Apple might be a secretive company, but it's showing its hand these past few weeks. The release of iOS 13 was met with much excitement for its hundreds of new features but also frustration over the numerous bugs. Apple soon released iOS 13.1, then iOS 13.1.1, as a patch for some of those bugs, but clearly they weren't enough. How do we know? The company just released iOS 13.1.2 today, Monday, Sept. 30.
After teasing what smartglasses powered by Snapchat might look like with two product cycles of camera glasses, Snap has now added augmented reality capabilities to its third take on Spectacles.
While Snapchat augmented reality often embraces pop stars like Drake and Ariana Grande, a couple of bands from the louder side of the music industry have found a home with Facebook.
Years ago, in 2013, Occipital introduced its original Structure Sensor for iOS, a mobile 3D scanning device for measuring three-dimensional objects. Soon after, in an unrelated deal, Apple acquired PrimeSense, the company that made one of the components for Occipital's scanning device.
If you've ever traveled to a country where you do not speak the language, you know there are times you need to translate text. Or maybe you just ordered a foreign good that requires text translation. Google Translate can easily solve this with its camera translation feature. It will translate any text you see in the real world into your desired language.
Google Lens can perform many different tasks with your smartphone's camera thanks to advanced machine learning, such as foreign text translations, landmark identification, and business cards to contacts conversion, to name a few. With this year's Google I/O conference, we have another cool Lens feature to look forward to — receipt calculations.
When shooting video on your phone, you have two cameras at your disposal, the rear camera and the selfie camera, and you can switch freely between the two. As for microphones, you may have more than one but, unlike with the cameras, it's not easy to switch between them. Filmic Pro solves this problem by isolating the mics so you can choose the best option for the audio track.
Google's has expanded ARCore support to numerous Android flagships like the Galaxy S10, so if you have a compatible device, you get access to all the cool new apps that can augment the world around you. One of ARCore's most sought-after features, AR Stickers, is normally exclusive to Google's Pixel lineup, but by sideloading the Google Camera app, you can try it on any ARCore device.
The camera punch hole on the S10 has gotten our creative juices flowing more than any notch ever could. First, we saw wallpapers that served to camouflage the cutout or even accentuate it. Now, if you want to go the opposite direction and highlight your S10's camera hole, there's an app that turns it into a circular battery meter.
Location services provider Mapbox is expanding the reach of its augmented reality development capabilities to include apps for automobiles as well as smartphone navigation.
If your phone is running Android 10, you can now share your Wi-Fi network with friends using a handy QR code. The other person doesn't have to be running Android 10 — in fact, you can even share this code with iPhone users. In most situations, this is now the fastest way to share your Wi-Fi password.
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.
After months of waiting, it looks like HMD has finally answered the call. Nokia's parent company is finally releasing a true flagship phone — one that isn't just an enhanced version of a previous phone and actually brings something new to the table. That phone is the Nokia 9 PureView.
The Galaxy S10 has finally been revealed to the masses, and it certainly doesn't disappoint. As the flagship to herald the tenth anniversary of the venerable Galaxy S line, the S10 has kept popular and familiar design elements like the immersive Infinity Display while employing new features like more advanced cameras to set a new standard for other OEMs to follow.
Snapchat made augmented reality selfie effects famous, with Facebook copying the feature across its mobile apps. Of course, others have followed, but their face tracking apps often pale in comparison to the original.
Snapchat and Snap Camera aren't the only augmented reality apps available for couples to use on Valentine's Day.
While the betting lines on iPhones with depth-sensing, rear-facing cameras in 2019 have already been established, a new report adds some certainty to the notion that the iPhone will get new AR superpowers later this year.
It looks like Facebook really likes Google's augmented reality leadership talent, as the social media giant has hired away another employee from the AR and VR team at Mountain View to lead its team for a product that brings Facebook's AR platform into homes.
First, there was SnapCat. Now, we have DogChat! Or SnapBark? In October, Snapchat took social media by storm with its Lenses for cats. But the latest addition to the camera app has given dog lovers an augmented reality Christmas gift they won't want to return.
The city of London is getting a holiday gift this season, but it's not the kind you unwrap, since it's completely delivered in augmented reality.
Boomerangs are a staple camera feature for Instagram and its users. The idea is to take up to 20 frames of video, which Instagram then processes into a looping movie that plays forward and backward. Since Facebook owns Instagram, it was only a matter of time before the feature hit its namesake apps, so it's not surprising that Messenger now supports the popular camera technique.
Occipital's initial augmented reality module, the Structure Sensor, gave iPhones and iPads the depth-sensing abilities of the HoloLens. Now, the company's latest product promises to do the same for Android devices, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality headsets and other devices.
The augmented reality smartglasses future that Snap founder Evan Spiegel has teased for so long may be closer than many realize.
If you own a Google Pixel, you'll soon have augmented reality versions of Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Childish Gambino on your camera.
One of the neatest tricks available in Google Lens, an app that can identify and interpret real world information, is the ability to copy text from the app's camera view and paste it into a digital document.
Until next March, the iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy S9 will be the only phones considered by many. Whether you're an Apple fan wanting to see how your new phone stacks up against the competition or a buyer on the fence, here's how the latest flagships from the two biggest brands compare.
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.
OnePlus will be releasing a new phone in the second half of 2018, specifically, an upgrade to their T-series. Over the past two years, #T versions have come out about five months after their predecessors and have included small updates that fix any problems from the previous OnePlus device. While we do know a bit about OnePlus 6T, what it could be is much more exciting.
Snapchat users are used to raising their eyebrows or opening their mouths to activate augmented reality face effects. Now, they get to use their voices as well.
After first being announced at Mobile World Congress 2018, the ASUS ZenFone 5Z will finally be coming to the US. Deemed an iPhone X clone by some, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to this flasghip. While it is similar to the iPhone X, in some ways, it improves on the design.
A peek inside the code of the Snapchat app has revealed that the company is expanding the search capabilities of its augmented reality camera to include visual search that may link to items within Amazon's massive online store.
While 3D motion capture via iPhone X is coming soon from Unity, software maker Reallusion offers similar functionality to 3D model animation producers today.
The addition of a new research mode for Microsoft HoloLens will enable researchers and developers to tap into a wider range of data collected by the device's sensors.
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.
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.
Augmented reality avatars that mimic facial expressions are no longer the exclusive province of Animojis on the iPhone X or AR Emojis from Samsung. Camera app Snow has added its own alternative to Apple and Samsung's features, which it also calls AR Emoji, for iOS and Android.
Another AR cloud savior has emerged this week in Fantasmo, a startup that wants to turn anyone with a smartphone into a cartographer for spatial maps.
For social media platforms like Facebook, augmented reality represents a whole new art form with which users can express themselves online. Now, Facebook is giving those users a new brush.
With a fresh series of videos and a new webpage, Snapchat has composed an answer to its own question, "What is Snapchat?"
The default Camera app got a few more tricks up its sleeves when iOS 11 was released, and the best addition by far was the inclusion of a built-in QR code reader since that meant no more third-party apps just for QR code scanning. However, Apple's built-in QR code scanner did have a vulnerability at one point that would let hackers direct you to a compromised website without you even noticing it.
