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.
It looks like it's cuffing season for AR hardware makers and telecommunications corporations. With AT&T aligned with Magic Leap as its exclusive wireless retailer on the high-end AR side, Verizon has also reached a master reseller agreement with Vuzix, according to a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission.
Fashion brand Christian Dior is using augmented reality as a carrot to drive up their follower counts on Instagram.
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.
The navigation and status bars aren't very noticeable on the S10's home screen since they're transparent. The status bar will even change colors to match many apps. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the navigation bar.
Developers options is one of the first things tinkerers unlock on a new phone. However, even the less tech-savvy users will find some benefits to revealing this hidden menu, as it enables features such as GPS spoofing and faster animations.
The augmented reality industry has an insatiable lust for 3D content, which makes an investment of $48 million into Matterport a no-brainer for investors.
The debut of Microsoft's HoloLens 2 went off without a hitch, and now it's time to figure out if you want to hop aboard the updated augmented reality train.
We already know that Microsoft has something big planned for later this month, and now we have details on how to watch the company's big reveal.
Next to Game of Thrones, Harry Potter is one of the most beloved franchises in entertainment today, and now we have another peek at its dive into augmented reality.
If you use the internet regularly, it's nearly impossible to avoid memes. They are the epitome of internet culture, demonstrating how jokes can spread and change like wildfire. While there are many different types, the most common ones you'll come across are images and GIFs with humorous text accompanying them, and we've found the best iOS apps to help you create your own.
We're still weeks away from a probably HoloLens 2 release, but Microsoft's immersive computing team is still hard at work on other aspects of its "mixed reality" ecosystem.
Samsung isn't set to reveal its latest and greatest — the Galaxy S10 line — until February 20, but that hasn't stopped leaks from giving us an early taste. While we already know what the rumored devices will probably look like, we now have access to their wallpapers as well. Apple fans don't need to be left out of the fun — someone has already cropped these images to fit your iPhone's display.
If there was a version of the Doomsday Clock for counting down the release of Microsoft's HoloLens 2, then the caretakers of that imaginary clock would move the minute hand to "one minute to midnight."
The recent pitfalls and media fallout hitting Facebook hasn't stopped the social media giant from looking to the future.
Although Apple's Animoji game is strong, as recently exampled by its Ariana Grande collaboration, Google isn't slacking either, unleashing a far more immersive music experience for smartphone users.
While the story of augmented reality headset maker Osterhout Design Group has come to an end, the epilogue of its demise continues.
If there's one company that is a fan of the TrueDepth camera on Apple's iPhone X devices, it's the popular eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker.
Reading the augmented reality news lately has felt a bit like reading a John Grisham novel, as the business side of things has dripped with legal drama.
Augmented reality startup Nreal was a hit at this month's CES event, with some even calling the device a worthy challenger to the Magic Leap One.
One of the best features on Pixel phones is the new call screening. Any call received on your Pixel device can now be answered by your Google Assistant, allowing you avoid spam calls, wrong numbers, or even exes. But what many don't know is that you can listen to the caller during the screening process.
The mystery surrounding the release of the next version of the HoloLens has been swirling for months, but at least some of that mystery may removed in the coming weeks.
Just because augmented reality is the technology of the future doesn't mean it can't reach into the past of computing.
Public software testers can now run the fourth iOS 12.1.3 beta. Apple seeded this update to testers on Thursday, Jan. 10. Just like with beta 3, public beta 4 includes two resolved issues — a VoiceOver fix for ECG and Irregular Heart Rate notifications, as well as audio improvements for iPad Pros.
Facebook has a new dark mode for Messenger, and it's a true OLED black theme. It's was hidden away in earlier versions and you needed to either run a root hack or send a moon emoji to activate it — but now, you can enable dark mode by toggling a simple switch in Facebook Messenger's settings.
Augmented reality wearables maker ThirdEye Gen, Inc. has officially released what it claims are the "smallest mixed reality glasses" in the X2, which will be available for hands-on demonstrations at the company's CES 2019 booth this week.
Group chats in WhatsApp are great for communicating with multiple people at once, but that can be a blessing and a curse — any message you send will be seen by everyone, and that's not always ideal. Thankfully, there's a new feature that lets you respond to group messages privately.
While we wait patiently for a system-wide dark theme, Google has provided us with the next best thing. The majority of Google-developed apps now have a dark mode, so you can piecemeal the feature together yourself.
As great as passcode and biometric security features like Face ID are for preventing unwanted access, they aren't needed 100% of the time. When you're at home with a locked door between you and anyone you wouldn't trust with your phone, they really only serve to slow you down. Android has long had a solution for this, but a new Cydia tweak has now brought a similar solution to iPhones.
Publicly, things have been pretty quiet over at Meta, the augmented reality headset and software startup based in Silicon Valley. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't have a few strong opinions about the state of AR in 2018.
With more and more phones using OLED displays, the need for dark mode is at the highest it's ever been. Since dark backgrounds reduce battery consumption on these displays, the Android community has been begging Google to include a system-wide dark mode. Instead, Google gave us dark mode for many of their apps, including the Phone app.
Despite less than glowing reviews from critics, the latest installment from the Harry Potter spinoff movie series, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is winning at the box office.
When we reviewed the best file managers on Android, MiXplorer easily topped our list with its abundance of features, including tabbed browsing, support for up to 19 different cloud services, file and folder encryption, and much more. The only major complaint we had was the fact it couldn't be installed from the Play Store, but now, that is no longer the case.
In the last few weeks, the Magic Leap ecosystem has ramped up activity with a number of new releases debuting just before the close of the year.
Apple released iOS 12.1.3 public beta 2 for iPhones on Wednesday, Dec. 19. Yes, that's confusing, since there was no first beta for iOS 12.1.3, but it indicates that it's the actual successor to iOS 12.1.2 public beta 1. Apple dropped iOS 12.1.2 unexpectedly to fix major issues but did not include everything in the beta, so we're picking up right where we left off.
If you ever looked at Apple's Peek and Pop feature on Safari and said "I want that," Google has kinda-sorta delivered. A new hidden Chrome feature brings similar functionality to Android despite the lack of 3D Touch, and while it's a bit redundant and nowhere near as polished, it does make navigating the web easier.
If you transition to an Apple Watch from another wearable like Fitbit, you might be a bit confused by the new calorie burn counter. Instead of ending your day with thousands of calories burned, your watch says you've burned just hundreds. Could it be you're less active with your Apple Watch? Probably not. It's more likely because of the different way the watch counts your calories.
Portrait mode works with any dual-lens iPhone, as well as the single-lens iPhone XR, and lets you take impressive portraits with blurry, bokeh-filled backgrounds. Portrait selfies, on the other hand, are only available devices with Face ID. But that's only for Apple's Camera app itself — third-party apps like Messenger have "portrait" selfies for any iPhone — as well as any Android phone model.
When wearables startup North officially unveiled its Focals smartglasses in October, the stylish frames strongly resembled, in form and function, Intel's canceled Vaunt smartglasses.
The New York Times has made a habit of publishing augmented reality stories throughout 2018, and now the media giant's magazine is getting into the act, too.
