Mobile

5G has been on a tear the last few years as wireless operators and smartphone manufacturers have made a marketing push touting higher bandwidth and lower latency for users. Yet, for all the attention that 5G gets from consumers, some of the most important new applications for the next-generation wireless …

Like countless other industries, mobile phone sales got hit hard in 2020. The industry hit a 10.5% decline for the year, as COVID-19 first decimated the supply and later consumer demand for devices. It was the latest in a rough couple of years for manufacturers, but 2020 hit significantly harder …

Police in Minneapolis obtained a search warrant ordering Google to turn over sets of account data on vandals accused of sparking violence in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd last year, TechCrunch has learned. The death of Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer …

Several high-level Apple services are experiencing issues and outages on Wednesday morning, Apple has confirmed. These issues are impacting a number of consumer-facing services, including Apple Music and Radio, Apple Books, and the App Store platforms across both iOS devices and Mac. For some users, the services are down. For …

Huawei’s status in the U.S. has been one of many question marks hovering over the newly minted Biden administration. The smartphone maker was one of a number of Chinese companies added to the Department of Commerce’s “entity list” during Trump’s four years in office. Gina Raimondo, Joe Biden’s nominee for …

TikTok announces additional steps to fight misinformation, Myanmar’s military cracks down on Facebook and Google’s subsea cable goes online. This is your Daily Crunch for February 3, 2021. The big story: TikTok will downrank ‘unsubstantiated’ claims TikTok had already said it would try to reduce misinformation by removing videos flagged …

Landed, a startup aiming to improve the hiring process for hourly employers and job applicants, is officially launching its mobile app today. It’s also announcing that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding. Founder and CEO Vivian Wang said that the app works by asking applicants to fill out …

In addition to AirPlay support for Fitness+, today’s iOS 14.5 developer beta is bringing some key new features to mobile operating system. At the top of the list is undoubtedly Apple Watch unlock for users wearing face coverings. The long-awaited feature arrives a year or so into a pandemic that …

The GameStop mania didn’t just drive up the stock price of a declining video game retailer, it’s also sent trading apps and others to the top of the App Store, due to record-breaking downloads. Today, the popular trading app Robinhood has become the No. 1 app overall on the App …

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion …