Open source media player VideoLAN, popularly known as VLC, has received a massive update to version 3.0. The update comes three years after VLC 2.5 was released and brings the media player up to speed with the latest standards and codecs.
Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming platforms on the planet, and while the company has used playlists for years in the standard app, apparently it’s time to try out a standalone option.
Google Chrome will start blocking ads that are non-compliant with the standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads from February 15, 2018. Starting from the said date, Chrome will remove all ads from a webpage which has a “failing” status in the Ad Experience Report for more than 30 days.
One of the major pain points of iPhone users switching over to Android is the lack iMessage for the OS. While there are a number of messaging apps, iPhone users — especially in the United States — prefer to use iMessage. A number of developers have tried to bring iMessage to Android through reverse engineering but their apps have eventually always been taken down by Google.
One of the side effects of using free apps in the mobile world are ads. They help support the development of the app and allow the apps to be used by a wider base of people. Some developers, however, implement ads in shady and annoying ways in their apps to garner maximum views and clicks. This includes sub-par apps showing ads on the lock screen even if their functionality has nothing to do with it.
Google today globally released a new app on the Play Store: Datally. Aimed at users in emerging markets like India and Indonesia, the app helps one keep track of their data usage and save mobile data by offering granular controls over how it is used.
UC Browser, a popular browser from Alibaba in India, has been temporarily removed from the Play Store. The app had over 500 million downloads, with over 100 million users of the app from India itself. The browser even came pre-installed on many Android devices sold in the country.
Back in May, Netflix blocked its app from being downloaded on unlocked and rooted Android devices. Even sideloading the app did not work since Netflix had started using Google’s Widevine DRM to prevent the app from working on devices that were not certified by Google Play.
Google has started rolling out Chrome 59 for Android from this week, with the release focusing on performance and stability fixes. Thanks to an updated JavaScript engine, Google says that the latest version of Chrome for Android will load pages faster and use less memory.
