Cell Phone, Mobile App | featured news

Facebook's Home app for Android phones has been downloaded more than 500,000 times from the Google Play store since its release on 4 April. But it has received mixed reviews from users, with an average rating of 2.2 out of five stars.

Online professional networking service LinkedIn is dressing up its mobile application to impress people who are increasingly scrolling through content on smartphones....

Douglas Rushkoff says Facebook's new app just increases disorientation and isn't getting rave reviews from users... And when I looked up Facebook Home online to try to find out just what it was, the first search results that came up were from users sharing how to disable it. This way, consumers can buy the discounted phones on which Facebook Home ships, and turn them back into a regular Android smartphones, where Facebook is just another app we can use in our own good time.

Smartphones are powerful tools, and with the right apps and accessories, they can become even more so. A California-based tech company has launched a tool that turns a regular iPhone 4 or 4S into a powerful biometrics scanning tool. AOptix has unveiled its app and a wrap-around device for turning the smartphone into a portable iris, face, fingerprint and voice scanner.

It's about time someone came up with a tech-savvy way to determine the optimal taxi route.As hard working as they are, some cab drivers may take a slower, more congested route to run up the fare, but the free Taxi Turvi app strives to help passengers judge whether their drivers are taking the best course possible.

Is Google in a hurry to get 2012 over with? Probably not. But that didn't stop the snarky headlines after it was discovered that a buggy app in the new version of Google's mobile operating system omits the month of December. The People app lets users bookmark friends' birthdays and other important dates on a calendar. But some users of Android 4.2, the system's newest update, are complaining they can't note December dates in the app because its calendar skips from November to January. December simply does not exist.

Since clinching the Republican nomination two months ago, Romney advisers have significantly stepped up their digital campaign, hoping to catch up with President Obama in an arena he dominated in 2008. Romney has hired data analysts and mobile-app developers from places including Google and Apple, unwilling to concede the traditionally liberal-leaning Silicon Valley talent pool.

Over the weekend, Facebook added a stalkerish feature called "Find Friends Nearby" to its mobile website; on Monday, it was gone. "Find Friends Nearby" let users of iOS and Android devices locate BFFs — and perhaps nBFFs (never BFFS) — who were within range.

Oleg Kostour moved from Canada to Mountain View to build a 3D software startup. Instead, he built an app to stay in touch with the girlfriend he left behind in Canada. The iPhone app, Pair, launched in the app store this week. It creates a private shared timeline for couples that allows them to easily swap SMS messages, photos, videos and locations.

Here are six easy, inexpensive DIY solutions for creating apps for iOS and Android devices.