All of the the tech industry giants, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, are working on new smartglasses and/or AR headsets, but this week, Google took a major step forward with gesture recognition technology that could make its way into AR wearables, posing a threat to Leap Motion and its hand-tracking controllers.
In late-2017, Instagram rolled out a feature that automatically saves your ephemeral Stories to a private archive. Before that, Stories disappeared into the ether after 24 hours, but not everyone was comfortable losing these precious photos and videos. If you post to Instagram Stories quite often, you can now easily access your history from your account — and you might not even know it.
The augmented reality industry has a bright future built on innovation and growth, but that doesn't mean we can't look back at the close of the year to see what the industry has accomplished from a business perspective.
Shopping wasn't always this easy. Now, in a matter of minutes, you can order your groceries for the week, send your cracked phone in for repairs, get your holiday shopping done, and have everything delivered to your front door in just a few days — without ever having to leave your home. Online shopping is convenient, comfortable, and a blessing ... right? Well, it can also be a headache.
During the keynote at WWDC earlier this year, Apple introduced the latest iteration of its mobile operating system, iOS 12. Despite a thorough demo on stage, Apple glossed over new eye tracking features that use ARKit 2. Developers can now use the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR to determine where your eyes are looking, opening up incredible new possibilities for new apps.
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.
iOS 12 has a feature that lets you instantly share saved Wi-Fi passwords with other iPhone users, but it can be finicky when you're sharing with multiple people. Then there's an even more pressing question: How do you share your password with Android users? Thankfully, there's a Shortcut that can solve these problems.
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.
Imagine this: you have your finger poised to take the perfect picture — a once in a lifetime opportunity, like a solar eclipse — and you are suddenly caught off guard by a buzz, then "ding!" You look down at your phone to find your perfect pic ruined by distortion from the vibration, all because of an ill-timed notification. It's enough to make you crazy, especially when you find out it could have been prevented.
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.
Depending on how you use your phone, you may have noticed your status bar is a bit crowded due to various icons being enabled. While some icons make sense to have, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the VPN key icon can be redundant, especially if the app uses a notification. Good thing, there is a way to get rid of the icon.
Mixed reviews of Magic Leap One aside, it would be hard to deny that Magic Leap has had a big year. And the AR unicorn isn't coasting to the finish line, with a number of new apps dropping and prescription frames finally arriving to bring relief to those who wear eyeglasses.
Around the end of each year, Spotify offers a year-in-review service so its users can see what they listened to the past year and share their listening histories in fun infographics. Apple Music does not have such a feature, unfortunately, but there is a way to curb that FOMO feeling this holiday season by downloading your listening history not just for 2018, but for the entire lifespan of your account.
Nothing beats a human translator, but Google Translate and other software-based solutions have developed into decent alternatives for help with basic translations. Need an English word translated into German? No problem — but what if you need to have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak your language? Is Google Translate capable of doing that? The answer is not really.
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.
One of the most useful features of the Pixel Launcher is access to the Google Discover page. Initially, this feature was exclusive to Google's launchers, forcing users to give up the customization of apps like Action Launcher if they wanted the quick access to relevant news and updates it provided. Fortunately, this is no longer the case.
Investors continue to bet on augmented reality, both for short-term returns and long-term plays. This week, Niantic reportedly picked up another round of funding from Samsung and others, based on the success of PokémonGO and the prospects for future revenue. Likewise, investors see value in WaveOptics, whose waveguide displays could make consumer smaller AR smartglasses possible within the next year.
Giphy has had a few apps for iOS over the years. Giphy Keys was a keyboard built specifically for GIFs. Giphy Cam lets you create your GIFs complete with stickers. Giphy World is for adding augmented reality stickers to the real world. But now, Giphy has combined elements of all of these into its main app, so you can create, find, and share GIFs and stickers right from your keyboard.
Anyone remember Google Goggles? Well, it's back with a new name: Google Lens. But this time, there's more machine learning and it's integrated into many different Google apps and services. The latest is the Google app for iPhones.
Signaling a new direction forward for the company, Magic Leap shook up its executive suite by re-assigning to top leaders to new advisory roles. Meanwhile, a new startup backed by Hollywood executives, tech venture firms, and notable angel investors plans to bring new life to AR for marketing entertainment properties.
Last year, Razer kicked off a new trend by building a smartphone from the ground up with mobile gamers in mind. At the time, many thought the Razer Phone solved a problem that no one really had — but a year later, we're starting to see that gaming phones are perfect for more than just Fortnite players.
After you unlock the bootloader, install TWRP custom recovery, and flash Magisk to gain root access, what might be the next step of your modding adventure? A custom kernel, of course! Flashing a custom kernel onto your device gives you a whole new level of tweaks and customizations, and it allows you to have full control over how your system performs.
AMC Theatres was never a fan of MoviePass and even predicted its unsustainability. After the struggling MoviePass turned off diehard fans with too many new restrictions to combat its cash problems, AMC stepped in to save the day with its AMC Stubs A-List subscription for cheaper movie tickets.
Safari has a convenient "Find" feature to search for specific words and phrases in a webpage, and Apple Books has a similar feature for e-books and PDFs. But those do nothing for you when searching text in the real world. Hardcover and paperback books are still very much a thing, as well as paper-based documents, and finding what you need is as simple as pointing your iPhone's camera at the page.
The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR.
Update February 25: The new Sony Xperia flagship has been announced, and it has a new name: The Sony Xperia 1. You can read all of the official specs and details at our full article on Sony's new model.
With the recent launch of the OnePlus 6T, the company continues to impress us with some of the best phones when it comes to the rooting and modding. OnePlus has made it easy enough to get up and running with the rooting process as fast as possible. The OnePlus devices follow the same core principles Google uses for their Pixels, which is excellent news for both the user and the development side of things.
Sony Pictures has tapped the powers of augmented reality as provided by startup 8th Wall & the Amazon Sumerian development platform to help it promote the latest motion picture manifestation of Spider-Man.
Now that the Magic Leap One is out in the real world, the mystery behind the company lies not in whether it will actually ship a product, but when it will ship a consumer product. Or, does CEO Rony Abovitz steer the company in a different direction first?
If you or someone you're shopping for has a newer iPhone model or an Android smartphone like the Galaxy Note 9 or Pixel 3, they come with wireless charging capabilities. Problem is, they don't come with wireless chargers. But there's no better time to snag one than on Black Friday, and we've found the best deals out there for 2018's holiday season.
The North remembers...that smartglasses are the future! Game of Thrones jokes aside, the smartglasses startup opened its doors, and we visited its Brooklyn store to get our hands the consumer-focused Focals smartglasses.
Now that its first developer conference is in the rearview mirror, Magic Leap continues to nurture its content development community, this time with an assist from strategic investor and retail partner AT&T.
This week, at its developer's conference, Samsung took the wraps off a new tool from Wacom that bestows the S-Pen with AR powers, as well as its own entry to the AR cloud market called Project Whare.
Hundreds of Windows 10, macOS, and Linux vulnerabilities are disclosed every single week, many of which elude mainstream attention. Most users aren't even aware that newly found exploits and vulnerabilities exist, nor that CVEs can be located by anyone in just a few clicks from a selection of websites online.
Haptic feedback and vibration of our smartphones have come a long way in recent years. These features are much more premium now than they once were, but most users are still unable to adjust the intensity for notifications or phone calls. Most higher-end devices make less noise on surfaces than in the past, but adjusting these values can still come in handy even today.
This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about.
When OnePlus announced their partnership with T-Mobile and the deal the magenta carrier is set to offer, mouths dropped. But as usual, this deal comes with some caveats. The bulk of these will hurt the folks who love to root, something a large portion of the OnePlus community enjoys doing.
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
Niantic's most successful app, Pokémon GO, has become the first app to integrate the company's Real World Platform, the developer's AR cloud technology that enables multiplayer AR, persistent content, and occlusion with physical objects.
