The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.
The recent announcement that Facebook will begin inserting advertisements into its VR experience on its Oculus Quest headset has set the VR and augmented reality industry into a frenzy.
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
There's already some fierce competition between Snap and Facebook in the AR space, but it's about to heat up even more, with Snap snatching up a 3D mapping startup that could add some new AR capabilities to its arsenal.
Snapchat may trail Facebook and Instagram in terms of daily active users, but a new partnership with Samsung may get those innovative AR Lenses onto the mobile devices of a lot more users.
The augmented reality industry has grown steadily over the past four years, but now it is on a collision course with uber-popular non-fungible tokens technology, with Looking Glass and music artist Reggie Watts among the latest to strike while the iron is hot.
The Lens Studio creators have published more than 1.5 million AR effects to Snapchat. One of them is Audrey Spencer, who shared her story with us and provided her insights into Lens Studio as a storytelling device. Meanwhile, Snap has added new capabilities to the platform to stoke more creativity from its creators.
Despite the unfortunate social media-driven association of Corona beer with the virus behind a global pandemic, beverage maker Constellation Brands has pushed its marketing forward like a lime through the mouth of a beer bottle.
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. At Magic Leap, the lemons are the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lemonade is a new solution for virtual meetings born out of social distancing.
The latest whispers about Apple's plans to launch its long-awaited (yet still unconfirmed) augmented reality device hits several familiar notes, but lands on a different refrain.
With over two billion websites floating around cyberspace — only 400 million are estimated to be active — you need every tool you can get to stand out. Great design, fonts that capture attention, and SEO placement are all necessary ingredients to success.
The majority of us have been shown, again and again, that we want our own business. Business software is making this a reality by automating and simplifying the complex parts of running any company.
You've just picked up your new Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, or S20 Ultra — but wait. After you turn it on and restore your data, there a few apps you should install to get the most out of your updated phone. Installing these eight apps right away will help maximize your experience from the very beginning.
Despite some of the biggest players in tech still lagging in terms of offering smartglasses options, there are nevertheless a number of smartglasses makers, including North and Vuzix, with consumer-grade smartglasses on the market right now.
Samsung decided to jump into the foldable category early, announcing the Galaxy Fold in February 2019. After a major hiccup, Samsung released the phone four months later to praise. But Samsung's not finished with foldables, as the new Galaxy Z Flip is just on the horizon.
Back when I worked in the music industry, I never imagined there would be a day that I'd be able to sit in a room surrounded by virtual album covers while listening to beats, but that day is really here.
Android 10 is officially out, but a lot of phones didn't get it in 2019, and others may not get it at all. With this page, you'll at least know when or if.
It's safe to say that we can call the annual ranking of AR investments a holiday tradition at Next Reality.
Sorry, Galaxys S11–19, Samsung's jumping straight to Galaxy S20 this year. They're also going with essentially three base models before accounting for niche variants. Of these three models, it's clear which one's the best: the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
As paper forms become a thing of the past, it's becoming commonplace to fill out contracts, rental agreements, waiver release forms, and non-disclosure agreements online. You can easily fill out forms on your laptop, but how can you best do this using your iPhone or Android device?
The worlds of augmented reality and virtual reality are closely linked in many ways. That means it's smart for AR insiders to keep a close on new developments in VR. If you have been paying attention, you know that Oculus CTO John Carmack is one one of the most important thinkers in the VR space.
In just a few weeks, on May 29, the annual AWE (Augmented World Expo) conference will take place once again in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, California, to be exact).
You can almost detect the collective breath-holding of the augmented reality industry as it waits for Apple's inevitable entry. A new Apple wearable built with augmented reality technology is likely the device that will finally make the smartphone take a backseat.
In 2019, Sony is mixing up its design, attempting to stand out among the sea of familiarity. Instead of emulating Samsung with punch hole cameras, they decided to target a rare section of the market, content consumers. There's the Xperia 1 for those who want the best, and the Xperia 10 and 10 Plus for the budget crowd.
Once again, LG is mixing up its launch. Instead of the announcing the latest entry in G series later in the year, the LG G8 ThinQ was announced at Mobile World Congress 2019, shortly after Samsung's Galaxy S10 event. And instead of trying to match what other OEMs are doing, LG is once again trying to be different.
The year 2018 was a rough one for Snap, the company behind the Snapchat app and the Spectacles wearable camera device. From executive departures to reports of slowed user growth, the company that once spurned Facebook's multibillion-dollar advances is now facing a moment of truth as it stares down its uncertain future.
It's that time of year again. No, not Thanksgiving. Black Friday. There are a lot deals available this holiday weekend, many of which include flagship Android devices. Whether you are thinking of buying a phone for yourself or looking for a gift for someone else, you can find a little savings to shop smart during the holidays.
Ever since the announcement of the Razer Phone, a wave of gaming smartphones started to hit the market. With ASUS being such a big name in gaming, it made sense for them to throw their hat in the ring. The result is the ROG Phone. And with this first try, ASUS has topped the rest, creating a gaming phone others should try to emulate.
In this jam-packed October, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has flown under the radar in the US. Due to Huawei's lack of presence in the States, many are unfamiliar with the second largest OEM in the world. Huawei has continuously put out amazing mobile devices, and this year they released a phone that's nearly perfect on paper.
Over the years, Magic Leap's long-cultivated shroud of mystery led some onlookers to buy into the company's dream before even trying the device, while for others, the secrecy seems to have stoked the kind of resentment and overcorrecting critique usually reserved for the mighty Apple.
There are nearly 100,000 unique onion service addresses online with over two million people using Tor every single day. Join me as I explore a small fraction of what the Tor network has to offer.
If you're looking for your gaming fix and nothing on the App Store is piquing your interest, you should give soft-launched games a try. These are games that haven't been released in the US yet because they're getting tested in smaller markets first. Using a simple workaround, you can install them on your iPhone in any country.
After delaying its launch by four months, LG revealed its 2018 entry to the flagship market on Wednesday, May 2. After years of an underperforming mobile division, the LG G7 ThinQ is the first product since a shakeup within the division to get things back on track, and it brings a number of upgrades over its G6 predecessor.
The war on dehydration is a commercially burgeoning marketplace. An increasingly sophisticated consumer population hoping to conquer everything from 26-mile marathons to vodka shots is deconstructing every functional remedy in the fight to quell the effects of severe dehydration.
For almost a decade, projector phones have tried to entice consumers with their convenience as media machines. While these devices are alluring, they've never really taken off with mainstream success. The latest effort, Moviphone, sounds tempting if you watch a lot of films and TV on your smartphone, but is it good enough to be your daily driver?
Black Friday is fast approaching, and just like every other day-after-Thanksgiving, there will be too many tech deals you won't want to pass up. If you've been saving up all year just for this sometimes-chaotic shopping holiday, we'll help you figure out the best tech sales to take advantage of and when, whether it's Black Thursday, Black Friday, or Black Friday weekend.
If you're in the market for a new smartphone, you'll likely scan spec sheets and read reviews of the top phones, compare display size and technology, RAM amount, and processors. But one factor that is often overlooked is cell reception — and for T-Mobile subscribers, there's only one device that has flagship specs and an exclusive antenna that will actually improve your signal.
Google announced a partnership with Movies Anywhere that allows you to connect your iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu movie library with Google Play Movies. In other words, movies you purchase from any of these online retailers will be available for playback in the Google Play Movies app after a little setup.
Cruise Automation, the driverless car startup General Motors (GM) bought for $1 billion in 2016, is readying a formidable fleet of robo-taxis for rollout in cities throughout the US. But when it comes to details about how the company plans to realize these lofty goals, it's been fairly tight-lipped.
Throughout this NR50 series, we have talked about the incredible growth the augmented and mixed reality space has seen in the last year. More devices, software, developers, and use-cases seem to arrive daily. For this growth to have occurred, it took the work of many people, from many different backgrounds and skill sets — and Next Reality wants to recognize them for all that they have done and are doing.
