Facebook Messenger gets animated stickers in messages.

Heavy users of Facebook Messenger will most likely like this new feature that some stickers are now animated in messages. Besides this fancy addition, the app supports more languages: Croatian, Hungarian and Slovakian. Add to that the usual bug fixes and you get an update that is available for download from the Play Store.

What's New

2.7.1

- Some stickers are now animated in messages—see Pusheen, Beast and Anooki wave, dance and wiggle! (Android 4.0.2 and higher)

- Plus, the app is available in more languages: Croatian, Hungarian and Slovakian

- Bug fixes for reliability

Chrome Beta update fixes flickering on HTC One.

Chrome Beta is the app that Google uses to test features before publishing them to the official version of its browser for Android. Since Chrome beta is available for download in the Play Store, early adopters are welcome to download and test those features and give feedback to the team. An excellent way to get various views and experience from users around the world. 

Today's update does not any new features, but include the following fixes:

• 260227: Space missing from suggestions in google.com when query contains a typo
• 272062: Simple Cache heap peaks during index regeneration
• Support for input

Known issues:

• 237839: Blue shadow on edit context menu
• 263870: History search textbox disappears when search term is deleted
• 268896: Samsung S3 - Quitting app,when open new tab while playing mse video
• 261822: Partial white flashes and background border issues during tap-to-zoom
• 266572: Flickering on HTC1

Download: Play Store

Angry Birds Friends updated with Toons Channel.

Angry Birds, like Mario or Sonic, is now part of those games franchise that will probably never die. At least, it will survive as long as there will be eggs on this planet. Rovio published a 47.84MB update to the store today that adds the popular Toons Channel to the app so users can watch full Angry Birds Toons episodes and other videos on their devices.

Angry Birds Friends has also been updated with support for upcoming tournaments with special themes, new graphics and more interactive levels. Obviously, this update has the usual improvements and fixes to make the birds, pigs and eggs last longer and perform faster on our favorite platforms.

Download: Google Play Store

Long live the birds.

Contacts+ for Android gets new widget.

If you need something more than the default contact app on your Android, you should definitely consider Contact+. With it you can send regular text messages, interact with your friends on Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter etc. All in one place without the need to switch between apps.

Contact+ was updated today with the following features:

+ Bug fixes

+ For Android 4.0+ devices - supporting a New (free!) Widget, downloadable separately and includes:

Groups selection (based on phone contacts)

Themes: light, dark&black

Click action selection per contact: call, text, send WhatsApp message or open contact

Resizable & Scrollable !

Lockscreen enabled :)

Note: Once the widget is installed, place it on the homescreen by entering the apps drawer >> click widgets tab >> select “Contacts+ widget” (press & hold) >> drag & drop.

Download: Google Play Store

App updates: Google Translate, Google+, Maps, Avast, CNN, Box.

This is a list of updated apps I have installed on my Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.3. Checkout those apps if you do not have them on your Android. 

Google Translate
What's New:

• Handwriting input is now available for Hindi and Thai.
• Camera input is now available for Afrikaans, Greek, Hebrew, and Serbian.

Google+

What's New:

• View, edit and share photos stored in Google Drive
• Pull to refresh content in the stream and notifications
• Locations improvements: share your city-level location, control who is displayed on the map
• Easier switching between different accounts and pages
• Google Apps for Business support: restrict posts to the domain, domain icons to identify members
• Hangouts app replaces Messenger for messaging and video calls. Visit Google Takeout to download your Messenger data.

Maps

What's New:

• Scale bar lets you see distances on a map 
• Bug fixes

Avast Mobile Security & Antivirus

What's New:

• New App Locking Feature (Premium)
• New Ad detector feature in privacy advisor (Premium)
• Dashboard redesign, plus additional interface changes to improve user experience
• New features inside Anti-Theft (e.g Geo-fencing, picture taking)
• New Backup functionality
• Bulgarian language added

CNN

What's New:

• Crash and bug fixes to resolve video player issue experienced after updating devices to Android 4.3

Box

What's New:

v2.2.1: Bug fixes including those for uploads on Android 4.3 and Nexus 7 layouts

New left-swipe navigation drawer

Revamped updates feed with document preview and new filtering options

New resizable home screen widget with scrolling

Ability to sort a folder by name, date, or size

Grid (icon) view for files

Ability to switch between multiple Box accounts from inside the app

Real-time updates to offline files while inside the app

Localized file and folder sizes

Finnish language support

Happy download :-)

Twitter for Android gets two-factor authentication, new gallery view.

Twitter has added two-factor authentication to its official app for Android today in an update published in Google Play Store to protect users' account with login verification. This new feature can be activated and managed within the app itself. I strongly recommend that you activate it. Better be safe than sorry.

The update also lets you enjoy a new gallery view for photos in search results and includes the usual bug fixes and improvements.

Get the update on Google Play. 

Facebook update brings Chat heads to mid-range devices.

Chat heads was initially restricted to devices supporting Facebook Home, the failed attempt by Facebook to take over your device. Home was meant to be the main point of entry to access your phone features as it worked more like a launcher, an intrusive one which did not garner much support from users. But not all was bad about Facebook Home. 

Chat head remains quite popular and it seems Facebook has noticed and is bringing it to those devices that cannot handle Facebook Home. In the latest update to Facebook Messenger, they added support for Chat Heads for mid-range devices like the Samsung Galaxy Y and HTC Wildfire. A bug on the Sony Experia U which caused chat heads to appear incorrectly was also fixed.

Finally, the usual bug fixes are also part of the update as well as improvements to use less battery.

With this update, Facebook Messenger reaches version 2.6.1. If you haven't received the update notification yet, get it on Google Play.

HTC One Mini announced.

Glacial Silver HTC One Mini

The long rumored HTC one mini has been officially announced today. The device is 13% smaller and 17% lighter than its big brother, the HTC One. It even shares some specs with the HTC 8X notably with a 4.3 inch, 720p display (341 PPI), 16gb of storage, 1gb of RAM, 1800 math battery. But the comparisons stop here.

HTC One and HTC One Mini

The HTC One Mini runs Android 4.2.2 with Sense 5. Like its big brother, the One Mini also sports the HTC UltraPixel, BoomSound, Zones, Highlight Videos, dual-frontal speakers.

Stealth Black HTC One Mini

Specs:
-4.3 inch, 720p display (341ppi)

-HTC UltraPixel camera (4mp), f/2.0 aperture, 28mm lens

-Front-facing 1.6 megapixel camera, BSI sensor

-Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 dual-core CPU at 1.4 Ghz

-Android 4.2.2 with HTC Sense 5

-16 GB of storage, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM

-1800 mAH embedded rechargeable Li-polymer battery

-2G Network Coverage: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

3G Network Coverage EMEA: 900/1900/2100 MHz with HSDPA up to 42 Mbps
3G Network Coverage Asia: 850/900/1900/2100 MHz with HSDPA up to 42 Mbps
4G LTE Network Coverage EMEA: 800/1800/2600 MHz
4G LTE Network Coverage Asia: 900/1800/2100/2600 MHz

-Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX enabled / Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n

-Size: 132 x 63.2 x 9.25mm / Weight: 122g

Skype adds signout to all screens and fixes some bugs.

Since the last update to Skype for Android last week that saw the popular app get a redesign that brought it closer to its Windows Phone counterpart, there has been a lot of complaints or feedback if you prefer, about the way user sign out of the app. Again like the Windows Phone version, users who wanted to log out of Skype had to go to their profile to do so. Skype has issued an update today that fixes this issue and let users log out from any of the home screens, including the profile screen.

Skype also included some bug fixes "including one that might have prevented you from making any calls or changing your status to online."

We can only salute Skype promptness.

Download: Google Play Store

Opera Browser beta updated.

The Chromium based browser for Android got a slew of updates and fixes today. Check out the change log:

- Based on Chromium 28.
- Improved startup-time.
- Improved tab-UI animations.
- New "open in private tab" context menu.
- New video control to download the video.
- Improvements and bugfixes to fullscreen web pages.
- Fix for bug causing Opera to crash after system language was changed.
- Fix for bug causing Opera to randomly display a black screen.
- Memory leaks plugged and general stability improvements

Source: Google Play Store