The top five apps of the 2010s were all social media apps of some kind, and the fact that's not surprising to you says a lot. We may use them for other reasons here and there, but our phones are social media machines at their cores. The thing is, some make better machines than others.
Google pushed a new kind of augmented reality walking navigation to the mainstream last year, and now startup Phiar is hoping users will use its AR app in the same way for driving navigation.
In a world full of augmented reality camera effects apps, one app is going in a more social direction.
No one likes in-app advertisements, especially in mobile gaming, but they're necessary because they offer developers a way to make revenue without having to charge you to play. In some games, in-app purchases give you the chance to remove ads, but what can you do about apps that don't offer the option to kill ads?
This week, the beginning of an epic legal battle was set to begin between augmented reality players Magic Leap and Nreal, the small China-based startup accused by the former of stealing trade secrets.
It seems like each day our phones become more integrated into our lives. School, work, shopping — so many tasks either require a phone or heavily benefit from one. But our phones are a double-edged sword that can easily distract us and harm our mental health as well.
Google Fit houses all of your essential fitness-related information in the cloud for safekeeping at all times. You can easily let your device detect your workout sessions for you automatically based on a variety of sensors. At the same time, the Fit app makes it easy to manually start a workout as well.
Usually, flying into unknown territory would mean riding into the "danger zone", but Paramount and Snapchat are taking the trip anyway with one of Summer 2020's most anticipated movie sequels.
The newly enhanced focus from Magic Leap on enterprise, announced on Tuesday, also came with a few companies opting to weigh in with their experiences developing for the platform.
Folders are great for organizing apps and removing clutter from your home screen. But once they become overfull, it's not as easy to find and launch an app. If you have a jailbroken device, however, there's a tweak that will lessen the hassle of rummaging through folders and make it easier to open the apps they contain.
On iPhones, the share sheet is a powerful yet largely underestimated tool. For the uninitiated, the share sheet is the menu that opens whenever you tap the share button (the box with the up-arrow). This menu features sharing options to first and third-party apps, as well as extra functions like saving, copying, duplicating, and more. Best of all? It's surprisingly customizable.
When Apple acquired the popular Workflow app in 2017, many were worried that it would either get replaced with something much worse, or just disappear entirely. Thankfully, Apple put these concerns to rest with the launch of Shortcuts. In iOS 13, Shortcuts is becoming more powerful than ever, providing functionality on the iPhone that the original Workflow team could only dream of.
The spatial computing world of Magic Leap is no longer limited to the rarefied tones of Sigur Rós and Sennheiser's Ambeo Augmented Audio app. Now, the entire music universe will be at your augmented reality fingertips.
With the files on our devices getting more important as the years go by, the need to keep things organized continues to rise. The longer you have a device, the messier the internal storage might become. Having a file manager would be extremely useful in this situation. You could also reorganize the folder structure as well, just like you could on a desktop computer.
Sometimes you might find that a certain app keeps sending you notifications. What are you to do? There are plenty of useful apps that might send one too many push notifications, but that doesn't mean you should dump them. Luckily, Android gives you complete control over how each installed app handles notifications.
Google's "Go" line of apps are lightweight counterparts designed to be limited speedy alternatives to their full-featured sibling apps. There is a Go version of Photos, Search, Maps, and more — but are they the right apps for you?
Now that iOS 13 is in the wild, developers are starting to show off the magical augmented reality powers ARKit 3 can deliver.
The Galaxy Note 10+ is the pinnacle of Android hardware. You won't find many phones with a better combination of specs and design. But you may not love the software. Even with One UI on board, some users still want a more "stock" feel.
Magic Leap is making it easier for developers to share their spatial computing experiments with other Magic Leap One users.
With iOS 13, Apple included some major updates to the Reminders app for iPhone. Among them is the ability to add web links to individual reminders, including a rich preview of the link that can be minimized if necessary. So now you can add an Amazon link in a reminder to buy a present or a webpage for a recipe in your grocery list, to name just a few examples.
Google's strategy for updating its apps with dark mode options is apparently "one at a time" and "as slow as possible." Even after the company added a dark theme to many of its apps for Android and iOS, such as Calendar, Chrome, Keep, and Photos, Gmail seemed to remain "light" for the longest time. However, the app now supports dark mode on both mobile OSs. Here's how to enable it.
The growing stock of augmented reality apps filling up the Magic Leap store seems to be picking up pace in recent months.
Sometimes, you'll see a comment on Instagram that you really need to share. Maybe it's something funny, possibly offensive. Whatever the case, the only thing to do is screenshot it and share that, right? Hopefully, not for long. Instagram is currently testing a feature that would allow you to share comments with others via a direct message and maybe even to stories and other apps.
In the last few years, the HoloLens has become a popular tool for use in medical procedures and training. But recently, the Magic Leap One has gained momentum in the space as well when it comes to medical use cases.
When it comes to augmented reality (AR) on Android, you might be wondering how you can get those cool new games and apps on your unsupported phone. Google has an officially supported device list for its ARCore platform, which usually consists of the more modern devices. You won't find very many older devices on the list for a reason, but that doesn't mean your "old" phone can't use ARCore still.
Fans of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man have yet another way to experience the web-slinger in augmented reality.
While Gucci is among the most recognizable brands in fashion, you would be excused for not realizing that the company makes sneakers as well.
Learning Chinese is hard, but it can be a lot easier with the help of a few great apps. As a native English speaker who's currently living in China, this is a process I've recently gone through. After playing the field, here are the three apps I personally think will help you the most with your Chinese learning adventure.
Magic Leap has done a great job of aggressively releasing new apps, software updates, and major franchise tie-ins. But aside from all the creative and entertainment apps, what's it like to use one of the apps the company hopes you'll use every day?
After North cut the base price of its Focals smartglasses, Vuzix is now testing the waters of a lower price point for its Blade smartglasses.
Having already solved for functionality and form factor, Nreal appears poised to pull ahead of its consumer smartglasses competition as the third piece of the puzzle now falls into place.
Apple's scheduled to show off the first look of iOS 13 at WWDC 2019 on June 3, but what will the new operating system hold for iPhone? Rumors suggest that many features initially planned for iOS 12 will show up in iOS 13, codenamed "Yukon," and dark mode will be the big ticket item this year.
Slow motion recording is an incredibly handy feature that works by capturing moments at a higher frame rate than they're played back at. Timing is everything when recording in this setting, so if you want a user-friendly app that keeps device interactions to a minimum and leaves you to focus on capturing your subject, Google Camera will surely fit the bill.
While the Galaxy S10 is a beautiful phone, its software isn't for everyone. One UI makes huge strides toward undoing the mess known as TouchWiz, but for purists, it's still not quite on par with stock Android. Fortunately, the beauty of Android is you can change this with a few apps.
The great thing about augmented reality is that so much is possible using the emerging tools and software, your only real limit is your imagination — that includes making real versions of imagined products.
Current-generation mobile augmented reality apps offer users numerous opportunities to punch up photos and videos with 3D content, but there's surprisingly few options for users to express themselves using virtual characters.
For some reason, the Slack app on Android and iOS is a little less customizable than Slack on other platforms, so you can't adjust the sidebar theme to different colors directly inside the app. But that doesn't mean you can't customize the look of your mobile app at all. It's just a little less convenient.
It's no secret that Google is all about AI. In their eyes, machine learning is the future of software development, and you can see evidence of this all over the last couple Android updates. They've used it to power all sorts of features in their Pixel phones, and they've even donated some of their AI smarts to AOSP for all Android manufacturers to share. But it looks like Samsung isn't exactly on board.
Your S10's notification panel can quickly fill up with alerts about incoming messages, emails, weather reports ... the list goes on and on. If that weren't enough, those notifications are accompanied by badges that pop up as tiny numbered circles overlaid on icons within your phone's home screen and app drawer.
When it comes to digital security, one of the best ways to protect yourself is to use two-factor authentication. Most apps these days support it, including Facebook, a site where the more privacy you can muster, the better. However, of the two 2FA options available for Facebook, only one should be used as the other will share your phone number with the world, a huge privacy concern.
