Google had no new mobile hardware to show off at Google I/O this year, and while that left most of the tech world feeling pretty despondent, we didn't walk away empty handed. Google announced its new music streaming service that integrates seamlessly with its digital content store, Play Music All Access. The minute it became available, many of us here at Pocketnow signed up for a trial period. I was particularly thrilled at the thought of having a subscription streaming service work alongside all the existing music I've purchased from Google and the tracks I previously owned and uploaded ...

I've been an advocate of using Google Wallet since I've been able to run the app on my smartphone. Walking into the local convenience store, phone in hand, and paying for my Monster Energy Drink by tapping my phone to their reader was, for lack of another phrase, science-fiction realized! The cashier smiled and chuckled a little -- a guy trying to use his phone to make a purchase! Shenanigans! Then the receipt printed out. The look on that cashier's face was epic: disbelief and jaw-dropping amazement. After that I started looking for places I could pay with my phone, just so I could see ...

Several months ago Waze, the insanely popular GPS navigation company, was in the middle of negotiations over selling their company to the highest bidder. Facebook reportedly want to buy Waze for the social aspects of the company. Google apparently didn't want Facebook to become a competitor in that industry, so the two companies got into a bidding war. What would this new partnership be called? Facebook Waze? Facebook Maps? Google Waze? Google Maps and Waze? As soon as the bidding started to heat up, I posted an article in which I made a very bold statement: If either Facebook or Google ...

The modern world of smartphone audio is perhaps best summed up by country-music singer Loretta Lynn: we've come a long way, baby. For much of the decade or so that smartphones have existed, the devices have been plagued by underwhelming audio performance, a symptom of too-small speakers paired with anemic software drivers, permitted only to suckle the tiniest bit of energy from an already power-strapped system. With very few exceptions, audio has been the afterthought, not the focus, of the smartphone industry. Thankfully, that's started to change in recent years. As smart devices have ...

Since many of today's smartphones and tablets don't have removable batteries, and staying tethered to an electrical outlet isn't a viable option, there's got to be another solution. Hold tight as we look at three portable batteries that you can use with your Android, iOS, Windows, or BlackBerry today! As our smartphones and tablets become a more powerful part of our every days lives, we seem to keep finding more things that we can do with them. My smartphone has become my calorie counter, pedometer, music player, TV, portable WiFi hotspot, primary email machine, turn-by-turn GPS and ...

Pocketnow Insider isn't just about video. It's a collection of posts that offers a glimpse behind the scenes of Pocketnow - and a brief look into the lives of the people behind it. This new recurring text series offers you the opportunity to get to know our editors better, outside the scope of their work here on the site. Last week, we hooked up with Michael Fisher to learn about his journey to joining our team, and in the weeks prior we brought you biographical sketches of Windows expert Adam Z. Lein and our Managing Editor, Anton D. Nagy. For our fourth installment of this series, we're ...

Not sure if you remember, but we've talked about Instagram around these parts before. We've gave you a guided tour of the photo-sharing app when it first came to Android last Spring, and the relative merit of the app has been disputed more times on the Pocketnow Weekly podcast than is probably necessary. But regardless of your personal feelings about the social photography title (looking at you here Taylor Martin), you'd have a hard time arguing that it's not a significant force in mobile. Instagram currently boasts 100 million active users posting 40 million photos per day - photos that ...

We recently had the opportunity to review the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, an experience we enjoyed primarily because of the device's innovative hardware: a 6.9mm-thick, 495g chassis that manages to squeeze water- and dust-resistance onto its list of features. Pocketnow is currently in the midst of reviewing the BlackBerry Q10, a peculiar blend of yesterday's design cues with a modern OS - and we're enjoying the feeling of real physical keys under our thumbs again. The third-generation Apple iPad and Microsoft's Surface RT also share space in our office, and we love the sturdy (if heavy) hardware ...