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Firefox Focus is a bit of an odd duck. It launched first on iOS, where Firefox itself launched last. It had very limited features and a singled-minded focus on privacy. And yet it seems to have struck a chord with many mobile users, even on Android where the app has been around for less than a month. It managed to rake in 1 million downloads already in that time, encouraging Mozilla to roll out even more futures for the simple browser.

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There are just some gestures that have become so natural that we’ve come to expect them almost everywhere, especially on smartphones. Pinching (not squeezing), flicking, panning, and even dragging and dropping. In the same vein, we become painfully aware when they’re not there. Like being able to drag and drop events in a calendar app just to change the time. The long wait for Android users is over because, after years of wishing, Google Calendar finally got exactly that feature.

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Apple may have been fairly quiet about its Clips app since the iPhone video editing tool went live in April, but it's getting a big update today. Clips 1.1 is available to download in the App Store, but if you bought an iOS device recently you well already have it. Launched alongside, rather than replacing iMovie for iOS, Clips was intended to address the concern that its existing video editing tool was a little too serious and fairly complex.

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YouTube is arguably the biggest source of streaming multimedia, video or audio, on the Internet but its viewing experience on mobile, even on Google’s own Android, leaves much to be desired. We are almost at the mercy of how Google dictates mobile users should experience YouTube, which isn’t really that much compared to what you can do on the desktop. There are, however, a few enterprising and daring developers who are giving users a bit more control. Like this NewPipes app that even lets you slow down or speed up YouTube vids, whether Google allows it or not.

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On Friday, Nintendo Switch owners will be scrambling to download and play the next big title intended for the nascent gaming console. Or at least most will. There might be a fraction of owners might be more interested in something that’s suppose to happen on that day too: the launch of the Switch’s online service app. Well, no need to wait, because someone at Nintendo flipped the switch early. Except the app isn’t exactly usable yet anyway.

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Amazon may be the go-to online retailer for a huge number of people, but the sales behemoth now wants to be a glamorous lifestyle boutique as well as a bargain warehouse. The company has launched a new feature, Amazon Spark, in its iOS app, taking ideas from Instagram and Pinterest in the grand scheme of making you buy more stuff. The premise? You'll be more likely to open your wallet if you see things looking pretty.

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The back and forth between Google developers and Android modders is an eternal cat and mouse chase. But unlike in the cartoons, this is hardly entertaining. It is also a battle where both sides are right and wrong at the same time. Case in point is the latest tug of war between Magisk developers and Google’s SafetyNet root detection system. While the upper hand currently belongs to Google, Magisk developers are just as passionate and committed and are already on the verge of releasing a fix to turn the tide again.

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It's one thing to know that your next commute might take an hour. But it's another thing to know when it might take 30 minutes. Travel times aren't always fixed and they ebb and flow with the rise and setting of the sun, a.k.a. rush hour. To better help give travels an idea of what they're facing, Google has very sneakily rolled out an update to Maps that shows users a graph that visually shows just how much, or how less, traffic you will face, depending on what time you hit the road.

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People talk a lot on the Internet. While many are nonsense chatter, some communication does happen to involve serious business. Or at least serious enough to involve sending files between one another. Perhaps trying to shed off the image of being just a fun, whimsical communication tool, WhatsApp is now letting any and all users send any and all kinds of files to one another, practically turning it into a one-on-one file sharing channel.

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When people think of email on mobile devices, they usually default to Gmail or Apple Mail, though some have found their own special email havens in other apps. Microsoft, once the king of productivity apps like email, barely leaves a mark in this space. It is, however, trying to make up for lost time and lost customers with its Outlook app for iOS and Android, as shown by this latest update that brings it up to snuff in the latest emailing conventions.

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Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are, as the saying goes. Google has apparently taken that age-old adage to heart in trying to protect users from less than conscientious Android apps. Such apps might use permissions and data more than they should, at least compared to other similar apps that behave properly. And while the reasoning behind such peer grouping, Google unsurprisingly injects a pinch of machine learning to make it a less overwhelming task.

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Back in March 2016, Microsoft introduced an app called Seeing AI designed to help the blind using a combination of artificial intelligence and computer vision. It has been many months since, but the app is officially now available for anyone with an iOS device. With this, anyone who has trouble seeing can utilize Microsoft's artificial intelligence technology to transform their smartphone into a personal audio guidance system.

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