How important is it to Google to be the first place iPhone users go to for search results? Important enough that the Web giant reportedly pays its biggest rival in mobile big bucks for the privilege. The search giant paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 to keep its search bar on iOS devices, according to …

Mere days away from finding out which two teams will be going to Super Bowl 50, Facebook is gearing up to get into the action. The social networking giant announced late Wednesday the launch of Sports Stadium, a sports hub where Facebook users can get live scores and stats about games while discussing plays and players with friends watching the …

After three years in exile, YouTube has returned to Pakistan, with a big caveat. The Google-owned video-sharing site returned to the country on Monday after a Pakistan-specific version was created that allows the government to filter content it considers offensive, Pakistan said Monday. The site was blocked in 2012 after refusing to pull a clip that mocks the prophet Muhammad, …

Samsung has been ordered to stop selling a handful of older smartphones in the US that have already largely vanished from the market. In the latest round of the Apple v. Samsung patent war, US District Judge Lucy Koh on Monday granted an Apple motion for permanent injunction against devices that use technology covered by patents Samsung was found to …

Hot or not hot, your looks probably don’t have as much to do with your dating success on Tinder as you would like to believe. Tinder CEO Sean Rad said the smartphone app, which helps users anonymously locate others nearby who are interested in making a love connection, relies on an algorithm to determine users’ “desirability” to make date suggestions. …

Apple Music has topped 10 million paying subscribers in its first six months, according to the Financial Times, a milestone that rival music-streaming service Spotify took nearly six years to reach. The milestone comes less than two months after the service was extended to Google’s Android operating system, the software that powers the majority of the world’s mobile devices. Apple …

Sluggish demand for premium smartphones during the holiday shopping season appears to be weighing on Samsung’s bottom line. The South Korean electronics giant said Thursday it expects to record a fourth-quarter operating profit of 6.1 trillion won ($5.1 billion). While that’s up 15 percent from the year-ago period, it falls short of analysts’ average estimates of 6.6 billion won, according …

Smartphone cameras have advanced so much in recent years that many shutterbugs have largely abandoned traditional cameras in everyday life. But while the tech has advanced, our photography skills have largely remained stagnant. To help amateurs shoot more like the pros with their iPhones, Apple is hosting in-store, hands-on workshops next month that will teach consumers at all skill levels …

A drone may one day deliver your selfies to Twitter. The San Francisco-based company was granted a patent last week for an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, for capturing photos and videos that can then be shared through users’ accounts on the microblogging network. The drone’s movements would be controlled by Twitter users’ likes, tweets and replies, determining what images …

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, the competing mobile-payments services, will go head to head next year in the world’s biggest smartphone market. Apple and Samsung said Thursday they had secured separate deals with the China UnionPay bank that will enable their customers in China to add credit or debit cards to the respective mobile-payments services. Both companies said their services …