In today’s mobile and social news roundup: Smartphone sales overtake feature phones; Facebook acquires Parse and adds some big names to DC project; T-Mobile gets called out for deceptive advertising; and Pinterest brings back friend-finding features.

Smartphone sales overtake feature phones

For the first time ever, the IDC stated on its report that smartphones have overtaken feature phones in sales.  The worldwide smartphone market shipped 216.2 million units in the first quarter of 2013 which is more than half, 51.6 percent, of the total phone shipments of that quarter.  Though the smartphone market grew, it is 5.1 percent lower than the 227.8 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012.

“Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “As a result, the balance of smartphone power has shifted to phone makers that are most dependent on smartphones.”

Facebook acquires Parse, adds big names to DC project

Facebook has acquired Parse, a service that allows developers to build mobile applications for iOS, Android, Windows, and mobile web, to promote mobile app development, for an undisclosed amount.  The acquisition is pegged at $85 million.

“By making Parse a part of Facebook Platform, we want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span mobile platforms and devices,” Doug Purdy, Facebook’s director of product management, said. “Parse makes this possible by allowing developers to work with native objects that provide backend services for data storage, notifications, user management, and more. This removes the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can simply focus on building great user experiences.”

In other Facebook news, the social giant has added some big names to its roster of supporters for founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s DC initiative, FWD.us, that aims to change the way Washington handles issues around immigration, education and employment issues.   Microsoft founder Bill Gates, current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Intuit CEO Brad Smith and Sean Parker of Facebook and Napster have all joined Zuckerberg’s pet project.

T-Mobile called out for deceptive advertising

If people want to get the cheapest price for the iPhone 5, they’d probably flock to T-Mobile because of its UnCarrier scheme wherein instead of being tied to the carrier for a two-year contract, they would just have to pay a downpayment of $100 upfront then $20 per month for the next two years.

But there’s a catch, the two-year installment plan comes with a huge price if you wish to terminate it early.  Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson learned that T-Mobile “failed to adequately disclose that customers who purchase a phone using the 24-month payment plan must carry a wireless service agreement with T-Mobile for the entire 24 months— or pay the full balance owed on phone if they cancel earlier.”

The State Attorney General filed a court order signed by T-Mobile that ensures that the carrier fully discloses the terms of its UnCarrier deal to subscribers.  Everyone who purchased the T-Mobile service and equipment between March 26 and April 25, 2013, are eligible to a full refund and cancellations of service plans without being required to pay the remaining balance owed on their devices as long as the customer cancels his or her service per the terms of the agreement, including returning the equipment to T-Mobile.

Pinterest brings back friend-finding features

Pinterest is rolling out a new look, and with that, the photo-pinning site decided to bring back some long-lost features.  “Pinned by”, which allowed users to see who originally pinned the photo, “@mention”, which allows people to connect to other pinners, and finding Pinterest users on your Facebook friends and Twitter followers, are all back after being removed when the new look started rolling out.  The core of Pinterest is still social so it’s quite weird that those social feature were removed in the first place.  The features were brought back due to their popular demand.