HMD (the company currently making Nokia-branded phones) only released one flagship device last year, with the rest of the phones falling in the mid-range and entry-level tiers. However, at Mobile World Congress 2018, HMD announced their ambition to become a top five smartphone maker in 3–5 years. Meeting this goal will require penetration in all markets — especially the United States — and it looks like Nokia will get the ball rolling early this year.
Last year, Motorola released their Moto G5 Plus, a fantastic mid-tier machine that earned praise from both reviewers and consumers. Starting at $229, it was well-built and inexpensive considering everything Motorola managed to jam into it. This year, Motorola is looking to replicate the success of their G series with the G6 Plus.
With only one profitable quarter in the last two years, LG's mobile division is undergoing a shakeup. With a fresh set of executives, LG has delayed the expected launch of the upcoming G7 and instead decided to start the year with yet another variant of the V30.
Both the OnePlus 5 and 5T have two pre-boot menus that every owner should know about: Recovery mode and bootloader mode. The recovery screen lets you wipe cache, perform a factory reset, or install firmware, which can help save the phone from a soft-brick. Bootloader mode, on the other hand, lets you send Fastboot commands via PC or Mac to lock or unlock your bootloader or flash images.
For the unaware, RED is a company that specializes in high-end cameras and other recording devices. RED's cameras are used to shoot some of Hollywood's biggest films and TV shows. Their modular designs make them ideal for the user who does a lot of mixing and matching — and has a wallet to back their work up (their WEAPON 8K VV starts at $79,500).
Deep down inside, Android is really just a fork of Linux, the popular open source desktop OS. You can see traces of its roots everywhere, and this lineage still holds a certain appeal with many Android fans. If you're in that boat, you'll love the newest notes app we just found.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the first big tech event of 2018. This year, if the early news is any indication, augmented reality could be the big star of the show.
The narratives around virtual reality consistently revolve around human empathy and emotion, while the story around augmented reality has been decidedly more dispassionate and business-focused — until now.
Binance, a China-based cryptocurrency exchange, is rapidly gaining popularity thanks to the sheer selection of digital currencies you can purchase — Ripple (XRP), Tron (TRX), IOTA, and Stellar (XLM), to name a few — using both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Binance has an iOS app, and there are a couple ways to install it. Either way, you can trade cryptocurrency from your iPhone today.
Over the past month, we've spent significant time covering Samsung's Oreo Beta program, and the detailed list of features in Oreo is extensive for the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Many of you were upset when the Galaxy Note 8 was left out of the official Oreo beta program entirely, but we found a method to install a beta Oreo build right now on the unlocked and US variants if you'd like to give it a try.
Considered by many (perhaps unfairly) to be a very public failure, Google Glass can add another plot point to its comeback story, this time as a tool to teach social skills to children and adults with autism.
Up until now, experiencing augmented reality through Vuzix's next-generation Blade 3000 smartglasses would have required a trip to a tech conference where the company has an exhibition booth.
The Android Oreo Beta for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ has been available for nearly two weeks. Samsung started rolling out the Beta 2 update late last week in the UK, and just yesterday in the US. Unfortunately, the US version of the update firmware (G955USQU1ZQK6) experienced a critical bug with the phone app at launch. As a result, Samsung has completely pulled the US Beta 2 update for the time being.
In case you didn't already know, augmented reality is here. It's no longer just an idea in a cyberpunk novel. And while augmented reality has been around for a long time, the actual technology is finally catching up to the idea.
Leaks are seemingly inevitable for smartphone makers these days. The OnePlus 5T, the successor to the OnePlus 5, is no exception to this rule. Last week, we witnessed leaked photos showing off the 5T's rumored "edge-to-edge" display. Today, leaks on OppoMart's 5T preorder page give us specs in addition to images.
A potentially groundbreaking new app targeting retail financial services hopes to bring augmented reality to your local bank and credit union.
Augmented reality headsets with larger eye boxes than any device currently available could make their way to market by the end of next year if current timelines hold true.
Some of us woke up at the KRACK of dawn to begin reading about the latest serious vulnerability that impacts the vast majority of users on Wi-Fi. If you weren't one of those early readers, I'm talking about the Key Reinstallation Attack, which affects nearly all Wi-Fi devices.
If you want to take your iPhone or Android photos to the next level, Snapseed is one of the best options. When it comes time to share pictures with friends and family, you want them to look as good as possible, so a little post-processing is in order. The problem is that Snapseed, by default, saves your edited photos at a lower quality than it first came in. What gives?
When it comes to Hi-Fi music streaming services, Jay-Z's Tidal is one of your only choices. But as you can imagine, true High Fidelity audio requires faster download speeds than your average music service. So the question becomes, how do you listen to Hi-Fi tracks on Tidal when a speedy internet connection isn't available? Offline music is the answer.
According to Digi-Capital, investors poured $1.8 billion into augmented and virtual reality companies over the last 12 months, including $300 million in the third quarter. These investments are not made without a means to monetize products and services.
In most cases, when you create a movie project in iMovie for iPhone, you're starting with just a few media clips. There's no reason to select every photo or video at once, and that's likely a hard task anyway. Adding additional media footage to your movie project couldn't be any easier, especially when it comes to photos.
A remote administration tool, or RAT, is a piece of software used for remotely controlling machines. They are commonly used by tech support to gain remote access for troubleshooting purposes, but RATs are also an important part of a hacker's advanced persistent threat (APT) toolkit. Unlike standard administration RATs, these tools are designed to be delivered stealthily and operate undetected.
Mira Reality unveiled the Mira Prism yesterday and people immediately got excited about it. The Mira Prism uses no electronics besides your iPhone and it works pretty simply. You have a semi-transparent screen in front of your face. Once you open the Mira app on your phone, you just slide it into the Prism and your screen will be reflected across your vision. The Prism seems to be fairly similar to the HoloLens and Google Glass.
I have spent a good portion of this year traveling between cities and various emergent technology conferences and events. Most of these events have been really good, but in terms of augmented and mixed reality, the Augmented World Expo, in its eighth year running, definitely stood above the rest.
Cyclists of the world, new AR glasses are here to improve your rides. Possessing 2 GB RAM, a quad-core CPU, GPS, 16 to 32 GB of storage, an accelerometer, camera, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer, Bluetooth, speaker, WiFi, and a mic, these aren't your regular UV-blocking sunglasses. Called the Everysight Raptor AR glasses, these shades project all of the information a cyclist could need to optimize their rides.
The beta firmware for OnePlus devices lets you record calls from the stock Oxygen OS dialer, but this feature is never included in official updates. This is likely due to legal issues with recording calls in some jurisdictions, but thankfully, there's a way to get this feature without having to run beta software.
A fairly hidden feature in iOS 10 let you turn websites and documents into PDFs, but thanks to the new Markup function in iOS 11, this process has become a lot more streamlined.
Nope, it's not 2016 again. Samsung is giving it another go at beating its competitor by attempting to unveil their new Galaxy Note 8 before the new iPhone. Because it worked out so well the last time.
Say you're on a train to work, but you forgot your headphones. You'd normally listen to music to pass the time, but given the circumstances, your choices are to sit silently like a considerate adult, or to blare songs out of your phone's main speaker like a jerk. Thankfully, there's now a third option.
If you're a tech enthusiast, there's no way you're not watching HBO's Silicon Valley. So you surely know the Pied Piper crew's latest shenanigans involve an app that uses a phone's camera to find facts about food items — a sort of Shazaam for food, if you may.
Kik is an extremely popular messaging app, but it has a few annoying features that we all just sort of put up with. You can't turn off read receipts, nor can you hide when you're typing, and the photos you take with Kik's camera show up differently than ones you send from your gallery app. At least a couple of these features should be subject to change, but they aren't — well, not without some tinkering.
Last week, Next Reality wrote about how the Microsoft HoloLens team is partnering with thyssenkrupp. Their mission? To bring mixed reality to the workplace. Now, Microsoft has just confirmed in a blog post that the HoloLens has passed the basic impact tests for protective eyewear in North America and Europe.
We have some bad news for BlackBerry fans: It looks like the upcoming KeyOne flagship won't be shipped in April after all.
Samsung's new Galaxy S8 can turn into a PC with its DeX dock, but while that may sound like the future of mobile computing on the surface, there are definitely a few issues with the entire setup.
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.
DigiLens, a company specializing in optical waveguide technology, recently announced that they had closed a $22 million round of strategic investment, also known as Series B funding. This round brought in Sony, Foxconn, Continental, and Panasonic, as well as more traditional venture investors such as Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Dolby Family Ventures.
For some time now, there has been quite a bit of speculation as to when the selection of augmented and mixed reality head-mounted displays would begin to trickle out to the public. Pricing, availability, and software selection are all issues that will have to be addressed before widespread adoption will start.
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.
Thanks to live-streaming video and social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, we're all on camera nowadays. Unfortunately, though, we don't have a script to work with when we're shooting selfie videos, so it's hard to come off as perfectly eloquent when you're just freestyling off the top of your head.
