More bad news for Samsung in its legal battle with Apple: A U.S. district judge has just granted Apple a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus phone. That’s the same device Google handed out to developers just a couple of days ago at its I/O conference. Apple had requested an injunction against the smartphone in …

Remember Google’s snazzy demo of 3D views of various cities at a rather impromptu press conference earlier this month? You can now play with that feature yourself. Google quietly released a new version of its Google Earth program for Android today that adds 3D maps of 14 regions, just about all of which are in the U.S.: Boston Boulder Charlotte …

Apple will offer users a way to manage which applications have permission to access their contact information as part of a new privacy control panel that’s coming in iOS 6. The feature comes in tandem with a new privacy pop-up that asks whether users want to give a particular application access to contacts, as pointed out by MacRumors today. Apple …

While Apple’s next iPhone isn’t expected to arrive until later this year, details of what the device will look like and how Apple might change some of its key software features continue to trickle out. The latest comes from 9to5Mac, which earlier this week posted purported photos of the front and back of upcoming iPhone models. Today the blog has …

If there’s one thing to be said about Google+ for the iPhone (iTunes), it’s that it hasn’t looked as good as its Web counterpart. With an update today, Google is hoping to change people’s opinions on that. In a new version of the software that went out to Google+ users for iPhone today, the company has overhauled the look and …

Amazon’s latest addition to its Appstore could very well ignite the ire of a litigious patent holder, and cause a new legal and monetary headache for app makers. Amazon yesterday announced its in-app purchase service, offering developers a way to let users spend money inside of apps. While not a new feature among mobile apps, it adds new ways for …

A decision on what will be the next SIM card technology for smartphones and other portable devices has been delayed following a spat between competing hardware makers. In a statement today, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) said that it is postponing its decision on what’s come to be known as nano-SIM until the end of May. “The committee decided …

A security loophole on Apple’s iOS platform that gives applications access to a user’s photo library without explicit permission has been found to exist on Google’s Android platform as well. The New York Times’ Bits blog today notes that Android applications are able to read pictures off a phone as long as that user has given the app permission to …

Samsung ruled the roost with its advertising during last Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast, analytics firm Ace Metrix said today. According to individuals polled by the firm, two of Samsung’s advertisements came in with top honors: one for the Galaxy Note, and the other for the company’s SmartTV product line. Trailing in third place was Google for its Google+ commercial. And …

In the future, your Google-powered computer could run the same apps you have on your Google-powered smartphone in a way that works with the hardware you have right now. At least that’s the vision laid out in a newly unearthed patent application picked up earlier today by Patently Apple. The patent filing, titled “Mapping trackpad operations to touch-screen events,” describes …