Missing a FaceTime video call no longer means missing out on a conversation. With the latest FaceTime update, an incoming caller can leave you a video message when you don't answer — and you can leave a video message for somebody who misses or rejects your FaceTime video call.
Your iPhone's Camera app isn't the only place you can use Portrait mode for selfies. An easy-to-miss feature built right into iOS lets app developers leverage Apple's powerful Portrait mode effect in their own apps, so you can add a shallow focus effect to photos and videos when using the front-facing camera in FaceTime and apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Zoom.
Have you ever had a great meal at your local restaurant and wondered how to make it yourself? Or perhaps you've found yourself stumped at what to make for dinner based on the random provisions in your kitchen? Now, you can discover solutions to these food-based problems via Snapchat's computer vision wizardry.
Amazon really wants to make itself at home in your home. Like, everywhere in your home, from your doorstep to your kitchen, your kids' rooms, and everywhere in between.
During its annual autumn keynote address, Apple didn't move heaven and earth. Instead, the company pushed the envelope ever so slightly forward for its marquee consumer devices.
After adding full-body tracking and 3D body mesh in its past two Lens Studio updates, Snap continues to supply creators, particularly apparel retailers, with tools for creating clothing-centric AR experiences.
For awhile now, Google has offered the ability to translate text through smartphone cameras via Google Translate and Google Lens, with Apple bringing similar technology to iPhones via Live Text.
For its latest augmented reality trick, Snapchat has brought the world an AR Lens that has become a bit of a viral hit on Twitter as users turn themselves and their favorite movie stars into characters out of a Pixar movie.
This week, Apple unveiled its own version of Google Lens in the form of Live Text. In response, Google just hit back with a new feature for its visual search tool called Places, a new search category that can recognize landmarks and return information on them within the camera view, which Apple touted as a capability of Live Text during its WWDC keynote.
If you were to summarize the path Snap has taken towards augmented reality smartglasses with a meme template, how it started would be the first-generation Spectacles camera glasses and how it's going would be the next-generation Spectacles with AR capabilities.
While Apple introduced new AR features for iOS 15 and Object Capture for Reality Kit 2 during the WWDC 2021 keynote, updates for ARKit were curiously absent in the official presentation.
Mobile augmented reality for iOS typically comes through apps via ARKit, but Apple is borrowing a few pages from Google's playbook and bringing AR directly to iOS 15.
After introducing a pair of new Spark AR capabilities last week, Facebook had one more trick up its sleeve to unveil at its virtual F8 Refresh developer conference.
The biggest win in the race for consumer augmented reality smartglasses to date belongs not to Apple, Facebook, or Google, but Snapchat's parent company, Snap.
For most mainstream users, LiDAR sensors for precision depth sensing remain the exclusive domain of Apple iPhones and iPads, but Google is helping Android device makers close the depth gap on the software side via its ARCore toolkit.
Since bringing augmented reality features to Search and Maps, Google has made them arguably the most useful augmented reality products in its portfolio.
Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic is showing signs of winding down, nevertheless, Google will still hold its annual I/O developer conference as a virtual affair, with keynotes and sessions available as live streams and on-demand videos starting Tuesday, May 18 and concluding on Thursday, May 20.
As Apple prepares to potentially introduce its (mostly) secretive AR headset for possible introduction later this year and launch next year, the company has made a strategic investment to ensure its supply chain can support it.
As the U.S. inches closer to herd immunity and reopening after the pandemic, it may become necessary to keep your COVID-19 vaccination cards on you at all times to gain access to places and events that are prone to spreading the coronavirus. You probably won't want to lose your card, so it may be wise to load a copy onto your smartphone for easy access.
We've reached the point in the trajectory of augmented reality's growth where AR advertising experiences are becoming commonplace tactics rather than rare experiments.
Snapchat parent company Snap may finally be taking the big step into the fully-functioning augmented reality wearables realm with the next iteration of its Spectacles devices.
If you have Snap Spectacles 3, the dual camera-equipped sunglasses capable of capturing 3D photos and video, by now you've likely jazzed up the videos you've captured on the wearable with Lenses via Snapchat.
Snapchat parent company Snap took a huge step towards the realm of smartglasses with the third iteration of its camera-equipped Spectacles sunglasses.
The hype surrounding non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has reached astronomical levels over the past few weeks, and now the technology has intersected with augmented reality's orbit in a fantastic way.
The Lens Studio app has become a cornerstone of Snap and its augmented reality technology portfolio by giving developers, creatives, and novices the ability to create augmented reality camera effects for Snapchat.
Outside of plastic surgery disasters or costumes, augmented reality is the closest we can get to morphing our likenesses into those of animals.
After the mobile augmented reality platforms of ARKit and ARCore moved Google's previously groundbreaking Project Tango (the AR platform that gave us the first smartphones with depth sensors) into obsolescence in 2018, we've seen a bit of a resurgence of what was then a niche component for flagship devices.
Rumors around Apple's not-so-secret development of an AR/VR headset have been prevalent throughout the young year, but the latest round of reports move speculation of the device into a clearer view.
The rear cameras on iPhones have remained at 12 megapixels since the iPhone 6s, but with each new iPhone model, more data is going into photos. That means larger file sizes. If you're running into issues with your pictures being too large, whether you're sharing or uploading them, there's an easy way to resize an image or group of images using a shortcut.
The Animal Crossing series has been a big hit for Nintendo, so in a bid to enhance the experience even more for users, the game is getting the augmented reality treatment.
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
The iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max are capable of shooting 4K video using HDR with Dolby Vision, producing content unthinkable in an Apple smartphone just years ago. That said, it's quite easy to miss the full potential of your iPhone's camera, iPhone 12 or not. If you want the best quality video possible on the iPhone XS and newer models, make sure you don't make this one mistake.
This week, developer Niantic began rolling out a new feature called AR Mapping to Pokémon GO that has bigger implications on the realism of augmented reality in mobile gaming and beyond.
Apple just released iOS 14.0.1 for iPhone today, Thursday, Sept. 24. The update features bug fixes for the News widget, default browser and mail apps, and more. In iOS 14, default apps suffer from a bug where iOS reverts back to Safari or Apple Mail when rebooting your iPhone, which defeats the purpose of the feature entirely.
In the tech world, our data is always under attack. When you download and install a new app, it can be difficult to know what information the app is actually accessing. Thankfully, a new emphasis on privacy in iOS 14 changes the game, exposing more of what your apps want access to — and even changing some behavior along the way.
Late last year, Snapchat introduced Cameos, deep fake-ish stickers animated from your own selfies. Now, Cameos have evolved as a sticker option to use in photos and videos captured with the app's camera.
After an Instagram creator created a viral sensation last holiday season with the Which Disney camera effect, Disney followed it up with a Sponsored Lens playing a similar roulette with programming from Hulu.
For the longest time, Instagram didn't have a native collage feature. If you wanted to post a story with an assortment of photos, you'd need to use the company's Layout app or a third-party collage maker. Thankfully, that is no longer the case since Instagram now bakes Layout directly into the story camera.
I've covered augmented reality apps for about three years now and the most useful mobile app I've encountered over that time is Google Lens.
Apple released iOS 13.4 to public beta testers on March 18. The update comes the same day we learned that iOS 13.4 would be made available March 24. The sixth beta is iOS 13.4's GM (golden master), even though Apple refers to it as "beta 6."
