No, that’s not a giant hand. Photo: The Nipper

Modern mobile phones need a lot of power; chances are we’ve all got an external battery pack (or at least a second cable and wall plug) tucked away in a bag somewhere that will charge up our Android and iOS mobile phones while we’re on the run.

The thing is, those things need to be taken along with you when you leave the house. If you’re like me, though, that requires a heck of a lot of cognitive overhead and pre-planning.

The whole point of the Nipper, this tiny new mobile phone charger that uses two AA batteries to give you a bit of juice when needed, is to always be available.

New social features add solid functionality to both iOS and Android versions. Photo: Instagram

Photo-sharing service Instagram takes another step closer to becoming its own self-contained social network today with features aimed at the 85 million folks using Instagram Direct, which lets you send direct messages to individual users or groups of up to 15 people.

The new features include threaded messaging and a new way to share Instagram videos or photos within those direct messages.

When it was released last year, the BlackBerry Passport made an impression for its bizarre, square shape and full QWERTY keyboard, but it didn’t exactly help pull BlackBerry out of the dumpster. Following rumors that BlackBerry would soon be making an Android-powered slider, though, a new video has emerged, showing that the Passport quite capably runs Android Lollipop.

Cortana is here. Photo: Microsoft

Microsoft Cortana today makes its debut on Android following its early release to a small number of testers last month. The beta release is available to anyone who’s interested in testing it, and Cortana can be summoned using Google Now’s home button shortcut.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti uses an iPad for some science work on the International Space Station. Photo: NASA

There’s a smartwatch app for almost everything, but very few are useful to the men and women who work in microgravity.

So NASA is asking the pubic to design a smartwatch app for its astronauts to do everything from keeping them organized during science experiments to alerting them to space debris approaching.