In today’s mobile and social news roundup: Yahoo! acquires Summly; T-Mobile reveals new flexible pricing plans; Apple acquires Wifislam; Facebook Messenger to get voice features in the UK; Galaxy SIV mini sighting; NOOK to have in-app purchasing soon; Shutterfly sues Kodak for photo app; New Apple patent protects iPhone from drops; and Evernote 5 now available for Android devices.

Yahoo! acquires Summly

Yahoo! is beefing up its refreshed mobile efforts as it announced the acquisition of Summly, a mobile service that delivers news fast, easily and beautifully by providing users with concise summaries of online content.

Summly was created by Nick D’Aloisio when he was just 15 years old.  It all started with an idea of providing new ways to simplify finding new stories that we care about at a glance.  With Summly providing snapshots of stories, articles and web content is easier to discover.

The Summly app will be shut down as D’Aloisio and the Summly team joins Yahoo in the coming weeks.  The Summly technology  will be injected in Yahoo’s mobile experience as more people rely on their mobile devices to ingest online content.

T-Mobile’s new flexible pricing plans

T-Mobile wants to be known as the UnCarrier-carrier as it launched new flexible pricing plans for its customers.  The network carrier has abandoned two-year contracts, which now gives customers the flexibility to choose what plans they want according to their data needs.  Unfortunately, it comes with a high price.   The new plans range from $50 to $110 per month depending on whether you just want to enjoy T-Mobile 4G offering by yourself or share it with other via your device’s hotspot.  The $50 plan gives consumers 500 MB of 4G data but if you consume it quickly, you’d have to put up with 2G speeds.  Adding a second line will set you back another $30 and if you want to add more data to your plan, you can pay $10 for an additional 2GB of 4G data or $20 for unlimited data.

Apple acquires Wifislam

Apple has acquired Wifislam, an indoor-mapping specialist, in an effort to expand it maps offerings and further compete with Google.  It’s just the sort of acquisition we predicted in an earlier piece, looking at indoor-mapping as a way Apple could leapfrog its Services offerings. The company has allegedly paid $20 million for Wifislam, which could deliver indoor mapping features to Apple products with an accuracy range of eight feet.  Which means it will be easier for shoppers to find stores in malls or the exact location for sessions held at events.

As usual, Apple declined to divulge its plans for Wifislam, stating that “Apple invests in smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.”

Facebook Messenger to get voice features in the UK

The Facebook Messenger app for iPhones in the UK has been updated with voice calling and voice messaging functionality.  The voice features has been in testing phase for some month now in North America and UK Facebook users are delighted to get the feature that would allow them to call and leave voice messages for free.  Just like in North America, Facebook will still be testing the features in the UK.  So users may encounter some glitches while using the app.

Galaxy SIV mini sighting

Samsung seems to have an affinity in making smaller versions of its flagship devices as a smaller version of the Galaxy SIV has been spotted in the wild.  The Galaxy SIV mini is exactly like its older brother physically, but like the Galaxy SIII mini, some of its internal components aren’t as impressive and it may lack some of the vital features of original.  The Galaxy SIV mini is Samsung’s answer to consumer demands for more affordable but highly functional devices.

NOOK to have in-app purchasing soon

NOOK Media, a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, announced that in-app purchasing will soon be available for NOOK devices.  The feature is possible with NOOK’s partnership with mobile payment provider Fortumo.  This will enable app and game developers to sell premium digital content in their products seamlessly and safely to millions of NOOK customers.

“We are thrilled to bring in-app purchasing to NOOK with Fortumo for our community of developers so they can foster a profitable relationship with their customers, while also providing our NOOK customers with a more in-depth app experience and an even wider selection of popular apps,” said Claudia Romanini, VP of NOOK Apps, NOOK Media, LLC. “We look forward to adding thousands of more apps that feature in-app purchasing over the coming weeks and months to expand NOOK’s already wide array of digital content offerings.”

Shutterfly sues Kodak for photo app

Last year photo service Shutterfly acquired the Kodak Gallery online photo business  for $23.8 million, with the agreement that the latter will not create another app that would compete with the already existing app.  Kodak made a new app, “My Kodak Moments App,” which lets users purchase photo albums created from photos stored on Facebook. Shutterfly accuses Kodak of using the same technology it used in Kodak Gallery for My Kodak Moments, violating their previous agreement.  Shutterfly is looking to have the app shut down.

New Apple patent protects iPhone from drops

Apple has been granted a patent for “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device,” which describes a mechanism that protects the iPhone from being severely damaged when it senses that it is about to fall to its death.  The protective mechanism works with the iPhone, iPad or iMac’s internal sensors, so when it senses that it’s about to fall, the phone rearranges itself so that the sensitive and most breakable parts, like the screen, won’t be the first to hit the ground.

Evernote 5 now available for Android devices

Evernote 5 is now available for download and it features a new user interface, a Shortcuts page that pops up when you swipe left, and the camera has been updated as well.  The updated Page Camera mode now features multiple shots and the ability to add all the images to a note at once.  Premium users will enjoy exclusive changes such as Document search.

For the full recap on today’s top stories, check out Kristin Feledy’s NewsDesk segment, which aired live this morning: