Author: Tapiwa Matthew Mutisi

Watching the Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress on TV, I couldn’t help but notice some signs of “5G,” the full-throttle Internet aspirations for smartphone manufacturers, chipmakers, network operators, and government regulators. But what precisely is 5G and when will it impact our everyday lives? The quick takeaway is that 5G, or…

Your next Android phone could cost a lot less and yet come with the same “biometric” fingerprint-unlocking security as high-end hardware. Or you could find yourself paying extra for screen resolution you can’t appreciate and an altered Android interface you don’t need. Those were the ups and downs of smartphones…

Many of the smartphones coming out in 2017 are moving in similar technical directions—more fingerprint scanners, more USB Type-C connections, and so on. All this smartphone tech was on display this week at the annual Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Most of the industry was represented, but not…

The photo- and video-messaging app Snapchat is unlike any other social network you probably use. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, launching Snapchat brings you to a minimalist camera screen with a few icons tucked away in the corners — there are no feeds or menus to greet or guide you here.…

Japanese-based messaging app Line is wildly popular in other parts of the world and the company has even expanded from a simple chat app to a full-service mobile carrier. According to news report, Line is branching out again and developing its own digital assistant called Clova to compete with the…

Apple is currently investigating claims that an iPhone 7 Plus exploded due to battery issues. The problem was raised on Twitter, where users have published a video and photos of the damaged phone. They show the back of a rose gold iPhone 7 Plus being deformed by a swollen battery…

The social media company has a huge contract with Google Cloud Platform. But what does that mean? Snap, which is set to IPO this week, signed a $2 billion, five-year contract with Google for its cloud services, which makes Snap Google’s largest customer of its cloud platform. For context, Google’s…

https://youtu.be/RH3OxVFvTeg?t=19 James Mangold’s Logan, the third and latest stand-alone Wolverine movie, is a strange contradiction: It’s both the most violent film in the series and the most sentimental one. When it’s not showering you in blood, it’s trying to make you spill tears. It’s much more comfortable with the former…

Welcome Brave – a brand new security-oriented web browser, which also has built-in support for torrent downloading and streaming. It is not a secret that old-fashioned BitTorrent clients have lost most of their appeal, as they become outdated with the rise of video streaming websites and services. This is why…

If I were to ask for a smartphone that’s smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus but has a bigger screen, most electronics store clerks would probably think I was asking them to answer a riddle. But that’s exactly what LG sought to do with its new Android phone, the G6,…

As the chills of February give way to the renewal of March, the mobile industry kicks off its year with the grand Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In years past, this has been the launchpad for tons of smartphone innovation — so we keep hoping for more of the same…

With all the hype around early 5G launches and tests, there’s one glaring problem: the telecom industry hasn’t really defined what 5G is. However, the super-fast wireless is starting to take shape. The International Telecommunication Union has published draft 5G specs that set performance expectations. As a user, you should…

As smartphones have proliferated, so have the kinds of people obsessed with them, from car-makers to media chieftains. Every year, they gather at Mobile World Congress, an annual extravaganza that brings together telecom companies, internet giants, handset makers and everyone in between to talk mobile computing for four days in…

Blackberry Ltd may have exited the device business, but fans of the pioneering email machine need not despair as Chinese smartphone maker TCL Communication has introduced its first Blackberry-licensed phone with the physical keyboard that was long its key allure. The KEYone combines a touch display with a physical keyboard…

Facebook has been pushing live broadcasting on the social network hard, but there’s been no serious financial incentive for us to go live there — until now. This week the company said it will begin opening up paid live broadcasting to the general public. That is, folks who have over…

Alphabet Inc’s Google announced that it will bring its digital assistant to smartphones running the latest versions of its Android operating system, vastly expanding its reach. The Google Assistant was limited to the technology company’s own products when it was released last fall, but it has steadily been expanding to…

Patrick Stewart (a.k.a. Professor Xavier) is retiring from the X-Men franchise. The actor says the new superhero film Logan (out March 3) will be the last time he plays the mutant leader, Professor Charles Xavier. Stewart made the announcement at a SiriusXM Town Hall where he appeared alongside Logan director and…

It’s been a week since YouTube sensation Felix Kjellberg (better known as PewDiePie) had to face the music for the anti-Semitic jokes he made in several of his videos. In the fallout, PewDiePie lost his deal with Disney’s Maker Studios, but the bigger blow came from YouTube directly. The company…

Firefox is testing a feature that lets you snooze tabs until later We’re all familiar with the snooze function that’s part of many email apps, which lets you temporarily dismiss a message and have it automatically resurface at a more convenient time. Now Firefox is taking the same approach and…

Whatsapp rolled out a new Status feature to all users. Instead of the text-only status that lets people know whether you’re busy or available to chat, the new Status feature uses photos, text, emojis and sketches to show what you’re doing. If that sounds familiar, it could be because it…