Enlarge Image Jason Cipriani/CNET Earlier this week Snapchat updated its mobile apps with a couple of new features, one of which the company calls Travel Mode. When enabled, this new feature will prevent content from things like Stories from automatically loading in the background when your smartphone is on a cellular connection. Meaning this could …
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Apple Music has so far scored 11 million free subscribers, so they probably won’t reach their rumored goal of 100 million subscribers anytime soon. Even with the company’s considerable marketing muscle and free trial subscriptions, 11 mil seems pretty paltry. It’s starting to look like Apple bought the wrong company — Beats — it should have bought Pandora. It’d be …
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Samsung will show off its newest jumbo smartphones, including a likely follow-up to last year’s Galaxy Note Edge, during an event in New York. Juan Garzón/CNET Samsung hopes to get the jump on Apple. But will it be enough? On Thursday, Samsung will host its second Unpacked event of the year to introduce its newest phablets, the jumbo-sized hybrids between …
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Nextbit is already shifting from software to hardware. Screenshot by Roger Cheng/CNET You would normally laugh off any no-name company’s attempt to jump into the brutally competitive smartphone business. But given the pedigree of the members at startup Nextbit, you have to at least be curious. Nextbit, which began life as a secretive software startup focused on a cloud-based tool …
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Sprint is opening the world to its customers to make it cheaper to make calls and access data. Sprint Sprint is the latest US carrier to make it easier (and cheaper) for customers to communicate with friends and family around the world. Sprint on Monday unveiled its Open World add-on plan, which offers free calling and texting from the US …
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As part of Google’s restructuring, CFO Ruth Porat will be CFO of Alphabet, as well as Google. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images When Ruth Porat, Google’s chief financial officer, addressed analysts on a conference call for the first time in July, she preached one thing: balance. “A key focus is on the levers within our control to manage the pace of expenses …
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Apple Pay is back in the good graces of RiteAid but will have to compete with Google Wallet and Android Pay. CNET Apple Pay and Google Wallet are once again welcome at Rite Aid stores. The pharmacy chain announced on Tuesday that all of its almost 4,600 stores in the US will start accepting mobile payments as of August 15, …
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Demonstrators took to the streets in 2012 to protest SOPA, ultimately helping to kill the controversial bill. Sarah Tew / CNET The Stop Online Piracy Act died in 2012. But now some of the largest technology companies in Silicon Valley are growing concerned that major movie studios are trying to bring it back. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Yahoo on …
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Ads or not, streaming music appears to be on a path to serious growth, Juniper Research data shows. Lexy Savvides/CNET Apple Music’s subscription-based music-streaming offering won’t prove to be much of a detriment to ad-supported music listening, new data from Juniper Research shows. Revenue generated from ad-based music streaming is expected to hit $782 million worldwide this year, and jump …
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Xiaomi’s Steve Vickers believes southeast Asia is playing a pivotal part in the smartphone wars. Xiaomi Xiaomi is one of the hottest tech companies in the world right now. At barely five years old, Xiaomi has become the world’s sixth largest smartphone maker and one of the world’s most valuable startups, with a valuation of $46 billion. Earlier this year, …
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A fix for the latest bug in Windows 10 may be on the horizon. screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET Microsoft apparently has a fix up its sleeve to patch a download glitch affecting Windows 10 store users. On Saturday, some Windows 10 users started reporting that they couldn’t access the app store to download either new apps or updates to existing …
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Could iPhone sales take a dip in the fourth quarter? CNET Little interest in the next iPhone’s purported Force Touch feature combined with weak demand in China could sink iPhone sales in the fourth quarter, says analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Reportedly slated for the iPhone 6S, Force Touch makes the screen pressure-sensitive so it responds to how you press on the …
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The address book is at the core of your phone. Since most of us don’t memorize phone numbers anymore, it’s a crucial tool for keeping touch with friends and family through phone calls, texts and emails. Unfortunately, the built-in contacts app that comes with the iPhone or Android phones hasn’t changed in years. It can be frustrating to edit, fraught …
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Current owners of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are loyal — to a degree. CNET Android smartphone owners have become more loyal to their operating system than iOS users over the last two years, according to new data. Between July 2013 and June 2015, 82 percent of previous Android owners stuck with the operating system when they purchased …
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CNET’s Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. Hey, has anyone seen summer? It was here a minute ago. Alas, for most kids, a new school year is just around the corner. (That sound you hear is the obligatory collective, “Noooooo!”) …
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