Truecaller earlier this week updated its iPhone app to version 5.0, and added a new Today Widget apart from redesigning the UI to optimise it for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and improving other features.

The new Today Widget, called Truecaller Widget Search, is meant to help quickly identify a missed call, and lets users copy a phone number from call history, and then drag down Apple's Today View to see the Truecaller widget and identify the caller. The updated app is available on the App Store.

The feature is available for iOS 8 users, and can also be used to search for people within and outside the user's phonebook. The firm says the app will first help search for the number or name inside the user's phonebook, and if it is not available, will search from within the Truecaller database that is claimed to have 1.6 billion names.

Users can now also information and photos from social media profiles to the Truecaller phonebook, a feature that Android users got back in December. Users will be able to choose the way they look in their friends' Truecaller phonebooks by updating their profile.

Apart from this, the new user interface allows for quick ways to send text messages or place calls to user profiles just discovered. Once a user profile is pulled, users will need to swipe left to place a call or text. The updated Truecaller app for iPhone also brings updated Spam filters for better protection against unwanted calls, and the app is claimed to be faster than before.

Alan Mamedi, co-founder and CEO of Truecaller, spoke of the changes in the new app in a statement, "We want to streamline and personalize the experience for our users as much as possible and a smarter design was essential to improving the experience. This is the next big step we're taking to increase the utility of our app, while helping the iOS community save time with tools they need to identify unknown numbers. We think the new Truecaller will improve the way millions of people use the service every day, and based on some of the great feedback we've had so far, we're confident that we're moving in the right direction toward our next 100 million users."

Samsung is expected to launch its next Galaxy flagship smartphone alongside a curved-display variant at the company's Galaxy Unpacked 2015 event during MWC scheduled for March 1, which is just a couple of days away from now. But the leaks related to the device just don't stop coming in.

The latest in the series of leaks is from mobile carrier Sprint. The US carrier along with T-Mobile, and AT&T earlier this week unveiled pre-registration pages that featured a side view of the Galaxy S6 Edge along with the words 'Six Appeal'. Soon after, AT&T's site code confirmed the names - Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.

More recently though, Sprint briefly put up a contest page (now pulled down) which showed the top-halves of both the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. In the meanwhile, more live images of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge have surfaced on the Internet, matching the phones seen on the Sprint contest page, alongside new details about UI on the handset.

First spotted by Android Police, Sprint's promotional teaser pages are for interested consumers to sign up for alerts on the handsets. Another promotional contest page shows the front panels of both the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.

The image only shows the upper half body of both the Samsung handsets that house the company logo just above the display while the screen has March 1 date potentially tipping the launch day. Sprint's contest page seemingly also spills the names of the two handsets, in-line with previous reports, and says, "Pre-register for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge that are coming soon and you'll be entered for a chance to win one of six GS6 (Galaxy S6) devices that are given away each week for a limited time."

In another leak, Sammobile reports that the Galaxy S6 will come preloaded with just two in-house apps while it will also include the themes feature that debuted on the Samsung Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A5. The report claims that Galaxy S6 users will be able to change "icons, colour bar, voice tones, background image and background colour in menus."

The report adds that the new themes should be available to download from the company's Theme Centre; though there is no word on whether the handset will support third-party themes.

Lastly, more live images of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge have emergedon XDA forum (via GSM Arena). On Thursday, some images of the Galaxy S6 were leaked via XDA forum showing the brushed metal frames alongside front and rear panels, as well as the lack of a microSD card slot and removable battery.

The latest images show the front and rear panels of both the yet-to-be-announced handsets. In one of the images the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are seen with switched-on screens. The curved-display edge of the Galaxy S6 Edge on one side is also visible in the image. The rear images of both the Galaxy S6 and the curved-display variant look identical with a protruding camera, a notable feature that's visible. As mentioned before, the images match that of the Sprint contest page, and we can now be reasonably sure the two phones will arrive in the form leaked by the carrier.

Based on previous reports, the Samsung Galaxy S6 is likely to feature a 5 or 5.1-inch QHD Super AMOLED display; run Android 5.0.2 Lollipop; octa-core Exynos 7420 processor; 3GB of RAM; a 20-megapixel camera with OIS (optical image stabilisation); 5-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 2600mAh battery with fast charging features.

Micromax has finally revealed the pricing of the Canvas Selfie smartphone, which will be available at Rs. 15,999 in India. Initially announced in December, the Micromax Canvas Selfie is expected to go on sale soon.

The company at the launch stressed that the Canvas-series smartphone has been designed for image-conscious women. It features a faux leather rear finish.

The highlight of the Micromax Canvas Selfie is its 13-megapixel front and rear cameras that are both accompanied by LED flash modules and Sony sensors. The smartphone's features few inbuilt camera tools such as eye enhancement; face slimming; skin smoothening; teeth whitening; remove oil; fade dark circles, and make-up.

The Canvas Selfie is powered by 1.7GHz octa-core (unspecified chipset) processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. The smartphone runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out-of-the-box and supports dual-SIM (GSM+GSM).

It features a 4.7-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. Micromax Canvas Selfie includes 16GB of inbuilt storage which is further expandable via microSD card (up to 32GB).

It includes a 2300mAh battery with no word on talk time and standby time. Connectivity options on the Canvas Selfie include Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, Micro-USB, GPRS/ EDGE, and 3G. It will be available in Mystic Blue and Angelic White colours.

An established Mumbai-based retailer on Thursday claimed that Micromax's new Bolt Q324 smartphone has launched at Rs. 3,990. So far Micromax is yet to officially announce or list the device. The retailer tipped that the Micromax Bolt Q324 will be available for Rs. 3,990 against an MRP of Rs. 4,699.

 

 

Panasonic has silently launched the successor of the Eluga U, the Eluga U2, in Taiwan at TWD 7,990 (approximately Rs. 15,700). As yet, there is no information of its global release.

The smartphone can be grabbed from Yahoo online store in Taiwan. The Panasonic Eluga U2 is a single-SIM device unlike the dual-SIM Eluga U. The smartphone runsAndroid 5.0 Lollipop with the company's Fit Home UI out-of-the-box, making it the first device to run Lollipop by Panasonic.

Upfront, the Panasonic Eluga U2 features a 5-inch full-HD (720x1280 pixels) IPS display and is powered by a 64-bit quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM.

The Panasonic Eluga U2 sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, and a 5-megapixel front facing camera. Inbuilt storage on the Eluga U2 is 16GB, which is further expandable via microSD card (up to 32GB).

Connectivity options on the Eluga U2 include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS/ A-GPS. The handset measures 141.5x71x7.95mm, weighs 131 grams, and comes with a 2500mAh battery.

Last year in July, Panasonic had launched the Eluga U smartphone in India, priced at Rs. 18,990. The dual-SIM (Micro-SIM) Panasonic Eluga U features a 5-inch (720x1280 pixels) IPS OGS display, and is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. Other specifications include, a 13-megapixel autofocus rear camera; a 2-megapixel front-facing camera; 16GB of built-in storage expandable via microSD card (up to 32GB), and a 2500mAh battery.

  

You hand over your phone to someone to make a call, or look up something on the Internet and the next thing you know, they're browsing through your messages. Most people know better than to be so rude, but we all know that one person who really doesn't understand why this is bad manners.

It's not like everyone has something to hide, but these days we all carry a virtual record of our lives in our pockets. Our smartphones have a lot of personal information we do not want other people to see.

One way to protect your privacy is to set a password lock on your phone. While that serves the purpose in most cases, it's no use when you pass your phone to someone for a quick call or if they want to check something. It's for times like these that a password lock for individual apps can come in handy. There are lots of apps for Android that let you do this, but Smart AppLock is our favourite.

This is how you can set up Smart AppLock to protect your apps from the curious friend:

1. Download Smart AppLock.
2. When you first fire up the app, it'll ask you to set the password. The default password is 7777, as you'll see in the password hint on screen. Tap those numbers in to open the app.
3. Now the App Lock tab will show up.
4. Tap the green + button at the bottom.
5. Select apps you want to lock down with a password. All you need to do is tap the checkmark next to each app that you want to protect.
6. Tap ADD.
7. Next to each app, you'll see a button labelled FAKE. Tap this button to enable a fake app crash message. Whenever you open that app, you will see a message like, "Unfortunately, WhatsApp has stopped." This will show the name of whichever app you have enabled the setting for. If someone sees the message and taps OK, Smart AppLock returns to the home screen. But if you tap and holdOK, you'll be asked to enter the app password.

That's it. Now all the apps you selected are hidden behind a password. But it's a good idea to change the default password and here's how you can do that:

1. Swipe left to the Settings tab.
2. Tap Password & Pattern Settings.
3. Tap Password and key a new numeric code.
4. Tap Password hint to replace the hint set by default.
5. You can also switch to a pattern lock, gesture lock or character password lock. Tap Lock Type to switch.

This will set a common password for all the apps you picked. If you want a different password for any of your apps, try these steps.

1. Open Smart AppLock and swipe left to the Settings tab.
2. Tap Multiple Passwords.
3. Tap Add Password.
4. Here you can select individual apps by tapping Locked Apps.
5. Tap the checkmark next to the apps you want to lock and tap Add.

We really liked Smart AppLock because it doesn't just protect your apps. It does this in a way that prevents any unauthorised user from knowing that something is up. This way, you can keep your stuff private, without getting into a fight with someone over it.

If your phone crashes unexpectedly, or worse gets lost or stolen, then you'll not just be down the cost of a phone, but also a huge amount of data. To get around that, you need to enable cloud backups for as many things as possible, so that logging your account into a new handset transfers most of your data automatically. But not everything can be backed up that way, and that's why it's still important to take regular backups of your phone.

While some third-party apps like Titanium Backup and Helium will let you take a full backup your Android smartphone, they are not for everyone. Most users don't know about rooting their phones, or want to mess around with installing ADB drivers. No worry, it may take a few more steps, but you'll get there (almost).

Here's how to backup almost any Android smartphone.

Backing up to the cloud

1. On your phone, go to Settings > Accounts & sync.
2. Under ACCOUNTS, and tick mark "Auto-sync data". Next, tap on Google. Now, tap on the Gmail ID you used to sign onto the phone.
3. Here, you can turn on all the options so that all your Google related information gets synced to the cloud. This includes your contacts, photos (uploaded to Google+, privately if you want), app data, calendar events, Chrome tabs, your Google Fit data and more.
4. Now go to Settings > Backup & Reset.
5. Check Back up my data.

This will save app data and all of your phone's settings including Wi-Fi passwords to your Google account. When you sign in using this Google account on another phone, all of your preferences, photos (via Google+), and contacts will be imported automatically. This data is synced regularly and you just need to log into another device with the same account to recover it. This does not cover your text messages and various other types of data - you'll have to back them up yourself.

Locally back up media, messages and apps

Next, you'll want to save the music, movies and other media you've saved on your phone's memory card. This process is easy - just connect your phone to a PC and copy everything that's in the microSD card. This is a manual process so you'll need to make a routine of doing this.

Media

1. Connect your phone to the computer with a USB cable. If you are on a Mac, make sure you have the Android File Transfer application installed before you do this.
2. Open My Computer on your PC, or Finder on your Mac.
3. Navigate to the SD card and copy all the files you want to save to your computer.
4. After the copying is done, you can unplug your phone.

Text Messages

 

You can easily save all your text messages and call logs to your Gmail account by using an app called SMS Backup+. Try these steps:

1. Download SMS Backup+.
2. Open the app and tap Connect.
3. Pick your Gmail account from the pop-up.
4. Now grant SMS Backup+ permission to access your Google account.
5. Now go back to the app and tap Backup. This will save all your text messages to your Gmail account.
6. Log in to Gmail from any Web browser and on the left side you'll see a new label -SMS. Click it to view all the text messages that have been backed up.
7. To restore these messages, just tap Restore in SMS Backup+.
8. Tap OK in the pop-up.
9. You'll be asked to set SMS Backup+ as your default SMS app. Tap Yes. This is needed to restore messages.
10. Now the app will automatically restore all your messages and call logs. Once the process is complete, the app will show a pop-up that restores your default SMS app. Tap Yes.

Apps

The next step is to backup and restore installed apps. You can re-download apps easily if you're using the same Google account on the new device - just open Google Play, tap the hamburger icon (three horizontal lines) on the top-left > My apps. You can install all previously purchased apps from there.

On the other hand, a local backup could be faster to restore, and wouldn't waste bandwidth either. And it's also pretty easy to do.

1. Download ES File Explorer.
2. Swipe the screen to the right to reveal the Homepage of ES File Explorer.
3. Tap APP which is under a blue Android robot icon on the top-right.
4. Tap and hold any app until you see a checkmark on its icon.
5. Now tap the tick-mark icon on the top-right, the one inside a box with a dotted frame. This will select all apps.
6. Tap Backup that's on the bottom row. This will save a copy of the apk files of all your apps.
7. To view which apk files have been saved, tap User apps at the top. From the pop-up, select Backed-up Apps.
8. Tap any app's apk file here to install that app without Internet.
9. To save a copy of these files to your computer, connect your Android phone to a PC via USB.
10. The phone will appear in My Computer like a pendrive. Open it.
11. Go to Internal Storage > backups > apps.
12. Copy all the apk files here. In case you format your device, or change handsets, you can quickly copy these apk files to it and install the apps again by placing them in the same folder on your phone, and then following steps 7 and 8.

By following these steps, you're able to save a copy of all your contacts, text messages, media, apps, Wi-Fi passwords, and your app data. Of course, doing everything one by one is a little cumbersome, and the best way to back up your phone is to use a third party backup tool. We've used Titanium Backup and it is excellent but it requires root access on your Android phone, which is something typically expected from more advanced users. Even its interface is too clunky for most average people.

Helium is a great app for those who haven't rooted their phones. It has a nice interface too, but it only works with select Android phones from some international manufacturers. If you bought a phone from Micromax, Karbonn, Lava or countless other brands, you won't be able to use Helium. Further, using Helium requires you to install drivers for the phone on your computer as well.

Motorola late on Wednesday introduced the second-generation Moto E smartphone alongside the LTE variant of the handset.

The Lenovo-owned company has in no time also revealed the India launch price of the 3G variant of the new Motorola Moto E to be Rs. 6,999, which will be same as the original Moto E price at launch last year. For those unaware, Motorola India recently permanently slashed the price of the Moto E to Rs. 5,999.

Motorola Mobility posted a YouTube video on Wednesday teasing the India launch price of the 3G variant. The company also confirmed that the second-generation Moto E will be available in India exclusively via Flipkart, similar to other Moto devices.

Unfortunately, the company has not revealed the price for the Motorola Moto E (Gen 2) LTE and also the release date for either handset. The price was first spotted by Android Advices.

Considering that Motorola launched the unlocked 3G model at $119.99 (approximately Rs. 7,400) and the LTE model at $149.99 (approximately Rs. 9,200), we can expect the LTE variant of the new Moto E to be priced at around Rs. 8,999.

The Indian smartphone segment is already lined up with a few 4G-enabled handsets priced below Rs. 10,000, namely - Lenovo A6000 (Rs. 6,999), Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G (Rs. 9,999), and Micromax's Yu Yureka (Rs. 8,999) - the Moto E (Gen 2) LTE looks set to be another entrant in the segment.

One of the biggest highlights of the Moto E (Gen 2) will be Android 5.0 Lollipop, which will also make it the first handset from Motorola running the latest Android version out-of-the-box launched under Rs. 10,000.

For specifications, the new Moto E packs a slew of improvements over its predecessor. Both the new Moto E (Gen 2) and Moto E (Gen 2) LTE come with identical specifications except the chipsets.

Under the hood, the Moto E (Gen 2) is backed by a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM and Adreno 302 GPU. The company has finally upgraded the dual-core Snapdragon 200 SoC to quad-core. The Moto E (Gen 2) LTE is powered by a 64-bit quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC with Adreno 306. The new Moto E only supports single-SIM, unlike the dual-SIM first-generation Moto E.

The new Moto E features a 4.5-inch qHD (540x960 pixels) offering a pixel density of 256ppi. The first-generation Moto E came with a 4.3-inch qHD display.

The company has gone with a 5-megapixel rear camera again on the handset, while this time there is a 0.3-megapixel front camera also onboard. The new Moto E comes with 8GB of built-in storage, which is double the storage on Moto E, and supports expandable storage via microSD card (up to 32GB).

The Moto E (Gen 2) includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0LE, GPS/ A-GPS, GLONASS, FM radio, and Micro-USB connectivity options. Another major improvement is in battery department, the new Moto E packs a large 2390mAh battery compared to 1980mAh battery on the first-generation. The handset measures 129.9x66.8x12.3mm, and weighs 145 grams.