Facebook revealed today that it began rolling out beta updates of its Android app to select users, bypassing the usual route of installing updates through the Google Play store.

This is intended to allow a limited amount of users to experience new features through the silent updates before a wider release using Google Play, Facebook told TechRadar.

The Android app's first beta update lets users change their profile photo using their mobile device, and allows them to hide stories and report spam, discovered website Liliputing.

"The Facebook app beeps or vibrates incessantly until you install it," reports the site.

Opt-in beta updates

The good news is that these select Android users aren't random guinea pigs.

Facebook made it clear to TechRadar that the beta updates only occur if a user has allowed non-Google Play apps to be installed on their phone or tablet.

Additionally, the Facebook Android app beta updates only happen over WiFi and when users have initiated installation, the company noted.

Keep Shipping

Facebook's transition to rolling out updates to the Android platform echos what it has been doing for years with its desktop component.

The social networking site's recently announced Graph Search and and new News Feed, for example, haven't been made available to everyone yet.

The company has expressed a culture of moving fast, keeping true to that "keep shipping" mentality.

Whether or not this is the first step for Facebook to break with official app stores remains to be seen, as does any signs of an often-denied, but often-rumored Facebook phone.

It's no surprise that the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S4 sports NFC technology but it's taken things one step further as it's the first phone to have Visa payWave built into its core.

Traditionally payment information is stored on the SIM card which means the mobile network is privy to a slice of the commission for each payment made using the contactless technology - but no longer!

Samsung has worked Visa's payWave tech into the Galaxy S4 itself, circumnavigating the SIM card and mobile operator resulting in it getting a bigger slice of the pay pie.

Tap n Go

While this technology is unlikely to effect the end user when it comes to tapping a terminal in a store, it could open the door for innovation in the field and encourage more firms to consider using NFC as a way to pay.

This would result in a win for the consumer as paying with NFC is currently pretty limited to specific chains such as McDonalds, with many businesses not prepared to step up to the plate.

Samsung has also said that payment apps from several brands will pop up on the Galaxy S4 in the coming months, including those from banks and mobile networks - watch this space.

There are already promising signs that the Samsung Galaxy S4 will outperform S3 sales, with Phones 4U reporting that within 48 hours of launching its pre-registration this week it saw a 40 percent increase in demand by comparison.

We can't say we're entirely surprised. The S4, which will be arriving in stores on April 26, is packed full of new features that promise to make it an appealing buy.

Scott Hooton, Chief Commercial Officer at Phones 4U, said: "The anticipation surrounding the next Samsung Galaxy has been astounding and it has already received the most pre-registrations as Phones 4U of any other smartphone launch in 2013."

He also added that Phones 4U was predicting the S4 could be the "biggest selling smartphone of 2013."

There's a new king in town

The Samsung Galaxy S4 was announced last night in New York, and so far we're impressed with what we've seen.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 launch was much more interesting than the Galaxy S4 itself. The tone was way off - CNet called it "shockingly sexist" - and like recent Apple launches, the device was evolutionary, not revolutionary. The Daily Mash nailed it with its report of "state-of-the-art pointlessness" that means "if you are watching a video you can pause it while being attacked by a wolf."

Many of the new features are old features, such as the tilt scrolling Instapaper offered in 2008 or the infra-red transmitters Nokia churned out by the truckload in the early 2000s. Other features have appeared on earlier Samsungs, or are available in apps such as Google Translate. Add-on games controllers are hardly a new idea either.

That's not to say that any of these things are bad - the wheel's been around for a while now, and that's still pretty handy - but of course if this was the iPhone 5S we'd have the entire internet telling us that Apple is doomed.

Samsung largely escaped that, although it was funny to see the odd bit of rumour-fuelled disappointment when the S4 didn't turn out to include a giant robot horse. Apple launches have had rumour-fuelled disappointment for years!

Cheap gags aside, can Apple learn anything from the S4?

I think it can.

It's all about the experience - and the apps

Samsung knows that it can't really stand out with hardware alone - let's be honest, bar the odd gimmick there's not a huge difference between the S4 and the S3, any more than there's a huge difference between an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 4 - and it can't really stand out with stock Android, because everybody's got that.

In fact, the word "Android" was conspicuous by its absence last night, and you got the distinct impression that if Tizen was ready, the S4 would be running that.

There's only so much you can do with the hardware. Sure, Apple can give us a bigger screen, a finish that doesn't scratch itself to death if you look at it funny, and it can boost the processor and the battery life and the megapixelszzzzz

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Sorry, where was I?

What's interesting now isn't the hardware, but the overall experience. The ecosystem. The apps.

That's where Apple could do so much better.

Take Siri, for example. It's a superb technology that doesn't do very much. Let me control my phone with it, activate Airplane Mode or find a particular video clip and send it to my Apple TV.

Give developers an API so they can expand it into the areas Apple doesn't do or hasn't got round to. Siri should be an oracle and a Babel Fish translator, a taxi booker and a cheap flight finder and a Netflix controller and a song identifier and anything else developers can come up with.

It'd be nice to see Passbook actually do something too. My wallet's full of paper and plastic cards - gym memberships, petrol vouchers, loyalty cards, gig tickets - and Passbook could easily replace the lot of them, but right now it's a dead app.

Get the big names on board, get Siri to find the voucher or card I'm looking for.

Better sharing between apps.

A lock screen more like Google Now.

*cough* Maps *cough*.

You get the idea, and I'm sure you have your own suggestions (please, share them in the comments, we're all ears).

That's my wish list for the next iPhone. What's yours?

A 6.3 inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is looking even more likely, with the official Samsung Galaxy S4's Game Pad page talking about the bigger screen-size.

The Game Pad - which is a bluetooth accessory for Samsung phones - was revealed at the Galaxy S4 conference, and has been given its own page on the phone's shiny new microsite.

But this is an accessory for more than just the S4, with the official blurb saying that it will work for screens of "4 to 6.3 inches".

That, of course, suggests that Samsung's next generation Note will be bringing us a bigger screen, in line with previous rumours emerging from Korea.

Note-able

The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has a 5.5 inch screen, and although the 'phablet' moniker has been thankfully retired, nobody would deny that it was a big, big phone.

Adding another big sliver of screen to that, and you are not only testing the elasticity of people's pockets but also once more blurring the line between what constitutes a phone and what is a tablet.

The Galaxy Note range has been divisive for many, due to its size, but as well as attracting a big group of fans in the UK and US, it has also been a smash hit in Asian territories.

Is it time to dust off the phablet jokes? Let's not...