It hasn't been long since Apple released iOS 16.0 with over 350 new features, but iOS 16.1 just came out with even more cool updates for your iPhone. While some of the recent upgrades were expected, others are somewhat surprising — and there's even one that you may not even th ...more
Apple previewed new cognitive, speech, and vision accessibility tools for the iPhone back in May, and they've finally been realized with the iOS 17 release. But there are more accessibility features than that hiding in Apple's latest software update — and they're not just for ...more
In the 21st century, we're all looking for ways to stay private, especially on our electronic devices. We have big tech corporations, enemy countries, malicious hackers, and other prying eyes watching our every move, so it's only natural to want to limit what they can see. Mak ...more
In the last decade, the number of people working remotely in the US has increased dramatically, and so has their need for technology and software to supplement that remote work. Whether you work from home or a coworking office space, the requirement for highly compatible and h ...more
Apple just announced the iPhone 6, and no matter whether you've been with Android for a few months or few years, there's a good chance you're enticed by the idea of switching over to the other side. As a diehard Android user, I can't blame you. A bigger screen, better camera, ...more
While iOS 11.3 doesn't have as many new features as iOS 11.2, there's still a lot to love about Apple's latest update for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, even if some of the best features we were expecting didn't make the cut. Apple released the iOS 11.3 beta on Jan. 24, and ju ...more
So far, iOS 13's major point updates have all been pretty exciting for iPhone. We've seen iOS 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 come and go, offering more than 60 new features and changes combined to that very first version of iOS 13. While iOS 13.3.1 was a minor update, its successor, iOS ...more
The original iterations of the Terminator film franchise have served as the inspiration (via the heads-up display of the T-800) for future augmented reality dreams, so it is fitting that the current crop of AR gives the latest installment in the series a promotional boost. Wi ...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. On Wednesday, Rakuten Viber flipped the switch on an update that brings Snapchat's popular AR Lenses to many users of its Viber messaging a ...more
Besides the Apple vs. Samsung competition, few battles are as vocal as the battle between the best Pixel and best iPhone. This year, it's the Pixel 3 XL and iPhone XS Max, two phones that are equipped with minor hardware updates from their predecessors, though both showcase si ...more
If you've been an iPhone user for quite some time, you probably have quite a bit of photos and videos in iCloud or on your device. Unless you know the date, location, or event, it can be pretty hard to find a specific memory. Even with intelligent search suggestions, AI-create ...more
If you regularly run into issues opening images that use the .heic extension, the easiest solution is to convert the file into a more compatible format. Using apps like Photos and Preview on a Mac makes the process simple, but macOS Monterey just streamlined the process so tha ...more
Millions of travelers pass through airports each day without understanding how powerful and insecure a boarding pass can be. Anyone can scan the boarding pass barcode with a mobile app, allowing access to frequent-flyer accounts and even a passenger's temporary airline account ...more
There are more actions available for the Action button, but only a handful of iPhone models have that button. However, there is another button with new features you can use, and you can access all the fresh features on any iPhone model that can run iOS 18. The button in quest ...more
Right on the heels of the iOS 11.4.1 beta 3 release, Apple pushed out iOS 12 beta 2 to registered developers on Tuesday, June 19. Public beta testers received the same version, labeled as iOS 12 public beta 1, six days later on Monday, June 25. Last year, the iOS 11 public bet ...more
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. Now, with the Reface app for iOS and Android, you can easily repl ...more
There's a new trend on Instagram Stories: People are making viral AR filters where images of popular characters from TV shows, movies, and other mediums shuffle above your head until one sticks. The filters range from Disney and Pokémon characters to Harry Potter and Friends, ...more
Apple's iOS 13 for iPhone includes new features in Safari that make browsing the web a little bit better when compared to iOS 12. Some changes are small while others add functionality that just wasn't there before. Plus, there are more security enhancements. While Safari didn ...more
So, you've gotten (or are getting) a shiny new iPhone 8 or 8 Plus. Congratulations! It's got great new features including the new A11 Bionic chip, wireless and fast charging, and portrait lighting. And let's not forget a much better battery ... right? Wrong. The iPhone 8 mode ...more
For enterprise augmented reality platform makers, remote assistance apps represent one of the greatest opportunities to show off the power of immersive computing. These apps enable experts to guide front-line workers or customers with AR prompts and other content in the field ...more
There are times when physically interacting with your iPhone is less than ideal, like when you're cooking or driving. Fortunately, iOS 13 has you covered regardless of the circumstance you may find yourself in. With the new Voice Control feature, you can control pretty much ev ...more
If your phone is running Android 10, you can now share your Wi-Fi network with friends using a handy QR code. The other person doesn't have to be running Android 10 — in fact, you can even share this code with iPhone users. In most situations, this is now the fastest way to sh ...more
For those of you who have (or had) and iPhone, one of the cooler photo apps for iOS was VSCO Cam, an extremely popular camera with pro-quality filters and effects. Now this app is available for Android on Google Play for your Nexus 7 tablet and any other devices running Androi ...more
Mobile app publishers are using augmented reality to solve everyday measurement problems from measuring the length or height of items to previewing furniture in the home. Now, it looks like checking luggage dimensions for carry-on eligibility is another volumetric problem inc ...more
The Pixel 3 has an indisputably great camera, but a software update coming soon is going to make it even better. Google will be adding a "Night Sight" shooting mode that's so good with low-light situations that you'll have to see it to believe it. XDA highlighted a port of th ...more
French automaker Renault is tapping into the promotional machine for Solo: A Star Wars Movie by deploying an AR experience through Shazam that's triggered via synergistic advertising. To access the experience, users scan the Shazam code embedded on bus stop advertisements in ...more
Lions and tigers and bears are just a few of the animals that Google users can now bring into their physical environments. Less than a month after previewing augmented reality capabilities in Search at Google I/O, Google has begun to roll out support for embedding 3D content ...more
There are plenty of reasons the Pixel's Google Camera has become a must-have app for Android users. Google Playground AR stickers and Night Sight for low light photography are just the tip of the iceberg. Beyond those, the app comes with other, less-publicized options that add ...more
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change o ...more
If DroneBase's new AR platform inspires even half the creativity among its users as Minecraft did with its community, then drone pilots are about to enjoy acres of blocky worlds to explore among the clouds. That new platform is called AirCraft, and it's available as a beta fe ...more
While The New York Times' augmented reality section has largely been dormant in 2019 (so far), USA Today has continued to crank out AR news stories. On Monday, the news outlet published a feature story about the world's tallest buildings (and the recent lack of new skyscraper ...more
Live Photos is an interesting new feature introduced by Apple on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models that captures the moments immediately before and after you snap a picture in the Camera app, resulting in a GIF-like animation. But unlike a conventional GIF file, a Live Photo d ...more
If you want your own lightsaber, you don't need to be a Jedi or have kyber crystals in your possession; now, thanks to augmented reality, all you need is an iPhone and a rolled up piece of paper. On Wednesday, app developer 2020CV released InstaSaber on the iOS App Store. The ...more
A little less than a year after announcing "Project Astoria," Microsoft announced Thursday, February 25th, that it will end the "Bridge," which would have brought Android apps to the Windows Store. Microsoft's Android Bridge (aka Project Astoria) is no more.. Microsoft also an ...more
The company that brought us a BB-8 droid controlled with the Force — okay, just a high-tech wristband — is releasing its take on Spider-Man. Toymaker Sphero collaborated with Marvel to release an app-enabled Spider-Man toy equipped with numerous features, as well as games for ...more
Will the name "slofie" ever catch on? Probably not. But that won't stop the feature from being a hit. Slo-mo selfies aren't new in the smartphone world, but they are new to iPhone, arriving for the first time on iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max. Here's what you need to know b ...more
The annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is one of those events that everyone talks about, so an augmented reality experience in the festival's mobile app and from one of its headlining acts, Eminem, basically means the technology is officially cool. The iOS versio ...more
Google's strategy for updating its apps with dark mode options is apparently "one at a time" and "as slow as possible." Even after the company added a dark theme to many of its apps for Android and iOS, such as Calendar, Chrome, Keep, and Photos, Gmail seemed to remain "light" ...more
I have over 400 photos on my iPhone, and I don't even know where half of them came from. Scrolling through all of those pictures is a pain in the ass, but it's not nearly as bad as trying to actually find an old image. Organization is not my strong suit, so I'm definitely not ...more
Normally, you have to hold down the on-screen button to record videos on Snapchat, but if you want to go hands-free for some more creative video selfies or less shaky landscapes, there's a workaround on iPhones that lets you do just that. In your iPhone's Accessibility menu, ...more
One of our favorite features on the Pixel Launcher is its App Shortcuts, which work a lot like Apple's 3D Touch for iOS or Huawei's Force Touch. Instead of using pressure sensitivity to call up static and dynamic shortcut menus for apps, Launcher Shortcuts relied on a simple l ...more
If you have a Mac, you can use Apple's Handoff feature to open one of your Safari desktop tabs in Safari on your iPhone. But if you prefer to use Google Chrome as your desktop browser, whether or not that's because you have a Windows PC, you can't "hand off" open tabs from Chr ...more
Augmented reality avatars that mimic facial expressions are no longer the exclusive province of Animojis on the iPhone X or AR Emojis from Samsung. Camera app Snow has added its own alternative to Apple and Samsung's features, which it also calls AR Emoji, for iOS and Android. ...more
Augmented reality and drones already go together like turkey and stuffing, but a new iOS app adds some spice to the combination with a new kind of flight path automation. Available now in Apple's App Store, the Vermeer Beta app displays a 3D map of the intended drone flight a ...more
If you're in the market for a new tattoo, the biggest hurdle to clear is imagining exactly how it's going to look. It's going to be part of your identity for the rest of your life, so you have to make sure it looks just right—or as your mom probably told you, "Think of what it ...more
"What's your Wi-Fi password?" That's usually the first thing guests ask for when you have them over. You tell them the network name, then try to explain your complicated hacker-resistant password, which becomes a whole ordeal. But there's a better way to do it, which doesn't r ...more
Apple CEO Tim Cook told us that augmented reality would change everything, and now we have a better idea of exactly what he meant. A new report reveals that Apple is already hard at work on a rear-facing 3D sensor for the iPhone that would vastly expand the iPhone's AR capabi ...more
If you hold your phone upright while taking a video, you've surely seen the horrific end results. When you try to play the video back on any other display, roughly 70 percent of the screen is occupied by black bars. I normally scold people for this behavior, as it makes for t ...more
In MyFitnessPal, you can search through a food database to add your meal into the app's diary and track your calories. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the database can make it hard to find exactly what you have just consumed, which is why MFP includes a barcode feature to mak ...more
When you sign up to be a public tester for Apple's iOS, you get early access to features most users won't see for months. But you aren't the first — developers get priority when it comes to beta releases, made clear when they received 13.2 beta 3 while public testers were stil ...more
There's nothing quite as exciting in the beta testing world as a new update. Battling overloaded servers to download the latest update as fast as possible, just to scour through the new OS looking for the biggest features to the smallest changes. It was only Thursday that Appl ...more
If social media apps were houses in a neighborhood and augmented reality photo effects were candy, then Facebook went to Costco and brought home a full pallet of treats. The Facebook app for iOS and Android, and its Messenger companion (also for iOS and Android), offer up mor ...more
It's time to step up your selfie game, especially if all of your selfies tend to have the same vapid look and feel. There are plenty of techniques for better selfie-taking, and I've already shown you a few iPhone tricks, like making yourself look thinner and using hand gesture ...more
Videos are great for catching fleeting moments, and photos are insanely easy to share with anyone, but how can you get the best of both worlds? Apple includes an easy way to take snapshots while you're in the middle of recording video, but that's just too much work for me. I' ...more
When going out to eat with friends, it's inevitable that one person takes charge at the end of the meal to split the bill. They whip out a pen and begin asking everyone what they ordered, carefully dividing, adding, and subtracting on the back of the receipt for everyone to us ...more
Math homework isn't the easiest thing to get through quickly, no matter how prepared you are. Knowing your stuff simply won't cut it. Going through dozens of equations in one sitting could take up hours of your time. Even when you finish, there's always going to be that one pr ...more
Texting something as simple as "What up, bruh?" can be transformed into something way more baller by adding emojis, emoticons, GIFs, and textspeak. Some people would even argue that texting is a form of art, similar to Shakespearean sonnets, but it still has a ways to go if yo ...more
Whether it's because you're too startled from a sudden awakening or you're elbow-deep in cake batter, turning an alarm or timer off on your phone can be annoying. So why not simplify the process by eliminating the need to even touch your phone? With these free apps by Augmente ...more
The UK has officially exited the European Union, completing the long and tumultuous Brexit story and putting the storied nation once again on its own on the international stage. And while some are wondering what the future holds for the EU-less UK, the country is kicking off ...more
Pokémon, Google, and augmented reality go together like wasabi, soy, and ginger, and the trio has come together again for the release of the latest game from the Pokémon universe. As Nintendo released the eagerly-anticipated games Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield for the Swit ...more