The mainstreaming of augmented reality won't happen overnight, but it's becoming increasingly clear that traditional media is leading the charge in the effort to introduce the public to immersive computing. A recent example came from none other than USA Today via its 321 Launch app.
Magic Leap has earned a reputation for overt secrecy, but as it nears the highly-anticipated launch of the Magic Leap One, the company is spilling some of the beans. This week, we get a heaping helping of information on the Lumin OS, as well as a couple of great demos.
If you're not impressed with the current crop of AR content, and you're worried this may put a damper on the industry's growth, these stories should give you cause for some optimism.
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.
Location-based gaming pioneer Niantic has offered a preview of its augmented reality cloud platform that could change the immersive content game yet again.
After a district judge approved the $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner, we knew AT&T would be quick to reap the rewards of capturing Time Warner's media properties. Today, we get our first look at this with two cellular plans from AT&T. What makes these plans unique is they include a new cord-cutting service called WatchTV.
Magic Leap shows up in the weirdest places. Last week, right at the start of World Cup fever, for some reason, the Magic Leap One appeared on a Brazilian television show.
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.
Android has gotten significantly better at handling intrusive ads over the years. Things have gotten to the point to where these nuisances are largely a non-issue for most of us. However, there are still a few ad-laden apps that fall through the cracks — particularly the kind that bombard your lock screen with ads.
It will likely take a few more years before smartglasses are ready for primetime as component makers achieve the innovations necessary for consumer-centric device designs. Nevertheless, two technology companies are making steps in that direction as Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a chip dedicated to AR & VR headsets, while DigiLens has reduced the size of its waveguide displays for motorcycle helmets.
We watched the first piece of public-facing content Magic Leap has released so you don't have to, and, well, you didn't miss much.
With April coming to a close, there's a fresh group of augmented reality Snapchat lenses you should try out while they're still hot. We've got a prank lens, gamer-oriented ones for Fortnite and Fallout, and ones for the memesters out there.
Upon Google's release of ARCore in February, the platform wasn't only playing catch-up with Apple and ARKit in terms of downloads, but it also lagged in capabilities, as Apple already had vertical surface recognition and image recognition on the way with ARKit 1.5 for a March release.
Apple released the iOS 11.3.1 update for iPhones on Tuesday, April 24, 26 days after the official release of iOS 11.3 and eight days after the iOS 11.4 beta 2 update. It is the first minor update to iOS 11.3, and the biggest thing in it is a fix that lets displays fixed by third parties work again.
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.
While you were slaving away at work or school or whatever you were so busy doing over the last seven days, people have been hard at work creating a variety of new Snapchat lenses for your enjoyment. These lenses are hot off the presses, and I'm honestly really impressed with this week's crop.
Apple has taken great strides to ensure that iPhone users are having an Apple Maps experience on par or even better than Google Maps can provide. One of the factors powering this is extensions, which adds functionality to certain apps by giving them permission to interact. Among all the possibilities, one extension will let you reserve dinner tables right from inside Apple Maps.
While you were busy browsing Instagram, composing tweets, or chasing Snapchat updates, an eight-year-old ARKit developer was hard at work on her first step toward taking over the tech world via augmented reality.
In the weeks following Google's AR toolkit launch last month, the availability of quality ARCore apps has been somewhat limited. That changed on Tuesday, as a flurry of new and updated apps arrived on the Play Store, including some AR experiences available exclusively on Android.
Following the surprise release of Magic Leap's SDK on Monday, March 19, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Mozilla followed up by announcing official partnerships with the company.
A funny thing happened on the way to the release of the virtual reality epic Ready Player One — augmented reality grabbed a major piece of the spotlight. Specifically, Microsoft's HoloLens.
Not content to just be a provider of rugged smartglasses for enterprise users, DAQRI has made the jump into the AR software side of the industry with its new Worksense productivity suite.
If you're not looking closely, it's easy to mistake last year's Galaxy S8 for the brand new Galaxy S9. Design, build materials, screen size, software — it's all virtually identical, save for a few exceptions. But those minor differences can add up.
The S9 and S9+ are both fantastic phones. However, there's no getting around the fact that the S9+ has its advantages. In fact, it's an objectively better smartphone than its smaller counterpart — Samsung has given the S9+ features not found in the S9, meaning you'll be missing out if you choose the 5.8" Galaxy over the 6.2".
In any business, there are a number of questions companies must answer in order to get customers to buy a product or service. The same holds true for companies selling augmented reality headsets.
A massive leak appeared the web today, and it's got some huge security implications for every iPhone on the market. On the plus side, it also has some potential for enabling deep-level modifications and jailbreak tweaks.
With Signal's class-leading end-to-end encryption, you can be sure your messages will remain secure as they travel to the recipient. However, once the message arrives, its privacy is completely dependent on the receiver, who could share it anywhere if they wanted. To patch this vulnerability, Signal added disappearing messaging.
A new survey of game developers paints a somewhat less than rosy future for augmented reality gaming, but there's still some hope for its long-term prospects.
While 2017 saw the rise of "bezel-less" smartphones, none truly lived up to the name. Samsung shrank its bezels significantly, while Apple went with the infamous "notch." However, Samsung seems on the verge of kicking bezels out the door with a new patent application that embeds the front camera into the display.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the first big tech event of 2018. This year, if the early news is any indication, augmented reality could be the big star of the show.
The narratives around virtual reality consistently revolve around human empathy and emotion, while the story around augmented reality has been decidedly more dispassionate and business-focused — until now.
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.
Transparent display maker Lumus has reached a deal to license its augmented reality optical engine models to Quanta Computers for mass production of displays for consumer smartglasses.
Who likes to buy apps? The answer is no one, of course. Unfortunately, as in life, the best apps and games don't come free. That's why it makes sense to wait until those apps go on sale before handing over your hard-earned cash. And what better day to find discounts in the iOS App Store than Cyber Monday?
Nova Launcher continues to push the boundary of features available to home screen launchers. While most users are waiting for their OEMs to send out the Android 8.0 update, Nova provides access to many of Android Oreo's features to the 99.8% of devices currently using an older version. However, Nova tries not only to add new features but to improve their design.
Just one day before the retail release of the iPhone X, Apple CEO Tim Cook trumpeted the company's continued success during an earnings call with reporters conducted via telephone. And while he rolled out the expected glowing praise for the new iPhone, what stood out most was his effusive language describing Apple's new focus on augmented reality.
When the Super Bowl airs, every other TV network puts on reruns because no one wants to face that juggernaut for ratings. The launch of a new iPhone is the Super Bowl of the tech world, with the launch of the iPhone X being the biggest one yet.
The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL were built by different manufacturers. This is pretty common knowledge among Android fans at this point — Google's smaller Pixel 2 was built by HTC, while the larger Pixel 2 XL was built by LG. What would the Pixel 2 XL look like if HTC had followed through and delivered on the larger phone for Google? Today we have some answers.
A potentially groundbreaking new app targeting retail financial services hopes to bring augmented reality to your local bank and credit union.
Update 10/14: Developer paphonb has added rootless Google Now integration to the leaked Pixel 2 launcher, so now, anyone running Android Nougat or Oreo can get the full Pixel 2 home screen experience. For those running Lollipop or Marshmallow, we've left the unaltered leaked version linked out below, but we've added a new link for the tweaked version with Google Now integration.
