We love new mobile tech, whether it’s news that will change the future of mobile app development or just something really, really awesome. Every month, we share the top tech stories and news we’ve enjoyed. To get the latest mobile news straight to your inbox, sign up the Sonin newsletter.

Sick of that “Storage Almost Full” message?

According to a recent report by Samsung, the tech giant just broke the terabyte threshold for smartphone storage. That’s 20x more storage than the standard 64GB internal memory of today’s smartphone devices. The new Universal Flash Storage also writes 500 times faster than a high-performance microSD card, allowing for a super-fast file transfer speed.

The reason behind pushing for more and more storage, according to Samsung, is bringing a more notebook-like experience to the next gen of mobile devices.

Google builds a roller coaster to show off its Assistant

At CES 2019, Google showed off its latest Assistant features in a rather novel (and kinda creepy) way – a Disney-like roller coaster ride. The attraction, “It’s a Small World,” took visitors through a day in the life with Google Assistant. From day-to-day schedules, navigation, automatic messages and smart home integration.

On top of this, Google discussed the future of Assistant and announced several new features:

  • Boarding passes
  • An interpreter mode which auto-translates conversations
  • Smarter auto-replies for replying to messages with your voice
  • A whole host of new or improved integrations for Sonos, KitchenAid, Samsung, Philips Hue, car products and more

Domino’s just gamified eating pizza

Gamification is when you take something like a task or, in this simply the process of eating Pizza, and add game mechanics to make it more engaging. Super Bowl weekend is one of the busiest periods of the year for Pizza sales. But unfortunately for Domino’s, it’s Pizza Hut that secured the official pizza sponsorship of the National Football League (NFL).

Where do you turn when your competitor steals the limelight for one of your busiest sales periods? The answer is mobile, image recognition and a bit of gamificiation.

As if devouring a 14-inch Pepporino pizza isn’t enticing enough, through April U.S customers will be able to redeem points for scanning pizzas through the Dominos app. The app will use Artificial Intelligence and Image Recognition to recognise any Pizza whether it’s homemade or from a competitor. After scanning several pizzas, app users will then unlock a completely free one.

So, by leveraging mobile during one of their busiest periods, Domino’s is looking steal Pizza Hut’s thunder (and save the $4.5 million it would cost to run a 30 second Super Bowl ad).

Full details on Mobile Marketer.