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Google has announced the debut of an Android One device in Turkey, the first of the line to land in Europe.

The goal of Android One is to bring cheap smartphones to the developing world with stock Android and made by a number of local OEMs.

Since its launch last September, Android One devices have launched in seven nations (including the latest in Turkey) but with the cheap price tag came super low-end devices and sales have been mediocre.

The new launch is in partnership with General Mobile and the device is the strongest we've seen yet from the Android One program. The 'General Mobile 4G' has a 5-inch 720p display with Gorilla Glass 4, 2GB RAM and dual 5MP/13MP cameras. The device is also the first to support LTE.

Google says the phone will sell for $250, higher than other Android One devices.

Mozilla has launched Firefox 38 this week for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android, featuring a few notable updates in addition to the normal performance and stability fixes.

Firefox 38 has integrated Adobe Content Decryption Module (CDM) to add the ability to play DRM-wrapped content on Windows devices, and Mozilla explained the move to DRM: "We are enabling DRM in order to provide our users with the features they require in a browser and allow them to continue accessing premium video content. We don't believe DRM is a desirable market solution, but it's currently the only way to watch a sought-after segment of content."

In addition, all the releases are getting Ruby annotation support,, often requested in Japan where publications need the extra text to indicate a pronunciation or meaning of the sentence or characters. There were add-ons previously, but now the support is built-in natively.

The full rundown:

The Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission are both near ending their review of the proposed AT&T acquisition of DirecTV, and are unlikely to block such a deal.

AT&T proposed a $49 billion acquisition of the satellite TV giant.

Although the deal is likely to pass, regulators are expected to propose numerous conditions on the deal, some of which will require either one or the other company to sell off certain subscribers, assets or spectrum.

AT&T has already committed to expand access to broadband in rural areas, and will likely have to commit to concessions on streaming video. Companies like Netflix have complained that a combined company could squeeze out other online services and raise prices on streaming providers.

Verizon and Sprint have settled with the FCC and will pay out $158 million over charges of 'cramming,' a practice in which the carrier allowed third-parties to charge customers for services without their knowledge and then hid the charges deep in the billing statement.

AT&T settled last year for $105 million and T-Mobile settled for $90 million. Verizon will pay $90 million and Sprint will kick in the remaining $68 million.

Many of the unwanted charges were as expensive as $9.99 per month, and included services that provided daily horoscope text messages or 30 second ringtones. The charges would then show up on your bill under a non-descript banner. Verizon and Sprint "were unable to prove that these services were ever requested" when asked by the FCC.

None of the carriers will be allowed to 'cram' in the future.

"Consumers rightfully expect their monthly phone bills will reflect only those services that they've purchased," Travis LeBlanc, the FCC Enforcement Bureau chief, said in a statement. "Today's settlements put in place strong protections that will prevent consumers from being victimized by these kinds of practices in the future."

Check out the refund process here for Verizon and Sprint.

Google, noticeably absent from a quickly growing catalog of Apple Watch apps, has unveiled their first app for the platform: 'Google News & Weather.'

While Google News and Weather is not the most popular Google app out there, it should be a good test for the search engine giant in exploring the new watch platform. It will compete directly with Apple Watch apps from major media outlets like The New York Times and NPR, among others.

Just like in those competing apps, you can swipe through top headlines right from the watch, and read news from over 65,000 publications condensed into different categories like "Top News," "Technology" and "Sports." You can also see any local news.

Unfortunately, the app appears to be limited. There is a photo and a headline, but no option to see the full story or even a summary. You cannot use Handoff to continue reading on your iPhone. You can however, use a Force Touch gesture to save the article to your Safari Reading List.

Starting next week, Domino's will begin rolling out a 'tweet-to-order' system that will allow hungry consumers to order via Twitter.

Making it even easier, all you will have to do is send a pizza emoji to @Dominos to get the process started. "It's the epitome of convenience," says Patrick Doyle, CEO at Domino's. "We've got this down to a five-second exchange."

Twitter has 302 million monthly active users sending over 500 million Tweets per day, but the company continues to struggle to maintain profits. Such creative uses of the platform are the next step in Twitter's plans. "Our hope is that advertisers will keep innovating this way," said Twitter spokeswoman Genevieve Wong. "Twitter is the best platform to be creative like this."

Domino's has been among the most tech-savvy companies in regards to ordering letting consumers order through Smart TVs, Android Wear watches, their own voice app and Pebble watches.

Verizon Communications has announced today the purchase of AOL for $4.4 billion as the company looks to expand its advertising and mobile video services.

AOL has remade itself in the last decade and now offers premier tech for selling ads and delivering high-quality Web video, including on mobile devices.

"Certainly the subscription business and the content businesses are very noteworthy. For us, the principal interest was around the ad tech platform," said Verizon's president of operations John Stratton.

Verizon has already announced they will launch a video service for mobile devices later this year that offers free, paid and ad-supported content. Most of the content will be shorter than the average TV show (21 minutes).

AOL also has a significant content network which includes Engadget, Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Moviefone but there is already rumors that HuffPo could be spun off into its own company.

In 2000, AOL acquired Time Warner and the deal is widely considered the worst in history. AOL's value plummeted after the tech bubble burst in 2001, and the merged companies had to take a loss of over $100 billion.

Warner Music Group, the second-largest record label on the planet, has announced a major milestone in the industry's shift towards streaming.

The label says for the Q1 2015 (fiscal Q2), streaming music revenue surpassed revenue from digital downloads for the first time ever.

Overall, streaming revenue grew 33 percent while digital download revenue only grew 7 percent. Streaming is anchored by Spotify, Google and YouTube while digital downloads are still mainly the domain of one player: Apple. For its part, Apple has also confirmed that digital downloads have peaked and Apple is rumored to be exploring a major comeback for its Beats Music service.

"The rate of this growth has made it abundantly clear that in years to come, streaming will be the way that most people enjoy music," says WMG CEO Stephen Cooper. "We'll continue to collaborate with our streaming partners to expand their businesses, and more importantly, to ensure that copyright owners, artists and songwriters receive appropriate value for their work."

Fixstars has unveiled the world's first 2.5-inch 6TB SSD, the largest capacity drive in that form factor.

The company says the Fixstars SSD-6000M will use 15nm flash memory and have read speeds of 540MB/s and write speeds of up to 520MB/s for sequential access.

Satoshi Miki, the CEO of Fixstars Corporation, noted: "The unparalleled performance of our previous model's (The SSD-3000M) sequential I/O helped propel our SSDs and garner lots of attention. Since many of our customers desire even greater capacity, I am excited to offer a new solution and grow the product line with the inclusion of the larger SSD-6000M. Since our SSD's capacity is now able to compete with high-end hard drives, we feel our product can draw the attention of data centers as well."

The drive is expected to ship in July, with an unknown price tag.

Pioneering streaming service Rhapsody has taken out a $10 million loan as its losses unexpectedly deepen.

Thanks to a filing with the SEC, we know that the company had an $8.9 million net loss for the Q1, even though revenue grew to $46.3 million. The loss was a bit unexpected given that the company lost $1.6 million in the same period last year.

Rhapsody has been trying to stay relevant against larger rivals like Spotify, Google, Amazon and Apple and the company has been forced to make bigger investments than it has in the past.

CFO Ethan Rudin stated a few months ago that 2015 would be a very important year: "2015 is a watershed year, not just for Rhapsody but for streaming music in general. It's not a period in time in which we're taking our foot off the gas. It's an investment year. We're thinking a lot about new product, we're thinking a lot about promotional opportunities, and music sharing like this Twitter opportunity."

Rhapsody is not traded publicly but its results are visible thanks to RealNetworks, the 43 percent owner of the company.

Nintendo has confirmed that it is looking to release five mobile games by March 2017, and partner DeNA hopes to bring in $25 million (3 billion yen) in income per month from the games.

The first games will be launched by the end of the year, and CEO Satoru Iwata says it will carefully choose the characters used in its smartphone and tablet games.

Nintendo has not yet revealed the gameplay format, although it did note that the games would be (in part at least), free-to-play with in-app purchases. Outside of the F2P, the gaming giant will also "establish a new successful business approach in the mobile game industry."

Spotify has reported their earnings figures for 2014, showing huge growth in revenue and an even larger growth in losses.

For the year, revenue grew 45 percent to €1.08 billion from €747 million year-over-year. The company posted a loss of €162 million, up from €55.9 million in 2013, as investments paid a heavy toll on the bottom line.

The market leading music streaming company launched in new countries, including major players like Brazil and Canada and also spent millions on building mobile apps for the service that allow for free radio streaming on iOS, Windows and Android.

Usership also saw major growth, jumping to 60 million with 15 million paying subscribers, up from 36 million users at the end of 2013.

Over the past few months, there has been a persistent rumor that Chinese OEM Huawei is preparing to build the upcoming Nexus phone, and now we have an alleged spec sheet.

The specs come via Chinese IT analyst firm Pan Jiutang, who posted the data on microblogging site Weibo.

Last November, Google released the Nexus 6, built by Motorola to showcase Android 5.0 Lollipop. The new device will not be called the Nexus 7, however, since that name has been taken since 2013 for Google's previous flagship tablet and it is unclear what name the new phone will receive.

If the specs are accurate, and we will not know that for some time, the new Nexus will feature a smaller 5.7-inch QHD OLED screen, a Snapdragon 810 processor and a higher resolution rear camera.

We may learn a bit more at Google's upcoming I/O developer event.

Last month, Nokia confirmed it was strategically reviewing its HERE maps service with the possibility of selling it.

Today, we have a reported bidder, with the startup taxi service Uber allegedly bidding $3 billion for the business.

The sources noted that Uber is competing against major luxury automakers BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz who have teamed up with Chinese search engine Baidu to create a consortium to bid on the service.

While it certainly seems that HERE will be sold soon, Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa would not confirm. "I'd like to stress that the review will not necessarily lead to selling of HERE. We strongly believe in the possibilities to develop HERE also as part of Nokia," he said.

The service has a book value of $2.2 billion without taking any growth into account, suggesting a $3 billion bid will be too small.

Source:
Reuters

Since its launch a little over a year ago, Google's smartwatch platform Android Wear has matured substantially, as has Android in general. The latest release, built on Android 5.1.1, brings quite a few new features and generally polishes the operating system making the experience better than what we've experienced in the past.

On the hardware side, it seems that every few weeks we see the launch of a new smartwatch from a top tech company, but so far none have really struck a chord with consumers, with the Moto 360 being the only possible exception. We have reviewed a few smartwatches here on AfterDawn, but none has ever been worth keeping. That leads us to the LG Watch Urbane, the latest offering from LG and the first Android Wear smartwatch to get 5.1.1. LG promises "timeless aesthetics" in a luxury package along with a premium price tag. Is the combination of the LG Watch Urbane and Android Wear 5.1.1 enough to get the casual consumer to finally embrace Android Wear?