It's here! Apple just released the latest version of iOS today, Monday, March 25. Version 12.2 has seen six beta releases, spanning the course of fewer than three months. The new update sports 30+ awesome features, including new Animoji, air quality reports in Apple Maps, and AirPlay 2 support for compatible TVs, in addition to a slew of new UI tweaks and redesigns.
When you think of companies that represent pillars like "privacy" or "security," Facebook is pretty far from the top of that list. However, the social media empire is making strides — small strides — to win trust with how it handles your user data. One of those efforts involves a way to prevent Facebook from tracking your iPhone or Android phone's location when you're not using the app.
Samsung just announced the Galaxy S10 lineup, but we already knew each device's every nook and cranny. Thanks to leaks and hands-on demos, we know the OEM kept the coveted headphone jack, but omitted one treasured feature in its place — the notification LED. Why did Samsung strip the S10 of this light, and can users expect something to replace it?
Snapchat and Snap Camera aren't the only augmented reality apps available for couples to use on Valentine's Day.
The tactic of brute-forcing a login, i.e., trying many passwords very quickly until the correct one is discovered, can be easy for services like SSH or Telnet. For something like a website login page, we must identify different elements of the page first. Thanks to a Python tool for brute-forcing websites called Hatch, this process has been simplified to the point that even a beginner can try it.
Twitter's official iOS app is adequate if you're not much of a tweeter, but if you are, there's a lot of useful features that are missing. Luckily, there are plenty of free Twitter clients available that you can use on your iPhone. These third-party apps have features such as customizable interfaces, post scheduling, and different browser options for opening links, to name just a few.
Just over two months ago, smartglasses startup North opened the doors at its two brick-and-mortar retail locations in Toronto and New York and began accepting orders for Focals. On Thursday, the company announced that those initial customers can get ready to pick up their wearables, as the first shipments have now arrived in stores.
We are in the midst of a mini-boom for communications tools designed for augmented reality headsets, with the introduction of Avatar Chat and Mimesys for Magic Leap One and Spatial for the HoloLens within the last few months.
Despite the hype and potential of immersive computing, the augmented reality industry is showing that it is not invincible, as another AR hardware maker, this time Osterhout Design Group (ODG), is reportedly going out of business.
When we reviewed the best file managers on Android, MiXplorer easily topped our list with its abundance of features, including tabbed browsing, support for up to 19 different cloud services, file and folder encryption, and much more. The only major complaint we had was the fact it couldn't be installed from the Play Store, but now, that is no longer the case.
In recent years, Apple has assembled its augmented reality team and supply chain through a series of acquisitions, high-profile hires, and strategic investments, but at least one potentially major deal was recently ditched.
The thrill and excitement of great tourism generally requires visitors to take part in the country's local fare in person. But Air New Zealand's new augmented reality experience for the Magic Leap One gives visitors an immersive taste of what the country has to offer without ever setting foot in the country.
As promised last week, Magic Leap has finally released the long-awaited augmented reality game Dr. Grordbort's Invaders.
Smartglasses maker ThirdEye has announced that its X1 model wearable will be updated by the slimmer, as yet unreleased X2 model. Both devices will be promoted and sold through its partner, brick and mortar technology retailer b8ta.
Location-based AR game Ghostbusters World is creeping closer to launch, and developer FourThirtyThree has released some new gameplay footage and a trailer to capture the interest of the living.
Thanks to Android Pie's gesture controls, features like split screen mode now take several additional steps to activate. This change is due to the revamped navigation bar which removed the recents apps button. Luckily, we can still change it back.
Despite the rise of music streaming, the experience of immersing oneself in the artwork and lyrics of old school albums is alive again, as sales of vinyl records and CDs have outpaced digital downloads for the first time since 2011. Now, the latest album from Amsterdam-based Necessary Explosion evolves this experience through augmented reality.
In recent days, I've twice talked about brining the Magic Leap One out into the world with me to test its mobile capabilities. But you may have been wondering how I carried the device with me. Did I just stuff my brand new $2,300, hard to obtain device in a backpack and hit the road? Hardly.
Despite its fifth-place finish in our ranking of the best transcriber apps on iOS, Voicera is still worth highlighting due to numerous factors that set it apart from the crowd. Besides being completely free to use on both iPhone and Android, the app's AI-based transcription service performed extremely well in our testing.
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.
Another entrant into the do-it-yourself AR content creation market has emerged, as Zappar has updated its ZapWorks Studio software to include features for development newbies.
I've called 911 accidentally more than a few times on my iPhone using the Emergency SOS triggers, but it's also just as easy to trigger an unintentional call to emergency services using an Apple Watch. These accidental 911 calls can put a strain on local public-safety answering points, or call centers, as well as local authorities and emergency medical technicians.
Has this ever happened to you: You're singing a song in your head and want to look it up on Apple Music but you just can't think of its name or even who recorded it? In iOS 12, if you can sing it, you can search for it, as the update lets you find songs in Apple Music by lyrics alone. It's like Shazam, only instead of identifying music by sound, it uses the lyrics in your head.
Netflix is branching out into the comic book business, and it's summoning augmented reality via Facebook to make the first issue more magical.
Less than two months after launching its augmented reality platform for casual gaming and shared experiences, Snapchat is ready to make Snappables available to advertisers.
Uber as a service is great, but using it requires you to hand over your location data to the company. What's worse is that you may be giving them precious access to your GPS even when don't have the Uber app open. This is both a major privacy issue and a drain on your battery. Fortunately, some of you can fix this.
As Facebook, Apple, Samsung, and others offer augmented reality selfie effects and content that challenge its platform, Snapchat has continued to innovate with its augmented reality capabilities.
Less than a week after securing a $25 million Series C funding round for automotive HUDs, DigiLens has introduced a new waveguide display for motorcycle helmets that's thinner, lighter, brighter, and manufactured at a lower cost.
Google Photos is a fantastic service, giving you unlimited storage on either your Android or iPhone. With all this free space, some pictures can get lost in the shuffle. Fortunately, Google will now let users "Favorite" pictures — whereupon they're automatically put in their own standalone album.
Auto rotation is generally useful, but it gets annoying when you trigger it accidentally. In past Android versions, you could lock rotation into portrait mode as a workaround, but you'd have to disable this every time you wanted to put your phone in landscape mode. Luckily, Android Pie has a great fix for this.
Location services company Mapbox has added new capabilities to its location-based gaming tool to fend off Google's challenge for the same mobile app category.
On Tuesday, on the one-year anniversary of the announcement of its AR Camera platform, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg revealed at the company's F8 developers conference that the platform will be extended to the company's Instagram and Messenger apps.
When you've exhausted your data plan, streaming isn't an option unless you want overcharges. While Apple Music makes it easy to download songs for offline listening, you need to add the music to your library first. This creates an extra step in downloading music, but it doesn't have to — Apple Music lets you automatically download any song, album, or playlist that you add to your library.
Following San Francisco-based Occipital's successful Structure Sensor Kickstarter campaign, the release of its Bridge AR/VR headset, as well as a string of technology and company acquisitions, the company has built a rather strong name for itself in the AR community. And now, with the first public release of its Bridge Engine on Thursday, the company continues to expand the features its platform has to offer, with hopes of bringing in more developers to utilize it.
The iOS App Store is a big place, offering over two million applications in total. However, there are actually some apps you can and should install on your iPhone that the iOS App Store doesn't include. And no, these apps do not require any difficult jailbreaking or complicated sideloading techniques — they are really simple to install.
Despite the fact that Snap Inc.'s Spectacles weren't the hit some were expecting, the company is nevertheless taking another swing at it by releasing an updated version.
HTC is entering the augmented reality market through the back door by giving developers access to the stereo front-facing cameras on the Vive and Vive Pro VR headsets.
Privacy is a hot topic. In the wake of Facebook's data scandal, many want to safeguard their personal info. On the other hand, we all gain a certain amount of convenience by using services administered by huge companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Google Assistant collects plenty of data, but you can easily check what is stored and delete items at will.
With over 1 billion downloads on the Play Store alone, Google Maps has become a staple for those traveling. Its popularity is the result of Google consistently improving its accuracy and adding new functionality. And this was only achieved with help of you — specifically, your data.
Epic Games just released update v3.4 for Fortnite Battle Royale on all four platforms. This new version brings a number of UI changes, performance improvements, and bug fixes, but the addition that will get the most players excited is a new weapon: the Guided Missile.
