Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge owners to get free Uber rides as part of new partnership

Samsung and Uber have announced a new partnership that will include the taxi-but-not-technically-a-taxi car sharing service as a featured item in the new Galaxy Gifts widget and unlock free rides for Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge owners. New Uber users will earn in credit toward their first rides.

The credit will be added automatically when downloading the app via the Galaxy Gifts widget and signing up for a new account. Unfortunately, the offer does not seem to extend to those who already have an Uber account, making the Samsung deal more or less the same incentive offered to new users signing up with a code provided by a friend. Ultimately, non-Galaxy S6 owners won’t be missing out on much.

Where the partnership goes beyond free ride credit and a featured spot in Samsung’s widget remains to be seen, but it follows similar partnerships with wireless partners like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

[via Uber]

Cyanogen announces partnership with Microsoft that will bundle their apps on Cyanogen OS

OK, so Cyanogen was only half-joking about their operating system being “powered by Microsoft” on April Fools day. The company today announced that they’ve entered a strategic partnership with the Redmond-based company to have their apps pre-loaded on Cyanogen OS.

Bing services, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, and Microsoft Office will all find homes on devices that come with Cyanogen OS (and not necessarily CyanogenMod, the community-focused ROM). The apps will be “deeply integrated” with Cyanogen OS at its core, though we’re not expecting them to enable you to do anything that simply downloading the apps from the Google Play Store doesn’t already.

And that’s it folks — Cyanogen and Microsoft definitely are a thing, no matter how many rumor-busting reports wanted to deny it. Let us know how you feel about that in the comments ahead.

[via Digital Journal]

Cyanogen OS to get caller ID integration thanks to Truecaller partnership

Cyanogen Inc today announced a new partnership. They’ve teamed up with Truecaller, the makers of a caller ID app that’ll show you unknown callers or identify phone numbers known to be spam. The integration will come at the OS level, says Cyanogen, so there will be no need to download a separate app if caller ID is something you fancy.

That deep integration will also allow the company to integrate the information you’re looking for in a way that makes sense. Whereas a standalone caller ID app might require going into their app to see information about calls that were already placed, you will be able to see that information right from Cyanogen’s built-in dialer.

Cyanogen says the deal will apply to all future mobile devices that ship with Cyanogen OS globally, and will also be available to tens of millions of existing users via an over-the-air update. We don’t have an exact timeline on when to expect these features to arrive to existing customers, but we imagine it shouldn’t be long if they’re already promising it to be ready for all future Cyanogen devices.