Mobile Nations Weekly: Microsoft's boss bots

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Enter the bot matrix.

Microsoft made waves with their annual Build developer conference, unveiling their big new take on computing: 'conversations as a platform'. This idea leverages bots and virtual assistants like Cortana to make computing more natural and predictive, and it's all coming sooner than you might think across the entire Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft is also planning to make things even easier for developers with two big changes: their Xamarin tools are now free and Bash is being integrated right into Windows 10. Oh, and we got to spend more face time with the production version of HoloLens, and it's just as cool as ever!

You can expect a review for the new LG G5 to come later in the week, but in the meantime: let's unbox this insane phone and all its, uh, friends. And this is coming right before the anticipated unveiling of the HTC 10. BlackBerry, for their part, is prepping Android 6.0 Marshmallow for the Priv, with the possibility of a public beta test.

If you're thinking about getting a newer and smaller iPhone SE or 9.7-inch iPad Pro review, not only do we have our reviews ready for your reading, we've also got comprehensive guides on how to get started for both the iPhone SE and the iPad Pro.

Windows Central — Build up

Microsoft this week held their annual Build developer 3-day conference in San Francisco. The event forgoes any hardware announcement and instead focuses on new developer tools and outlines the future of Microsoft, Windows 10, Azure, and all of their various services.

Some of the big announcements at Build included Xbox controller support for phone, Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app development is open for the Xbox One, chaseable Live Tiles, Notification mirroring and Universal Dismiss.

Perhaps the biggest news was Microsoft making Xamarin entirely free for developers and the inclusion of Bash into Windows 10.

You can see all our Build coverage right here.

Android Central — We're all fools for phones

We're well into the flow of the LG G5, and you can buy one in the U.S. now. To get you interested, we have a pretty sweet unboxing of the whole thing, accessories included. Unfortunately, AT&T's bloatware is pretty out of control on the G5.

On the other side, the HTC 10 teasers just keep coming. As we get ready for the new flagship, we did a roundtable asking the Android Central editors what they want to see this year.

If you're looking to get a little more "Google" experience on your non-Nexus phone, check out Google's Calculator app, now in the Play Store. And while you're installing apps, why not check out Pokemon Go? And yes, April Fools' Day happened

CrackBerry — Buckle up

Priv

Following BlackBerry this week was a little bit of emotional roller-coaster. The BlackBerry earnings report took place, we saw multiple signs of Android Marshmallow coming to the Priv and the BlackBerry 10.3.3 OS update release date got moved around. All in all, pretty crazy. Oh, and BlackBerry has unveiled Radar, a new end-to-end tracking system for trucking companies.

iMore — Go for launch!

Last week was all about our iPhone SE review and 9.7-inch iPad Pro review. This week Apple launched both new, tiny devices and many of you finally got your hands on them. And that means iMore was there — and here! — to help!

Also, it's also World Autism Awareness Month, so please make sure you meet Dillan and share these amazing autism apps for iPhone and iPad

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Derek Kessler
Derek Kessler

Derek Kessler is Special Projects Manager for Mobile Nations. He's been writing about tech since 2009, has far more phones than is considered humane, still carries a torch for Palm, and got a Tesla because it was the biggest gadget he could find. You can follow him on Twitter at @derekakessler.