DxOMark, an independent camera reviewer, has become the go-to place where consumers and OEMs alike hope for good camera scores on major new smartphones. The Google Pixel 2 has topped the charts since Oct. 2017, when the score no doubt helped pull the phone out from its trouble ...more
The S9 and S9+ are both fantastic phones. However, there's no getting around the fact that the S9+ has its advantages. In fact, it's an objectively better smartphone than its smaller counterpart — Samsung has given the S9+ features not found in the S9, meaning you'll be missin ...more
Google and Samsung are the biggest players in the Android world. Despite a rocky launch, Google's Pixel 2 XL became one of the premier Android devices of 2017, headlined by fast performance and a pure version of Android. Still, many users prefer Samsung's offerings, and their ...more
While it may not be an obvious feature, Apple actually built a way into iOS that lets you hide specific pictures and videos in the Photos app that you want to keep on the down-low, for your eyes only. If you show off your photos a lot or stream slideshows to your TV, this is a ...more
HBO's Westworld has touched down on iOS as a mobile game, giving players the chance to manage their very own futuristic theme park set in the wild west. Unfortunately, the game is currently only available in select countries as a soft launch until its fully developed. But if y ...more
Apple didn't invent the concept of photos with videos embedded (that credit goes to HTC and their Zoe feature), but they sure did popularize this functionality when they came out with Live Photos. If you're jealous of iPhone users, you certainly don't need to be — there are se ...more
A while back, we told you about NoChromo, a no-root ad-blocking browser based on Google Chrome's open source code base, Chromium. That browser was wildly successful, as it offered an identical interface to regular Chrome, but without any ads. Sadly, the developer abandoned NoC ...more
While self-driving cars appear to be as inevitable as augmented reality headsets, the auto industry and its technology partners likely have years of testing to complete and regulatory loopholes to jump through before self-driving cars hit most highways. Until then, the same c ...more
Just over a week after debuting, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp received its first-ever event geared toward the winter holiday season. With the ability to craft Christmas-themed goodies and own a full Santa suit, it's the perfect time to jump into Nintendo's latest hot mobile ga ...more
If building with Lego blocks in AR appeals to you, rest assured that an app is on the way for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. We were tipped off to Lego's dip into AR development because the software was briefly demoed at the ARKit unveiling at WWDC and at Google's Pixel ...more
Mobile AR developer Blippar has achieved a breakthrough by releasing what appears to be the first commercially-available AR navigation app. The company's new app, AR City, gives users overlay directions for walking routes as well as points of interest. The app is available vi ...more
After announcing another massive round of funding to the tune of $502 million, Magic Leap is adding another powerful weapon to its creative arsenal: John Gaeta, the man who helped develop the iconic Bullet Time effect for The Matrix series of films. Gaeta made the announcemen ...more
So, it's Halloween time, and you feel like playing around with some augmented reality apps? Well, you've come to the right place — if you have an iOS device. Sure, you could load up some Halloween-themed filters on Snapchat (like the new lens sponsored by Stranger Things 2) a ...more
The promotional images for American Horror Story: Cult have been some of the most arresting in recent memory. They mash coulrophobia, trypophobia, and body horror together with some serious economy into a succinct, colorful, image. It's like a bad car accident that you can't s ...more
A development duo has concocted an iPhone app that displays related tweets based on objects recognized by the device's camera. Or Fleisher and Anastasis Germanidis compiled the experiment, dubbed Twit.AR, using Apple's CoreML machine learning platform and Google's Inception v ...more
Playlists are a vital feature for any music streaming service. For many, the ability to add and organize songs into the perfect order is a deciding factor in which streaming service to choose. The folks at Tidal (including owner Jay-Z) certainly recognize this, as they've prov ...more
All to often, many of us are struck with a brilliant idea out of nowhere, only to forget about it moments later thanks to the distractions of daily life. Sometimes, the actual process of jotting these ideas down in our iPhones can be a holdup, as the idea we want to record fad ...more
Google's new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL have a new camera mode called "Motion Photos." As the name implies, it's quite similar to Apple's Live Photos feature or HTC's Zoe before it. For every picture you take, a few seconds of video footage from before and after the shot was taken ...more
To revise a line from the Blues Brothers, when it comes to ARKit apps, we've got both kinds — home utilities and games. As such, two more candidates for each category have made their way to the app store. In addition, one by one, NFL teams are taking a pass at augmented reali ...more
Sports gaming company ePlay Digital, Inc. is looking to capitalize on the fall launch of iOS 11 and ARKit with an augmented reality fantasy sports app. With ePlay GO, the company is borrowing a few pages out of Pokémon Go's playbook, with players finding virtual avatars of at ...more
Augmented reality sells, but who's buying? Over the past week, two companies made executive hires to capitalize on the growth of augmented reality as a service to sell to other businesses. Meanwhile, two companies joined forces to offer augmented reality tools to headset maker ...more
Life is all about spending time together with loved ones, experiencing new places together to enjoy and create memorable moments. Luckily, Google has made it easier for us to rendezvous with friends and family at specific places by letting us broadcast our locations using Goog ...more
If you've ever wanted to scour the basement of a Hollywood hotel looking for evidence of a gruesome murder spree, this new AR experience might be the game for you. Horror games have changed drastically over the years to make you feel like you're in the story. Video horror gam ...more
Update: HBO discontinued this service. Your best bet for transferring your data from one account to another is to save a record of your watch list. That way, you can add your titles back manually with your new account. Now that you can add an HBO Now subscription to your Hulu ...more
SoundCloud is a really interesting alternative to Spotify and Pandora in that it will never really give you the exact mainstream song that you want. If you're looking for new up-and-coming artists that are making some wonderful alternative remixes to mainstream music, then Sou ...more
YouTube's mobile live streaming feature is great for connecting with your audience in a more personal way than traditional videos provide. Audiences can view and respond to content in real time, and creators can do the same. While unfortunately not available to everyone — you ...more
The new battlefield AR game announced by Skyrocket Toys today is similar to the childhood game "Tag", except the stakes are much, much higher. Skyrocket Toys are known for selling drones and other gadgets that have previously utilized AR/VR. This includes products such as Meb ...more
Netflix added the ability to download TV shows and movies on Android and iOS for offline binging back in Nov. 2016, and the process is the same as it is today. So if you anticipate having some downtime to catch up on Narcos or give Bright a try when you'll be away from a secur ...more
If you don't have any home Wi-Fi, like to watch videos on public transportation, or just always find yourself streaming Netflix when there are no hotspots available, your cellular data is probably gobbled up fairly fast. For limited data plans, watching the next episode of you ...more
I thought eventually that my ex's Instagram account would magically clear from my "Suggested" search history. It's been six months now, and I'm sorry, babe, but enough is enough. It's time to clear out your very cute face. (On Instagram, of course.) I don't want to be reminde ...more
Reigns recently went on sale on the Google Play Store (sorry, iPhone users), and that inspired me to give it a go. I've wanted to try this one out for a while now, but the steep price tag kept me away. ($2.99 is a lot for me, okay?) Now that I've had some time with Reigns, I ...more
There are so many tips and tricks on how to improve your Instagram photos, but one really easy way is to use the HDR camera setting. HDR is high dynamic range imaging and takes three exposures of a photo — overexposed, underexposed, and one in the middle at the normal exposure ...more
Carrier-branded Galaxy S8 models come with a ton of bloatware that you usually can't get rid of without rooting. If you dig a little deeper, however, there is a way to debloat your S8, and it's relatively hassle-free. In the past, we've recommended Package Disabler Pro for ge ...more
Ride-hailing services are everywhere nowadays and with new companies developing all the time, it is one of the most convenient ways for people to get around. Companies like Uber make it easy for passengers to call a car to pick them up and drive them to their desired location. ...more
Despite what you may have heard, sleep is NOT for the weak. It's essential, not to mention it makes us feel a hell of a lot better in general. But for some, getting to sleep is easier said than done. In fact, about 50 million to 70 million people in the US have a sleep or wake ...more
People love sex. They don't love talking about the possible repercussions of sex. And with dating apps such as Tinder, Grindr, and Bumble paving new ways for strangers to talk and have casual hookups, people need to be able to more comfortably have a conversation about sexual ...more
Uber's struggles are expected help Lyft get ahead in driverless development as it confirms its third partnership with autonomous tech company nuTonomy today. Based in Singapore and Boston, nuTonomy is the second Asian-based company Lyft has partnered with. Previously, Lyft ha ...more
Running commands on Linux seems so complicated for the layman that it may as well be a foreign language. But for the die-hard terminal users, or for those who are just curious about the Linux experience, there's a new Android launcher that gives your home screen a command line ...more
Fans of Titanfall now have a great alternative to play on their iPhones whenever they're out and about. Titanfall: Assault has arrived as a soft launch for iOS devices. A hybrid between card-based and real-time strategy genres, the game will pit you against other players with ...more
This week in Market Reality, we see two companies capitalizing on technologies that contribute to augmented reality platforms. In addition, industry mainstays Vuzix and DAQRI have business news of their own to report. Fastdata.io Raises $1.5 Million A group of investors head ...more
The keynote at this week's Vision Summit 2017, a two-day event put together by the Unity team in beautiful Hollywood, California, revealed a few new features coming to the Unity platform. They also previewed some of the beta features that are currently available for those less ...more
Who pays for live TV anymore? Better question, who watches live TV anymore? With a ton of streaming services available, there's no room in our lives for things like schedules, commercials, or going weeks between episodes. (What is this, 2010?) But streaming services think peo ...more
The world of mobile gaming is flush with MMORPGs that entice players with console-quality graphics and gameplay, intense co-op dungeons similar to World of Warcraft, and epic loot that'll give you a leg up over your competition. While there are games like Order & Chaos that ne ...more
Preorders for the LG G6 have all been fulfilled, and the phone has been up for grabs at local cell phone providers for three weeks now. However, not every LG G6 was created and released equally. The T-Mobile variant of the LG G6 features an unlockable bootloader, while most ot ...more
Microsoft Build 2017, the first of Microsoft's big developer conferences for the year, is just a few weeks away. This very popular conference, which has been going on since 2011, is known to sell out fast. In 2015, it sold out in under an hour, and in 2016, in less than 5 minu ...more
Final Fantasy XV, the latest release in the long-running Final Fantasy franchise, has been a massive success, shipping around 6 million copies worldwide in less than two months. Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire is a mobile game based off this popular console iteration, and has s ...more
Fans of rhythm tap games and traditional one-on-one fighters finally have something to bring them closer together. DuelBeats, a fighting game that lets you perform moves by tapping to the beat of a song, has been released as a soft launch for both iOS and Android in New Zealan ...more
I was a slap-happy T-Mobile customer before, but now, after hearing that the company sent out a box of rolling papers to certain media sites with memes bad mouthing #VerHIGHzon ... I love you even more, John Legere! Yesterday, the Washington Post was all about pointing out th ...more
Rooting a phone lets us install custom operating systems, known as ROMs, which replace the device's preinstalled OS. Most custom ROMs are based on code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which gives them a look and feel similar to Google's version of stock Android. B ...more
Jam City's Panda Pop was a great success that helped millions of users waste vast amounts of precious time with its bubble-popping panda cuddliness. Not wanting to mess with success, Jam City has now simply re-skinned the game to feature all the beloved characters from Charles ...more
Tom Clancy games, like Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon: Wildlands, are famous for their realistic and immersive gameplay that focuses on covert, low-intensity warfare. Ubisoft now appears to be testing the overcrowded waters of mobile gaming with the release of ShadowBreak, and ha ...more
As it turns out, your Android apps are pairing together to share your data without asking for your permission first. Researchers from Virginia Tech developed a tool called DIALDroid to monitor exchanges of data between Android apps over the last three years, and what they've f ...more
We've all been hit by inopportune screen rotations at some point or another. Having the display orientation suddenly go from portrait to landscape when reading an interesting article in bed is one of the biggest irritations that come with using a smartphone (at least, for me). ...more
There have been mumps outbreaks in three different US colleges so far this year as instances of the illness are on the rise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Three students at Illinois State University and about 20 at Louisiana State Universi ...more
There has been an outbreak of syphilis in Oklahoma County with 75 confirmed cases connected by a social network driven by drug use and sex. The Oklahoma City-County Health Department (OCCHD) and the Oklahoma State Department of Health confirmed the epidemic, which infected pe ...more
There's now more reasons to make sick workers stay home—a new game theory study suggests adequate hand washing and other illness-aversion tactics aren't as useful as we thought to keep you from getting infected when a virus or bacteria is circulating. According to a study pub ...more
DayZ is a first-person shooter game for Windows that places you in a vast post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies and other players that are all out to get you. Famous for its realism, DayZ has garnered a cult following and influenced many subsequent games in the genre. But ...more
NetGuard is a well-established app known for its highly secure firewall, which blocks unwanted web activity from individual apps that can take up both precious bandwidth and battery life. Not quite as well known, however, is the fact there's a second official version of NetGua ...more
The iPhone has a handy feature called AssistiveTouch that lets you quickly adjust volume, lock your screen, rotate your display, and even navigate through the phone's interface using a virtual home button. In a way, it's a lot like the on-screen navigation bar that you'll find ...more
The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighter ...more