News: Smartglasses Maker North Brings Its Focals Showroom to Your Home via iPhone's TrueDepth Camera
Wearables startup North has made a smart move to get its Focals smartglasses into the hands of more consumers.
Wearables startup North has made a smart move to get its Focals smartglasses into the hands of more consumers.
Despite hints hidden in internal iOS 13 code, Apple did not unveil its long-rumored smartglasses at its annual iPhone launch event on Tuesday.
The venture arms of Samsung and Verizon Ventures, along with Comcast, are among the strategic investors backing startup Light Field Lab and its glasses-free holographic displays in a $28 million Series A funding round
While Magic Leap has remained mostly silent regarding its plans for its Magic Leap One successor, the software team continues to makes strides with improvements to the device's Lumin OS and SDK.
The longer it takes Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, and other tech giants to build their own version of augmented reality headsets and smartglasses, the longer runway of practical experience Microsoft gains with the HoloLens and its sequel. The latest example: AR cloning.
A typical hours-long podcast can cover a broad range of topics, and it's not uncommon to stop listening halfway through an episode or to skip through the parts you don't want to hear. Unfortunately, in the Apple Podcasts app, unfinished episodes remain within the app's My Episodes list and will play again automatically once you've finished a previous episode.
Tuning into a favorite station on Pandora has become part of a routine for many, and it's easy to see why. The app automatically plays songs tailored to your tastes to ensure a relatively hands-free experience. And if you're a subscriber, Pandora even has you covered in moments where there's poor cellular service by letting you keep listening to your go-to tracks uninterrupted.
With Microsoft taking direct aim at enterprises for its HoloLens 2 with a $3,500 price tag, one startup is betting that business will be willing to pony up for glasses-free 3D displays as well.
The Pixel is the phone to beat when it comes to cameras, and it's largely due to software. While its hardware is solid, Google's machine learning prowess and general coding wizardry are the biggest reasons the Pixel is so good with taking photos and recording video. What this means is that if you can get the Pixel's camera software, you can replicate the Pixel camera experience on other phones.
While Leap Motion has given makers a DIY solution for building their own augmented reality headset with Project North Star, a self-described "AR wonk" has taken the blueprints one step further by creating an untethered version.
The iPhone's notification system has drastically improved over the years, but it could still use some work. The notifications, while useful, are all monochrome, making it hard to distinguish which app posted each alert, and that's not even mentioning the drab overall look. This is where jailbreak tweaks can come in handy.
By default, there aren't many customization options for the notification badges on iPhones — you can either leave the numbered red bubbles there, or turn them off. But thanks to a new jailbreak tweak, you can now give your badges a unique look with new functionality.
As highlighted in our article on how to enable Google Now in Action Launcher, doing so takes away the Quickdrawer. This effectively ruins one of the more beneficial features of Action Launcher, making it a tough choice between the two options. So I looked for a solution and found one that works.
Keeping track of your physical activities can be difficult, especially if you have a hectic lifestyle with responsibilities to constantly stay on top of. Thankfully, Samsung Health is there to help you log your workout routines, leaving you with one less thing to keep track of as you go about your busy day.
According to Google's new Android ecosystem transparency report, you're eleven times more likely to be infected by malware if you're running Android Lollipop (5.0) as opposed to Android Pie (9). The same report shows that if you sideload apps, you're almost seven times more likely to be infected than if you stick to Google Play as your app source. All of the data provided in the report is quite interesting, but there's a clear pattern among malware-infected users.
Rumors are swirling today that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) may have shown us the first public glimpse of the next-generation HoloLens. Are they real? Or just a prototype? We've been digging in all day to find the answers.
Augmented reality experiences for consumers, for the most part, are relegated to mobile devices at present, but creation and development of those experiences is still a province of desktop computers.
The iPhone XR has touched down alongside the XS and XS Max, and it utilizes tried and tested materials found on the iPhone 8, while being molded in the same vein as the iPhone X. The budget-friendlier flagship comes with its own set of design elements to set it apart from its more expensive brethren, but is powered by the same SoC, making it is a solid choice if you're thinking of upgrading.
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.
Low Power Mode can go a long way in preserving your iPhone's battery life in a pinch. It can be set manually or appear as an option once your battery levels dip to 20 and 10 percent. If you have a jailbroken device, you can take Low Power Mode a step further by having it automatically turn on whenever using Do Not Disturb.
You can view battery information in the Today View, you already know what carrier services you, and you can quickly figure out with normal use whether your display orientation is locked, so what do you need the status bar at the top of your iPhone? If you don't find much use for it and would like to see more of your wallpaper, there's a way you can get rid of it for good.
In 2018, notches are the hot trend with smartphones. Essential was first to release a phone with a notch in mid-2017, but Apple kicked off the fad in earnest with the iPhone X. Unfortunately, unlike the iPhone X, every Android phone with a notch has a noticeable bottom chin. Let's take a deep dive to find out why.
Samsung's Good Lock app has has breathed much needed life into its TouchWiz UI by giving us the ability to customize our Galaxy phones in ways that previously would've required root or a custom ROM. One companion app in particular even lets you personalize your lock screen to set it apart from the rest of the crowd.
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.
Earlier this week, we told you about the new DreamGlass augmented reality headset from Dreamworld, a company started by a former Meta executive. The device looks great, and the features sound good, but is it worth your hard-earned cash? I recently took it for a brief spin to find out.
Electronics maker Epson is courting developers to its Moverio smartglasses with an updated software development kit (SDK) and integration with a web-based tool for publishing augmented reality experiences.
Nearly one year after its announcement, AirPlay 2 has finally landed on iPhones everywhere. Not only can you easily control multiple speakers including Apple TVs and HomePods from your iPhone, but you can use Siri to help you get the job done. It's one of the iOS assistant's best features, and if you're running iOS 11.4 with a compatible speaker, you can try it out right now.
The OnePlus 6 is finally in customers' hands along with its top-of-the-line specs — and yes, a notch. But you can start getting some of their stock apps as early as today, thanks to XDA user erayrafet, who ported this Weather app directly from the source.
PUBG is continually getting better and more intuitive with each update, and version 0.4.0 is no exception. Besides a new training map to help you practice and a faster-paced arcade mode for on-the-go gaming, the newest version of PUBG now includes a feature that exclusively caters to iPhones from the 6S on up.
Starting with Android 8.0 Oreo, the process of sideloading apps has changed dramatically. Google removed the old "Unknown Sources" setting and replaced it with a permission that you have to grant to individual apps. It's really an interesting security feature.
For the longest time, the only clickable link you could throw up on Instagram was in your profile's bio, and that's still true for a lot of users. The only way to add a clickable link aside from the aforementioned one is in an Instagram story, where users checking out your story would swipe up to load the webpage before going back to finish your story.
By default, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ only have 15 media volume steps — in other words, there are only 15 increments between silent and full volume. That's usually fine if you're using your phone's speakers, but if you're wearing headphones, more fine-tuned controls would be helpful.
Carrier-branded Galaxy S9 models come with a ton of bloatware that you usually can't get rid of without rooting. With a little digital elbow grease, however, there is a way to disable bloatware on your S9 or S9+, and it's a lot safer that attempting to root and modify you precious device.
Many Samsung fans were excited when the Galaxy S9 kept the 3.5 mm headphone jack. While this is a rare delight in 2018, you also have the option for high quality audio playback over Bluetooth. When used with compatible headphones, the S9's new Bluetooth audio codecs can greatly improve audio quality.
WhatsApp comes with a ton of great features that make it the go-to messaging app for millions of people around the world. Among these is the ingeniously simple Read Receipts that let you know your message has been viewed. If you want to read a message without alerting the sender, however, there are simple tricks you can perform to give yourself plausible deniability.
UPDATE: The P20 and its variants are officially available now. However, there's no official North American variant. You can purchase the international version of the P20 Pro or P20 Lite on Amazon, but be aware that it may not work perfectly on US carriers.
When it comes to media players, few are more capable than VLC. With its extensive codec support, VLC is able to play almost any video file. Partly due to its open-source nature, features are constantly added. This trend has continued with a new update that added native Chromecast support.
This week, saw two companies leaning on AR to prop up their financial futures. On one hand, Apple made quite a bit of AR-related news ahead of its quarterly earnings report next week. On the other hand, Vuzix launched a pre-order program for its Blade smartglasses and closed the largest financing deal in the company's history to fuel its ongoing headset production.
It recently came to light that a number of Android phones are unable to stream HD video through services like Netflix, Google Play Movies, and Amazon Prime Video. If you're worried that your phone may be affected, there's a simple tool you can use to find out for sure if you can actually stream video in 720p or higher.
With technology giants like Apple and Google finally entering the fray, the move toward mass adoption of augmented reality is ramping up. Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore will allow entirely new categories of apps to be made. Unfortunately, in a world of heavy competition, getting these two frameworks to work together wasn't a priority for either company.