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Apple may have seen the writing on the wall. Google may have actually sensed it sooner, which is why it didn’t seem to get excited in the first place. Although they have been the biggest proponents of this app-centric ecosystem we have today, especially on mobile, the two most influential companies in the world seem to be slowly abandoning them. Apps are no longer the great money makers they once were, even the paid ones. Some might argue they never were, at least on Android. The money may soon be in subscriptions instead, and that could drastically change the software landscape forever.

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There are many uncertain things in life but one constant thing next, other than change, is the rising prices of smartphones, particularly the premium ones. Not more than two years ago, consumers would be complaining about how expensive $800 phones are. Analysts scoffed at the iPhone X’s $1,000 price tag and predicted Apple’s humiliating defeat. Today, $1,000 has become the new normal for premium phones and there are no signs the industry is going to reverse course. And, like it or not, that’s partly thanks to us consumers as well.

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ASUS is reportedly rethinking its mobile strategy around gaming phones, spurred perhaps by the popularity (not actual sales) of its ROG Phone. Razer has definitely been convinced it’s the way to go, enough to create a Razer Phone 2. Xiaomi’s Black Shark and ZTE/nubia’s Red Magic all seem to believe there’s a future in gaming smartphones. They might be right, at least for another year. Two at most. Then gaming smartphones will suddenly vanish not because they’ve become passé. It’s because practically every smartphone will be a gaming smartphone.

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Last week, iOS gamers bid farewell to the Infinity Blade trilogy. By today’s standards, the game may not only look dated but also feel a bit shallow. Epic Game’s decision is perfectly understandable and even justified from a technical and business standpoint. But while this particular news simply borders on sad for those who’ve had fond memories of the games, it belies an inherent problem in the mobile gaming ecosystem and perhaps the whole mobile app ecosystem at large. In a year or two at most, there will be more games that will disappear from app stores and there will be no way for anyone to experience them anymore.

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Facebook has probably become one of the most suspected, even hated, tech companies of late. It may have even managed to surpass Google to some extent. But the infamy and exodus that Facebook is now being subjected to is really just the height of a trend that has been happening lately. YouTube stars are burning out or exploding in spectacularly distasteful ways. Twitter’s 280-character expansion got the cold shoulder reception. Tumblr dug its own grave in trying to impress Apple. And Instagram and Snapchat seem to be locked into copying each other. The fire that drove social media’s growth has seemingly been reduced to smoldering embers and users are either jumping ship to other networks or quitting outright. But it’s not for the reasons that you might think.

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If, at the beginning of the year, you were worried that the new God of War title was just a cynical money grab from Sony, you definitely weren’t alone. After all, the God of War series had a pretty good run back in the days of the PS2 and PS3, but it overstayed its welcome and ended up going out with the whimper that was God of War: Ascension. It wasn’t hard to imagine that Sony was simply tapping a dormant franchise to squeeze more money out of fans of the series, with no real intention of returning the franchise to its former glory. That’s just what big publishers do.

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What is a computer? Apple asked this soul-searching when it launched the iPad Pro line. Since then, arguments have been thrown back and forth for and against the iPad as a laptop replacement. Then along came the Microsoft Surface Go, calling attention to itself, shouting that it's a real computer. With the holiday shopping period fast approaching both companies have stepped up the rhetoric and the marketing. Which leaves us wondering which is really the real computer?

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I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Pokemon Let’s Go isn’t quite what I was expecting - or even hoping for - out of the series’ home console debut. We Pokemon fans have been waiting more than 20 years for the mainline Pokemon series to come to consoles, but Pokemon Let’s Go only gets part way there. It gets closer than other any of the console spin-offs have, but it isn’t quite the Pokemon that many of us have been looking forward to since the day the Switch was first announced.

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There is no stopping the 5G revolution, especially since everyone seems to be on board. From network operators to smartphone manufacturers to silicon makers, everyone seems to be hellbent on pushing the fifth generation cellular technology to businesses and consumers. With all the marketing and hype, there’s bound to be some confusion and questions. What is 5G, what is it for, and will really make our lives better? Here are some answers to those questions and more.

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It has not been a friendly console cycle for Microsoft and the Xbox One. Microsoft’s troubles began from the second it revealed the Xbox One back in 2013 - not only did the company reveal a console that seemed to put gaming last, but it also took a heavy-handed approach to digital rights management that immediately received a lot of blowback. Though Microsoft reversed many of these controversial decisions before the console launched, the damage was done.

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Almost everyone has a smartphone these days，perhaps more than a PC. That means almost everyone uses Android or iOS. Linux runs the tech world behind the scenes and macOS still enjoys the prestige of being the creatives' OS. But like it or not, Windows is still the operating system on computers, from desktops to laptops to hybrids to even some PoS and ATMs, regrettably. With that many users and installs, you’d think Microsoft would exercise great care and caution to ensure its updates don’t break computers terribly. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that isn’t the case lately.

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Another day, another Android malware sighted on Google Play Store. Countless pieces and analyses have been written up regarding Google’s mostly hands-off approach to screening apps and it’s a bitter pill to swallow for Android fans and believers. But while there’s no denying that too many such Potentially Harmful Apps or PHAs have slipped through the cracks, there is also one thing that seems to escape notice: the hundreds of thousands of users that should have all been compromised by these malware-laden Android apps.

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