Phone Apps

These days, keeping up with games can be a full-time job. So how do you separate the signal from the noise, the wheat from the chaff, the Temple Runs from the Temple Jumps? Allow us to help by regularly selecting a game You Should Play. Video games make it possible for us to experience things…

Talk about a sweet gift for the holidays: Super Mario Run just hit the App Store on Thursday, and this late-year release is easily one of the most anticipated iPhone and iPad games to date. Nintendo’s game takes the full-fledged Super Mario side-scrolling experience that we’ve seen for the last 30-plus years and streamlines it…

Facebook Messenger is bringing selfie filters to real-time video chat. On Monday, Facebook announced that its Messenger app will let users conduct group video chats in real time. The splitscreen video will support six callers at any given time, but up to 50 users can join the conversation via text and voice, with the “dominant…

The Brexit vote is beginning to have an impact on iOS users in the U.K. Apple is raising App Store prices by about 25 percent to reflect exchange rate fluctuations following the Brexit vote in the U.K. According to 9to5Mac, $0.99 apps in the US will cost £0.99 in the U.K., up from £0.79. An…

Update, 1/20/17: A post on the Technosociology blog signed by dozens of security experts calls for a Guardian retraction and apology. This article has been updated to reflect this. When Facebook’s WhatsApp turned on end-end-end encryption in its messaging service last year, it was a big deal. As all eyes were glued on Apple’s fight with the…

Meitu isn’t new. The app, from a company of the same name, has been anime-izing people’s faces in China for several years. It just went viral in the U.S. for no apparent reason, explaining all the super-cute (“kawaii”) sparkly and smooth images of people in your social media feeds. This, in turn, quickly led to…

You’ll soon be able to use your iPhone to pay at Target stores, but not in the form of Apple Pay. Target is developing its own in-store mobile payments system this year, the company’s Chief Information and Digital Officer Michael McNamara told Recode. Target confirmed that its iOS apps will soon include the capability to…

Super Mario Run is getting an easy mode, thanks to an update rolling out Tuesday on iOS. This is great, because as adorable as the game is, it can be kind of hard, especially for kids. Nintendo says easy mode will be “pressure free” so you can just explore the levels without dying over and…

Users of Microsoft’s Outlook app for iPhone and iPad can now get work done quicker using third-party integrations. As of Thursday, Outlook for iOS supports add-ins, which let software companies build extensions to their own products that interact with emails in Outlook on a user’s smartphone and tablet. At launch, the app supports add-ins from…

For its first branded mobile game, Nintendo went with the most obvious choice: Super Mario Run, a smartly streamlined take on the classic formula—and thankfully one with a single price tag. Nintendo’s next smartphone and tablet game is quite different in nearly every respect, however, as it’s based on a less prominent franchise, offers a…