The augmented reality industry made great strides in 2017, but its apex is not even in sight. In terms of software, augmented reality is approaching meaningful mainstream awareness, thanks mostly to Apple and ARKit. Meanwhile, on the hardware side, AR is very much in its infancy, with headsets mostly limited to enterprise customers or developer kits and the majority of smartphones lacking the sensors necessary to achieve much more than parlor tricks.
Andrew Mucci, a New Jersey-based vlogger who is also Social Media Coordinator at Sennheiser, likes to use Instagram not only as a platform for the brand but also as a place to experiment with content on his own account.
Food labeling is a tricky beast. For instance, when I read the words "cage-free" on an egg carton, I think it means that happy chickens frolic in a sunlit meadow all the livelong day until they're gently herded into a clean, sweet-smelling coop to lay a few dozen eggs—which I can purchase for a reasonable price, of course.
Apple's new iOS 16 software update is finally here, and there are over 350 new features and changes for you to enjoy on your iPhone. There are major lock screen and home screen improvements, a pleasant surprise for the Contacts app, and tons of new upgrades to Safari, Mail, Messages, and more.
Yo dawg, Snap heard you using Snapchat augmented reality Lenses in your messages, so it's putting its AR Lenses in other messaging apps.
Most of you probably hate ads on your smartphone, but they're a part of modern digital life. As long as apps like Instagram are free to use, then we'll need to pay by dealing with posts, videos, and pop-ups trying to sell us stuff. Well, not necessarily, so long as you're OK with a few compromises.
Saving a chat's history is useful for finding valuable information later on or just reliving a favorite conversation from the past. Sometimes, however, it's good to delete chat threads, and it's even better to have them auto-delete right after you see new messages. While some apps have had disappearing messages for some time (e.g. Snapchat), Facebook Messenger now has it too with "Vanish Mode."
Deep fakes, the art of leveraging artificial intelligence to insert the likeness and/or voice of people into videos they don't otherwise appear in, typically focus on celebrity parodies or political subterfuge.
For the longest time, Instagram didn't have a native collage feature. If you wanted to post a story with an assortment of photos, you'd need to use the company's Layout app or a third-party collage maker. Thankfully, that is no longer the case since Instagram now bakes Layout directly into the story camera.
As protests surge in the wake of George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer, powerful photographs and videos from the demonstrations have gripped the world, putting our nation's very real and very justifiable widespread civil unrest out into the digital world. Unfortunately, these pictures could put you or others in danger if precautions aren't taken before uploading them online.
Motorola is a shell of its former self. In 2010, it had just released the Motorola Droid, a phone so popular it led to all Android phones being called "Droids" by non-techies. But there have been some rough years between then and now, and Motorola's latest "flagship" doesn't look like it will help get them off this path.
Apple Watch owners know the struggle — it's the end of the day, and those rings aren't met. Whether you forgot your watch before hitting the gym, let the battery run out, or just didn't move enough, you could feel the sting of fitness failure. But it doesn't have to be this way. You can actually close your Activity rings yourself; it just takes a little know-how.
FaceTime has been around since iOS 4, and year after year, things stayed pretty much the same aside from a few small changes. In iOS 6, calls over cellular networks were finally possible, and audio-only calls were officially supported starting in iOS 7. But the one feature most everyone has wanted since FaceTime was a thing — group video calls — didn't show up until iOS 12.1 for iPhone.
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials.
It's super easy to add filters, adjust levels, and crop images using the default photo editor on your smartphone, but there's rarely any built-in tool for removing the background in a photo. A third-party app can help isolate people and objects in your pictures, and we've found a free one that's easy to use, works with high-resolution images, and is available for Android, iOS, iPadOS, and the web.
The new iOS 14 for iPhone arrived Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2020, alongside iPadOS 14, and there are a lot of features to uncover. Improved widgets. Better home screen customization. Exciting Messages improvements. New abilities in Camera and Photos. There's so much here that it'll take months for you to learn everything by heart.
In a similar vein to Facebook's colorful backgrounds for text posts, Instagram has a way to add vivid text-only status updates for your stories. That way, you can conjure up colorful stories that make a statement without even needing to take a photo or video in the first place. And now there are even more fonts to choose from.
The original iPhone SE was, for some, the perfect iPhone. It brought back the popular one-handed form factor of the iPhone 5 but packed in the internals of the then-new iPhone 6S. Now, the second-generation iPhone SE is here for 2020, but can it live up to what made the first-generation iPhone SE so popular?
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.
Contrary to popular belief, augmented reality apps have been available for a while now. I remember using the Layar app (still available for iOS and Android) to explore nearby businesses and landmarks with varying success via an early-generation Android handset.
Around this time in 2016, the predictions for the next year had reached something of a consensus: 2017 would be the year of augmented reality. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future — nothing much, really. At least not for the first half of the year.
Your iPhone has plenty of already-created Apple wallpapers just waiting for you to set as your Lock Screen and Home Screen backgrounds. But using a photo from your own library can provide a more emotional connection, help you express yourself better, and give your phone a more unique look. To maximize these effects, auto-rotate your personal images daily, hourly, when locked, or when tapped.
Your iPhone has hidden apps that work behind the scenes to filter SMS messages, trust computers, deal with payments, test ads, and perform other actions. You won't find any of them in your App Library, but there are tricks you can employ to unlock and use some of these secret apps.
In the past, Apple never really put much work into its Contacts app for iPhone, making the tool much less useful than its Mac and iCloud counterparts. But now the Contacts app for iOS is a force to be reckoned with. Packed with new features (some hidden), it's finally good enough to beat all of the third-party contacts apps that previously reigned supreme.
Apple's Contacts app just got its biggest update ever. Since the first iPhone in 2008, there have only been minor upgrades here and there to how you manage and interact with contacts. That changes with iOS 16.
The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smartglasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smartglasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment.
There's no doubt iOS 13 has dominated the talk around the Apple community this month. Since the announcement and release of the first developer beta, we iPhone users have had a treasure trove of new features and changes to explore and discuss. Now the fun continues with iOS 13 dev beta 2. Who's ready to start up the conversation all over again?
Lidar, a technology first used by meteorologists and aerospace engineers and then adopted in self-driving vehicles, has slowly crept into consumer electronics over the last five years. If you have a Pro model iPhone or iPad, there's a good chance it has a lidar sensor, and you're likely using it whether you know it or not.
Are you thinking of switching from an iPhone to an Android phone? Before you make a permanent change from Apple to the other side, it's good to try out the other ecosystem and see if it makes sense for you. If you can't get your hands on an Android phone to try it out, you can simulate Android right on your iPhone. You can even see what a foldable smartphone feels like!
Messages is arguably the most important app on your iPhone, which is why it's always exciting when Apple pushes out new features for it. With the iOS 14 update, there a few critical changes as well as interface improvements and customization options that make the experience even more personalized than it already was.
Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) features to explore, so we've collected them all here for you.
In these times of social distancing, video calling is becoming the technological substitute for face-to-face connections. For those who carry an iPhone, the art of video calling defaults to FaceTime, the native app on iOS that is exclusive to Apple devices. But what do you do if you or the other party is on Android?
Apple's stock keyboard for iPhone has gone through many changes over the years. Some have been significant, and others more subtle. Overall, most of these updates have been fairly obvious, so you're probably already using them — but there are more than a few interesting features that were slipped in under the radar that you may not know about.
Facebook Messenger is a messaging app first, but of its more than 1.3 billion monthly users, 32 percent use its video chat feature at least once every month. While it may seem pretty straightforward to video call with family and friends on Messenger, there are many tips and tricks that can help enhance your experience.
Cases and stickers are always great, but they aren't the only way to customize an iPhone. The software on your device is full of customization options, from a better-looking home screen and cooler lock screen wallpapers to app icon changes and a system-wide dark mode. There's literally over 100 ways to make iOS on your iPhone genuinely unique, some of which are hiding in plain sight.
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?"
Smartphones are now indispensable when traveling. Domestic and overseas travel alike require food, navigation, translation, and so much more to make work or vacation successful. Gone are the days of lugging multiple tourist books around with you everywhere you go — you need to let your smartphone handle the dirty work.
The last iOS software update was a modest one, but iOS 17.4 has a lot more for your iPhone, including changes to emoji, Podcasts, security, Safari, widgets, Apple Cash, CarPlay, and more.
Apple just seeded developers and public beta testers the GM (golden master) for iOS 14 on Tuesday, Sept 15. The update (18A373) comes just after Apple's "Time Flies" event, and six days after Apple released iOS 14 beta 8 for both developers and public testers.
Apple's iOS 14 is here. With it, you'll see over 200 new features and changes hit your iPhone, including home screen widgets, inline replies in Messages, and cycling routes in Maps. Here's how you can get your hands on the brand new update.
