For those out there in the wild that, while taking a photo, wish they could capture the moment in a video at the same time, Instagram wants to give you the option to do just that. Kind of.

Instagram has officially launched a new app called Boomerang, which is available for free in the Google Play Store right now. With this app, users will be able to take a series of burst photos that Boomerang will automatically stitch together to create what Instagram calls a “mini video.” The video will look something similar to a stop-motion piece, rather than a seamless video experience, and Boomerang will run the video on a loop, playing forward and backward so the fun never ends.

Instagram says you can shoot in portrait or landscape, and there’s the ability to share the mini video to Facebook, Instagram, and others as well.

Boomerang is available right now. What do you think of the idea?

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If you’re the owner of a modern Verizon Galaxy device, we have some good news for you: Samsung Pay will finally work on your Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, and Galaxy Note 5! If you’ve received the necessary software update from Verizon, just download the app from the Play Store and you’re good to go.

While Verizon was the last carrier to adopt the service (we wouldn’t have been surprised if Verizon refused altogether), the carrier announced that support would be coming, just late. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Verizon to push the update out to enable this new feature.

Hit the source link to download the app if you have a supported device and give it a shot!

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While there has been a section of the Play Store specifically for Android Wear-supported apps, it hasn’t always been easy figuring out if an app you’re looking at supports your favorite wearable. With the latest update rolling out to the Play Store, that changes.

You will now see an icon indicating Android Wear support in the description. In the collapsed view, you’ll see the Android Wear watch icon. In the expanded description, there will be a line at the bottom. It doesn’t apply to all apps yet (a lot of Google apps are missing the icon, despite supporting Android Wear), but this is just the start.

With Android Wear growing quickly, it’s good to see Google making it easier to find apps for your watch. The feature should be rolling out to everybody now, so go check your Play Store to see if you have it!

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New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

DreamLab

Description: DreamLab is the flagship program of Vodafone Foundation Australia. It brings life to the Foundation’s purpose of empowering charities to use mobile technology to improve the health and wellbeing of Australians.

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 Airli Watch Face

Description: This watch face keeps it simple and minimal. Just some lines, circles and colors. It was designed as a round watch face, but can also adapt to square Android Wear devices.

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RockScout, by MirrorLink®

Description: RockScout makes Android music and audio apps controllable from your car’s dashboard via MirrorLink®. Simply download RockScout and use it as a portal to access any participating Android audio provider.

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STARZ Play

Description: Your STARZ subscription just got better. Now you can watch captivating original series as well as hit movies anywhere you go. You can play episodes of past season originals as well as current season episodes the day after they premiere on STARZ.

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KnockOn

Description: With KnockOn you can easily wake or lock your phone with a simple double tap on screen! Tap to lock your phone. Tap to wake your phone (OLED displays only!). Both features can be activated separately. Set up a sleep time to reduce power consumption.

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LinkedIn Lookup

Description: LinkedIn Lookup is the fastest way to find, learn about, and contact anyone at your company, even if you’re not connected to them on LinkedIn. In seconds, you can find a coworker by title, skill, name, expertise and more

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Parchi

Description: Parchi, a Microsoft Garage project, is a quick note taking app – think paper-pencil, sticky notes, edge of a paper, the last page of every notebook, you get the idea 🙂 Use Parchi (pur-chih) the same way you would use paper-pencil to capture notes.

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Microsoft OMS

Description: The Microsoft Operations Management Suite mobile app provides you with anywhere access to information about your IT infrastructure. The app delivers Operations Management Suite fully optimized for Android, enabling operational intelligence on the go.

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Sunrise Sunset Watch Face

Description: This Watch Face for Android Wear allows you to see the sunrise and sunset times for the day,as well as twilight periods. 

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NFL Emojis

Description: Emojis include: NFL Teams, Players, Mascots, and More! Share your NFL Sunday like never before with our exclusive NFL emojis and stickers. Share your favorite NFL fantasy football stars. Customized emojis and stickers for all 32 NFL teams.

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You’ve watched a YouTube ad, which means you’ve seen an advertisement, too. Whether that ad was skippable in a matter of seconds, or forced you to watch it for up to a minute probably, it doesn’t matter to most people. They’d just prefer the ads go away altogether. Luckily, Google has you covered. Finally.

Google has just announced YouTube Red, which will be a new subscription service that will go live on Wednesday, October 28. With Red, viewers will be able to watch YouTube videos without any ads at all. On top of that, subscribers will be able to download videos to watch later offline, and even use the YouTube app to watch videos in the background while they do something else.

All of that for $9.99 per month.

This new subscription will also include support for Google Play Music, the company’s streaming music service, and even the YouTube Music app when that launches at some point down the road. The subscription will work across devices, so just because you’re watching a YouTube video on your computer won’t mean you’ll be inundated with ads — as long as you’re signed in, of course.

There’s more, though. Google is also launching original content for YouTube, which will only be accessible through YouTube Red. That includes content from popular entities like PewDiePie, as well as creators like Rooster Teeth. The full laundry list of new content, which is set to go live in 2016, can be found through the source link below.

What do you think of the idea of YouTube Red?

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In August of this year, Fossil showed off its upcoming Android Wear-based smartwatch, but managed to do so without actually announcing anything about it at the same time. Now, though, the wait has finally come to an end as Fossil has officially announced the Q Founder.

The Q Founder is actually the top-of-the-line watch in a new Q Family of watches, and it’s the only wearable of the four that offers Android Wear under the hood. It’s a smartwatch that has an Intel chip inside, and it has a full touchscreen display. Its price starts at $275. Unfortunately, as of this writing there’s no word on when the new Q Founder will actually launch (the other three watches launch at the tail-end of October). The company does say it should land in time for the holiday shopping season, though.

Fossil is staying mum on most of the details regarding the Q Founder. Even the official press release for the device doesn’t actually articulate any details, like the display’s size or any of the inner workings of the wearable. Hopefully with the launch date arriving soon, we’ll know all the finer details before too long.

What do you think of the Q Founder?

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For those that have seen polls on Twitter, but have been miffed at the fact that the feature isn’t available for everyone to use, Twitter has good news.

On Wednesday, October 21, Twitter officially announced that over the coming days, the social network will be rolling out polls for everyone to use. As Twitter points out, the polls can be used to get other users’ opinions on just about anything, including what you should have for dinner or what you should name a new pet, even if the selections are limited. Right out of the gate Twitter says that the polls will only support two choices, so users will have to keep it fairly simple.

Coming soon! We’re rolling out the ability for everyone to create polls on Twitter: https://t.co/pH5a8q9Ujz http://pic.twitter.com/ijAKEMUdf1

— Twitter (@twitter) October 21, 2015

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Twitter says the poll will stay live for 24 hours after it is published, and users can vote on any poll and their responses will remain anonymous.

Twitter Polls will be rolling out for Android users (and iOS users, as well as twitter.com visitors) over the next few days. Once the feature lands on your platform of choice, there will be a new poll icon in the compose window, offering up quick access.

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Technically, we’ve already seen Samsung’s Galaxy View tablet, because the company showed an image when it teased the device last month. The problem is that that was one image with a black screen, so we couldn’t really discern much from it. Now some new images have leaked that give us a much better view of the View.

These newly-leaked Samsung Galaxy View images show the tablet and its 18.4-inch display in all their glory. The Galaxy View has a stand attached to its backside that lets you prop it up vertically or at a more horizontal angle, and the stand also has a handle attached for those times that you want to carry your huge tablet with you.

Another notable design feature of the Galaxy View is that it appears to be lacking a physical home button. Most all previous Samsung Galaxy phones and tablets have had a physical home button, making it a defining characteristic of Samsung’s hardware. Samsung appears to have realized that a single home button might look kind of silly on a huge tablet, though, and so the company scrapped it for the Galaxy View.

A previous leak claimed to shed light on the Galaxy View’s spec list, suggesting that it’ll have a 1920×1080 display resolution, octa-core Exynos processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 2-megapixel front camera, a 5700mAh battery, and Android 5.1.1. If true, that’ll make the Galaxy View a mid-range tier device, but it’ll still be useful for doing stuff from your kitchen counter and maybe some light productivity with a keyboard.

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I think most of us can agree that Google is the best search engine out there. Results are often really accurate, even if your query is quite stupid (I don’t know how Google understands some of the things I search!). And soon, Yahoo might be just as good.

No, Yahoo isn’t beefing up its own search algorithms; it’s actually using Google’s. The two struck a deal that allows Yahoo to use Google’s search services, both text and image, for its desktop and mobile sites. Part of the deal is that Google will display its own ads on Yahoo.

Interestingly, this deal isn’t exclusive, and Yahoo has a similar one with Microsoft for Bing services. And which service it uses for each search is up to Yahoo, as Google won’t control how or how often Yahoo uses its services.

Hopefully this means an improved search experience for Yahoo users.

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System updates have long been a sore point for Android and its fans, as manufacturers have often been painfully slow and carriers further delay updates to add their own bloat and annoying features. But with Nexus devices, you often get updates first, regardless of what carriers want, since they have historically been unlocked and free of carrier influences (there have been a few exceptions).

Other brands have tried to keep up as well. Companies like Samsung and HTC have improved in many ways, and Motorola has exceeded expectations in some cases. But HTC is looking to make an even bigger impact.

With the announcement of the HTC One A9, HTC claims that the unlocked device will be updated only 15 days after the Nexus devices receive their major updates. So whenever Android 6.1 launches, the A9 will get it just 15 days after the Nexus line, which is a stark contrast to the 90 days most manufacturers go by (and often fail to achieve).

That’s not to say HTC won’t be able to do it. The company has blamed lack of updates on carriers before, but the unlocked device will have nothing to do with them. But it remains to be seen how quickly HTC can pump out those updates, since it has to also adapt (and hopefully improve) Sense UI along with it.

There are some fears that a year or two in the future, HTC may not even be around anymore. The company isn’t doing too well financially, so those fears aren’t unfounded. What do you think of the promises HTC is making? Leave a comment!

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