Apple revealed three new iPhone models on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at its "Gather Round" event in Cupertino, as well as announced the official release date of iOS 12, its newest mobile operating system. If you missed it and want to watch the full event, here's how to do it on your computer, smartphone, or Apple TV.
Massive multiplayer shooters like Fortnite have become all the rage, as mobile gamers duke it out in long, protracted battles that can often be as excruciating as they are thrilling. If you're yearning for a more fast-paced shooter on iOS, Nitro Games has you covered, and has soft-launched Heroes of Warland for further tweaking. Of course, you can try the game yourself right now with a tiny hack.
While we've seen Snapchat apply sky segmentation to AR content, the makers of the Blue Sky Paint app have applied similar capabilities to create and share airborne art.
Xiaomi made a new phone with their sights set on picking up some ex OnePlus users. As a result, the Pocophone F1, or just Poco in some markets, is quite unlike most other Xiaomi phones. While you can't buy the F1 in stores in the US, you can get its home screen app on almost any phone right now.
While the three new iPhones won't even be announced until Sept. 12 during Apple's fall event, case makers are already primed for the launch of the devices. Some case designs are already live on manufacturer websites, and you can even buy or preorder cases for the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Plus to have right now or on launch day.
Traditional media institution The New York Times continues to break new ground in its augmented reality news coverage, this time with a 3D volumetric capture of model Ashley Graham.
While they don't do augmented reality just yet, the latest styles of Snapchat's Spectacles 2 camera glasses serve as a peek into the future of how mainstream AR wearables may look.
While last year's revelation that Apple slows down iPhones with aging batteries left a bad taste in users' mouths, the company's $29 battery replacement program was a step in the right direction. However, all good things must come to an end; Apple will soon shut down the program, leaving users to pay the full $79 to replace their faulty batteries.
Ever-shrinking bezels and disappearing hardware buttons make for good looking phones, but they also increase the need for gesture controls. Android Pie comes with seven new swipe gestures, but if you don't have the update yet (or find its default gesture options to be lacking), you should take a look at the Microsoft Launcher.
Apple's dedication to iPhone security is one of the company's biggest selling points. It's no surprise then that iOS 12 offers users a simple yet powerful way to make, save, and auto-fill strong passwords to your iCloud Keychain when creating accounts in both Safari and in apps. The best part? You hardly need to do a thing.
While iOS 11 was famous for its instability, performance issues weren't the only factor holding it back. The OS overhauled the notification system on iPhone, but not necessarily for the better. iOS 12, however, improves upon these changes, bringing critical features that make viewing and interacting with notifications on your iPhone on par with Android.
The long, long, loooong wait finally ended this week for the augmented reality community as the Magic Leap One was finally released. The Florida-based company has loomed over the industry for years promising something big, and now the AR cat is finally out of the bag. Now we get to see if it will live up to expectations, but early reviews are a bit skeptical.
Recently, a user on Reddit complained that their Snapchat account had been temporarily banned because Snapchat noticed the user's account was going through a third-party service. In reality, the account in question was running on a jailbroken iPhone, and it was far from the first to be banned by the messaging app.
The shifting sands of immersive computing, currently fluctuating between augmented reality and virtual reality, can be hard to navigate if you're only versed in one of the platforms. But a new series of videos from Leap Motion paints a picture of a near future world in which AR and VR will seamlessly merge together, forcing us to change the way we see both.
Facebook is preparing to make augmented reality experiences for brands more visible in its mobile app with Tuesday's introduction of augmented reality ads in its News Feed.
Has this ever happened to you: You're singing a song in your head and want to look it up on Apple Music but you just can't think of its name or even who recorded it? In iOS 12, if you can sing it, you can search for it, as the update lets you find songs in Apple Music by lyrics alone. It's like Shazam, only instead of identifying music by sound, it uses the lyrics in your head.
Ever since 2009, you could send a photo or video that you've already taken right from the Messages app on your iPhone. You would just tap on the camera icon next to the new message box, then choose either to take a new one or select one from your library. If you're running iOS 12, that's no longer the case, but that doesn't mean the capability is gone entirely.
When Snapchat first hit it big, people just assumed it'd be used for seedy activities. And while that's not completely true, it's definitely true sometimes. For those moments when you need to take a sneaky screenshot that doesn't notify the sender, Android has plenty of ways to keep your cover from being blown — no root needed.
In iOS 12, Apple included new, Snapchat-like effects and stickers for photos and videos in Messages. While these new options are fun, they're missing something that takes away from the appeal, especially since Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and similar apps already let you do it.
Let's say you wake up in the middle of the night and check your phone to see the time. As soon as you do, you're greeted by a wall of notifications on your lock screen. You just wanted to know how much longer you could sleep, but now your mind's racing after seeing all of the messages you need to deal with. Thankfully, iOS 12's new Bedtime Mode has a solution for this problem.
Apple is putting their Workflow acquisition to use with the new Shortcuts feature, integrated right into Siri. It allows you to connect commonly-used actions to a phrase that you activate with Siri. In addition to some of the other speed improvements in iOS 12, Shortcuts helps streamline your mobile experience.
Setting up Face ID is simple, but getting it to work correctly every time is a different story. While there are numerous tips for getting Face ID to work every time you need it on your iPhone X, XS, XS Max, or XR, Apple has added a better option in iOS 12 that lets you add an "alternative appearance."
With each year that we anxiously await Apple's next big version of iOS, there comes the sad reality that the eldest iPhones will not continue to receive support. That's not the case with iOS 12, however, as the software is compatible with all iPhones currently running iOS 11, going back as far as the iPhone 5S.
Confirming a previous report from last week, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon X1 platform designed for augmented and virtual reality devices during an event at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Tuesday, with Meta and Vuzix among the first manufacturers to adopt it.
With the change to a glass back, many of us are concerned about the durability of OnePlus 6. While glass does offer some benefits such as lighter weight, without proper reinforcement, it can easily shatter in one drop. Now we have our our first look at its durability thanks to JerryRigEverything.
Whether due to spotty cellular reception or just data that you want to save, popular navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze offer an offline feature that lets you navigate from one location to another in the absence of internet service. Apple Maps also lets you use its service offline on your iPhone, though the feature is not as straightforward as it is on its competitors.
Even if your default mobile browser is Google Chrome, you may not want Google to also be your search engine. Maybe you're not impressed with Google's search results all the time, maybe you want a more private search experience, or maybe you just don't want Google's hands over everything in your life. Whatever the case, it's easy to switch from Google to another default search engine.
In an effort to help its advertising partners close sales with its sponsored augmented reality camera effects, Snapchat has launched a set of e-commerce tools designed to encourage users to buy products directly in the app.
After setting up your phone, there are a number of things you should do immediately before download your favorite apps. Specifically, now that your data is on the device, you need to take steps now to ensure it's both protected and retained. Fortunately, most of these steps are a one-time process.
Investors aren't keen to throw money at a new technology sector without at least some hope of a significant return on their investment in the future. That's why a recent run of activity within the augmented reality business space has stoked some new optimism among the financial community.
In addition to the standard "Raise to Wake" option that's been around since iOS 10, the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR have a unique capability that lets you "Tap to Wake" the screen. But these features can get annoying real fast when your screen keeps turning on accidentally, which could even lead to some unnecessary battery drain.
Both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 have Oreo beta software available in the wild at this point. We devoted a number of articles to covering what's new in Oreo and went into detail about the bugs and hiccups on both the S8 and the Note 8. Still, many people are left wondering — what's the difference between the Oreo builds on these two phones?
They say if you don't believe, you don't receive. Therefore, I'll choose to believe that this holiday season, Santa's elves have learned how to code in Unity and leverage ARKit to deliver these jolly AR apps for helping children of all ages virtually decorate their homes.
Chis Lacy's Action Launcher is easily one of the best third-party home screen apps for Android. If you're interested in the basic feature set of this impressive app, check our our overview of the top five launchers on Android. Today, we're taking an in-depth look at the brand new Adaptive Folders feature included in the latest update.
We've had a lot of fun digging into the Oreo update for the Galaxy S8. Thus far, we compiled a full list of the biggest changes and ran down some of our favorites. One of the most user-facing components on a smartphone is the camera. Samsung made sure to add some nice tweaks to the camera UI in Oreo too, bringing it more in-line with the camera on the Galaxy Note 8.
Now that it's been officially released for Android, Monument Valley 2 shot to the top of our best paid puzzle games list, and rightly so. This was no easy feat, as the games we covered ran the gamut of puzzles and all had stellar reviews. But there's just something about Monument Valley 2 that made it stand out from the rest.
All to often, many of us are struck with a brilliant idea out of nowhere, only to forget about it moments later thanks to the distractions of daily life. Sometimes, the actual process of jotting these ideas down in our iPhones can be a holdup, as the idea we want to record fades from memory before we can even unlock our devices and open Notes to get started.
The cutting-edge iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR have one-upped their Android competitors when it comes to facial recognition. Apple packed these flagships with an array of front-facing sensors to complement its selfie camera, which allows the new device to more accurately analyze faces, which you need for Face ID, Touch ID's replacement.
Ever since iOS 11, there's been a little drawer at the bottom of conversation threads in the Messages app. That drawer houses what Apple calls "iMessage apps," even though they also work in regular text messages. These apps are convenient for various reasons, but if you don't use any of them, it's just wasted space on the screen. Luckily, you can get rid of this app drawer.
While fully closing apps on your iPhone can keep it running at peak efficiency since it frees up memory and stops background refreshing, it's most critical when dealing with unresponsive apps. If you have an issue with a certain app, you can just force-close it instead of rebooting.
