The OnePlus 3 and 3T are a pair of phones which allow you to do practically anything you want, because OnePlus is such a developer-friendly company. They almost always release kernel sources, and their phones sport an unlockable bootloader that doesn't void the warranty. But while their software is certainly solid (miles ahead of Samsung's TouchWiz), it still has room for improvement.
It looks like Samsung was thinking about slapping a little nub of a home button on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. This is according to a patent published by the European Trade Mark and Design Network, uncovered by Android Headlines. Despite having a nearly bezel-less display on their latest flagships, the South Korean manufacturer apparently considered modeling the design after last year's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
If you relate in any way to having the need to carry your iPhone and your vaporizer in one hand, then keep on reading.
Those of us that work with or around augmented and mixed reality have seen a powerful shift in the last year as the popularity and interest have grown in the field. With Microsoft's HoloLens release, the popularity of Pokémon GO, and the constant rumor mill known as Magic Leap, the terms augmented reality and mixed reality have started to become a part of the modern vernacular more and more each passing day.
The Galaxy S8's Bixby Vision feature isn't working up to its full potential for Verizon customers, according to a recent CNET report.
The Broadway musical War Paint is teaming with augmented reality cosmetics app YouCam Makeup to promote the show on iOS and Android devices. The musical, which centers on the famous rivalry between Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, two cosmetics industry pioneers, has been the talk of Broadway since its premiere in March 2017.
It turns out that the new Galaxy Samsung S8 Active (codenamed Cruiser) will be headed for AT&T in the US later this year, just like previous Active models. SamMobile revealed that the device would be exclusive to the network with a model number SM-G892A.
The rumor mill surrounding the iPhone 8 is churning this week, and not necessarily in a good way. Yesterday, we learned Apple may be leaving the 3D camera out of the next big iPhone to keep the phone on schedule. Today, rumors allege the 10th-anniversary edition of Apple's smartphone may not ship with Touch ID embedded under its display.
As with any new smartphone (but especially with Apple), the iPhone 8 is generating rumor after rumor. This newest rumor, however, rocks the boat a bit, as BGR reports that the iPhone 8 may release at Apple's standard time in the fall, but the 3D camera will be pushed to the 8s.
Just like in the Spy Kids 3D movie, US soldiers may soon upgrade their mission planning from 2D to 3D. Welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, US Army.
Google, the company that rules the internet, is now testing a method to leverage its machine learning with its ubiquitous presence on mobile devices. The new model they're employing is called Federated Learning, and it hopes to apply artificial intelligence to Google's services on Android without compromising user privacy.
Could the technology that powers games like Pokémon GO be used for surgery in the near future? Researchers at the University of Maryland think so.
While clicking random links on the internet probably isn't the best idea to begin with, now you can rest easy knowing that your iPhone won't repeatedly dial 911 after tapping a malicious link in Twitter, Facebook, or other apps that use iOS's WebView.
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change our very own faces into moving emojis.
It's no secret Uber has had a pretty rough year, in no small part to being sued by Google. But Google doesn't seem to have intended a full lawsuit against Uber from the get-go, as news today shows Waymo pushed for arbitration against their former employee last fall, months before the news broke that they were suing Uber.
It's been an exciting week for Tesla. First, Elon Musk offered a preview of the nearly complete Model 3, then China tech giant Tencent invested $1.78 billion in the company. Now, Tesla has officially updated its Autopilot software today for Tesla owners with Autopilot 2.0 hardware.
Google's Pixel smartphone is striking up some heated competition between phone makers HTC, LG, TCL, and Coolpad, as the Pixel 3 gets ready to release in 2018. Yep, you heard that right—not the Pixel, not the Pixel 2, but the Pixel 3—which shows that Google is really committed to the future of its new flagship line.
T-Mobile just unveiled two new services—Scam ID and Scam Block—which specifically target those pestering robo-calls that reach out to 2.4 million Americans every month.
In February, the popular Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger service jumped on the "stories" bandwagon and replaced their in-app, text-based "About Me" status (you know, those lovely little messages where you can say "Sleeping" or "Not Sleeping" under the tiny nub of your profile picture). Taking its place was a clone of Snapchat's Stories feature, continuing the social media giant's recent trend of shamelessly copying Snapchat.
Judges at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Accelerator Pitch Event named Lampix the winner in the Augmented and Virtual Reality category, conference organizers announced today. The ninth annual competition, which took place over the weekend in Austin, Texas, pitted 50 startup finalists against each other in 10 technology categories.
Anybody who was around in the '80s and '90s associates Sony with music still to this day, thanks to their wildly successful Walkman brand. And that's not even mentioning their major label record company. Indeed, the Tokyo-based electronics maker/media conglomerate has music embedded in its DNA, and that's certainly noticeable in the stock Music app included with their Xperia phones.
Last month, Dr. Sung-Hoon Hong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, announced at the Virtual Reality Summit in San Diego that Samsung would be moving into the augmented reality market. According to a recently published patent application, that move has begun.
Meta's long-awaited Meta 2 development kit finally began shipping in late-December last year, after having been delayed about six months. While very few have received a dev kit at this point, some more information about the headset has just been announced; Depth-sensing technology from pmdtechnologies is included in the dev kit headset.
DAQRI, a company mostly known for its odd but fun-looking industrial Smart Helmet, unveiled their new Smart Glasses product at CES 2017. Their smartglasses look like a strange attempt to answer the Microsoft HoloLens, and the price tag of $4,995 for the developer's edition reinforces that notion.
Merge VR, a company mostly known for its virtual reality experiences, is moving into and creating an augmented reality experience that combines an iPhone or Android smartphone, a set of goggles to put your phone in, and a box about the size of a Rubik's Cube which looks more akin to the Lament Configuration seen in the Hellraiser film series. When used in concert with the smartphone and goggles, the toy cube, called Holo Cube, becomes one of many AR experiences.
Ever since QuickPic was sold to a known adware company, there's been a glaring need for lightweight and fast third-party gallery apps on Android. For the folks that don't want to use Google Photos and other cloud-based solutions, a gallery app that loads your locally-stored pictures quickly without taking up much storage space is the best possible fit.
In recent weeks, thousands of Nexus 6P users have reported that their devices are shutting down with 30% or more battery life remaining. The phones won't start back up until they're plugged into a charger, so it's as if the battery completely dies even though there is plenty of juice left.
When developing for the HoloLens, keeping a constant 60 fps (frames per second) while making things look beautiful is a challenge. Balancing the processing power to display complex models and keeping the frame rate where it needs is just a straight up painful process, but a solution seems to be on the horizon.
Today, December 7, it was officially announced that Magic Leap has found their replacement for the recently departed Brian Wallace. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz has tapped Brenda Freeman, former EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of National Geographic Channel, as their new Chief Marketing Officer.
In recent years, wave after wave of technological advancement has led us down roads that are beginning to look more and more like science fiction stories. In their efforts to bring us from science fiction to science fact, Microsoft Research showed us a new communication medium called Holoportation earlier this year—and now they have found a way to make this highly complex holographic system far more mobile.
If your Android phone was made by Samsung, LG, HTC, or any other manufacturer that likes to apply skins on top of stock Android, then your camera app is tied to the custom gallery app that was preinstalled on your device. In other words, when you tap that little image preview icon after taking a picture, you'll be taken to a camera roll interface that was made by an electronics manufacturer.
In 4.74 seconds, I can barely bend over to tie my shoes, and somehow this guy managed to crush the human world record for solving the Rubik's Cube in that time exactly.
What happens when a entrepeneur/theme park creator and special effects artist/magician team up? You get a team crazy enough to create the first true virtual reality theme park (sorry, Six Flags). They only have a single experience so far, but it's already taken a giant leap beyond the wonders we've seen in today's consumer virtual reality headsets.
Security journalist Brian Krebs recently suffered a record-breaking DDoS attack to his his website, clocking in at or near a whopping 620 Gbps of traffic. Krebs' site was down for over 24 hours, and it resulted in him having to leave his CDN behind.
If you just can't wait to see the Pixel and Pixel XL, the new Google-branded smartphones expected to be announced tomorrow, you're in luck. After weeks of rumors and blurry images, a smartphone sales company called Carphone Warehouse just accidentally dropped the entire ball. The UK business accidentally set the product pages for the Pixel and Pixel XL live a couple days early, and for just long enough for them to be archived before they were taken down.
A 2D film can show you something, but a 3D film in virtual reality can make you feel it. If done right, you'll feel immersed in a new world that surrounds you. If done wrong, you'll get nauseous and uncomfortable. SilVR Thread, a 360-degree VR video company, figured out a few important ways to get the feeling right.
Most popular virtual reality headsets, like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, require a tethered connection to the computer and that imposes some obvious restrictions on how much we can move in our space. We'd all prefer a simpler, untethered option, and Intel wants to provide just that.
Most augmented/mixed reality hardware still exists in the development stage, whether that's one of the more robust headsets or a high-powered smartphone. Most everything else isn't widely used or monetized. Snapchat, however, snuck in under the radar and created the foundation for the first social network to focus on augmented reality.
Many apps and services that are available for Android can only work if they have access to your Google account. While you're setting up one of these apps, you'll see a popup that says something like "This app would like to access your Google account," and the options are "Accept" or "Cancel." Of course we tap "Accept" here to ensure that the app will work properly, but what are the long-term repercussions of doing that?
This week has been quite a successful one for Google, thanks to non-stop news coverage of their developer-focused I/O conference.
