The app world is a massive place. There are millions of applications and games between the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It’s no surprise that some of them get into trouble every now and then. This year was a pretty big one for controversies. Some spanned almost the entire 2020, while others are still ongoing at the time of writing. The pandemic certainly didn’t help things, and even the FTC got into the mix a little bit.

Today, Asus took the wraps off its latest flagship, the Asus Zenfone 6. Although the Asus Zenfone 5Z was a pretty run-of-the-mill 2018 smartphone, the Zenfone 6 is anything but. The biggest change with the Asus Zenfone 6 is its flipping rear camera. Rather than putting a selfie cam permanently on the front or a pop-up selfie shooter as we’ve just seen on the OnePlus 7 Pro, Asus invented a mechanism that flips the rear camera around to the front.

It used to be the case that many Android phones had bad Android skins. From Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and even smartphone kingpin Samsung, it seemed like phone brands couldn’t resist turning stock Android into a visually unappealing, inconsistent, stuttering mess in the early years of Android. Sure, many of these Android skins also introduced new features that have since become commonplace on all phones. But it still didn’t change the fact that these overlays were ugly and/or demanding on resources.

TL;DR A cheaper HBO Max ads-supported tier is now live on the streaming service. This new tier is available alongside the more expensive $14.99-per-month ads-free tier. The price for the cheaper subscription is $9.99 a month, but it won’t have access to the newest movies. Update: June 2, 2021 (10:11 AM ET): In a press release, Warner Media confirmed that it has now launched its cheaper subscription tier for HBO Max.

TL;DR This week is the Google Chrome browser’s tenth anniversary, and Google is celebrating with the release of Chrome 69. The latest version of Chrome has a new Material Design finish, new password management features, an improved Omnibox, and more. Chrome 69 is rolling out now globally. Instructions on updating are below. It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten whole years, but the Google Chrome browser launched on September 2, 2008.

You simply cannot have too much screen real estate, that’s a fact. Coming to Android today, Duet Display promises to let you turn that old Android tablet you have lying around into a second screen for your PC or Mac. Duet has been quite successful on iOS, and over the past months the team behind it worked to make the jump to Android. The app lets your devices act as secondary displays for your laptop or desktop.

TL;DR The new Xiaomi virtual assistant is called Xiao Ai. Remarkably similar to Google Assistant, Xiao Ai checks the weather, controls smart appliances, does math, and performs translations. Due to cultural and language barriers, Xiao Ai will probably do better in China than other English-based rivals like Siri and Alexa. While Google’s stance on China has certainly softened a bit over the years, it’s evident that the search giant isn’t going to fully integrate into Chinese society any time soon.

Update: Google has now released an official blog post on not just the new support for web-based texts on Android Messages, but several other new features that will be rolled out over the next week. As we previously reported, once the Android Messages app update goes live, just go to the settings menu, click “Messages for web,” then scan the QR code on the Messages web client so you can send and receive texts on your desktop or laptop.

With an expected debut around the middle of the year, Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 805 chip should start showing up in devices soon. Perhaps in a sign that the 805 is indeed just around the corner, Qualcomm has allowed technology journalists to benchmark the new chip for the first time. AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi ran a suite of benchmarks on a Mobile Development Platform tablet provided by Qualcomm to see exactly what kind of performance the Snapdragon 805 brings to the game.

Is your mind playing tricks on you, or is that brand-spanking new Samsung Galaxy S8 (or Galaxy S8 Plus) screen look like it came straight out of 2013? It certainly looks like it did, as Samsung has decided to set the default resolution to FHD+ (2220 x 1080) and not the native QHD+ (2960 x 1440). The reason? We are not exactly sure, but it must have something to do with battery life and/or performance.