Google Camera

So you're thinking about downloading the Galaxy S8 Oreo beta, but you're not sure if it's stable enough to use. It is a beta, of course, so you might want to wait for others to give it a try. Over the past ten days I've used the Galaxy S8+ running Android Oreo as my daily driv ...more

Two companies behind a number of augmented reality devices have joined forces to develop a 3D depth-sensing camera system that will facilitate computer vision capabilities for augmented/virtual reality experiences and more. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., whose processors power ...more

Update 6/16: This number is now way higher. In just the first two days of this sale, over 350,000 people have pre-registered for the phone. The OnePlus 5 is being majorly hyped, and people — including myself — are itching to get their hands on it. Although it's official June ...more

Computer vision technology maker uSens, Inc. has unveiled uSens Fingo, a camera module that enables tracking of hand and head movements for PC-based, mobile augmented, and virtual reality platforms. With an embedded dual-lens camera, uSens Fingo attains accurate inside-out 6D ...more

The Galaxy S8's Bixby Vision feature isn't working up to its full potential for Verizon customers, according to a recent CNET report. Bixby Vision was supposed to let you use the phone's camera to recognize bar codes and shop for products via Amazon, but for Verizon customers ...more

As with any new smartphone (but especially with Apple), the iPhone 8 is generating rumor after rumor. This newest rumor, however, rocks the boat a bit, as BGR reports that the iPhone 8 may release at Apple's standard time in the fall, but the 3D camera will be pushed to the 8s ...more

Images of the newest Moto X flagship phones surfaced over the weekend, and it looks like Motorola has a cool new feature in store for the handsets, which are tentatively titled Vertex and Vector Thin. There are 12 dots near the bottom on the backs of each phone in the photos, ...more

If you have a specific app you want to lock so that others can't access it, the most secure way of doing so is with biometrics. While there are options to lock apps with either a PIN or pattern, these can easily be figured out with a simple glance over your shoulder. It's much ...more

We have all seen videos of people walking off of platforms and into street signs because they were too distracted by their phones to pay attention. This has become such a problem that cities have even considered fining pedestrians for texting and walking. Even though I find t ...more

The Moto X introduced tons of cool features that have slowly been ported over to other phones, like Peek notifications and always listening "OK, Google" detection. Another such feature allows you to twist your wrist to bring up the camera app from any screen—even with the disp ...more

In one of Apple's newer ads, the company claims that "more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera." If this is in fact true, then it might also be appropriate to say that more photos are accidentally deleted on iPhones than any other camera. Don't Miss: How to ...more

Google's newest Android system update should be arriving on Tuesday, November 13th, with the release of the Google Nexus 4 smartphone, and Nexus 7 and 10 tablets. All will come preloaded with the new Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS, but what about the rest of you (especially those w ...more

It feels like every few months, some new feature is discovered in the Pixel's Camera app. By taking advantage of machine learning and the high-quality camera, Google continues to add hidden functions that improve your life even if they're a little niche. The Pixel's Camera ap ...more

The spirit of Google's Tango augmented reality platform lives on at Vivo, a China-based company that has developed its own 3D sensor for mobile devices. Presented during this week's Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, the smartphone maker revealed its new the time-of-flight (T ...more

Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer, is underway, and Google has rolled out several tools to help Muslims commemorate the event, including an augmented reality app. Last year, Google launched Qibla Finder, an augmented reality web app that points users in th ...more

Here it is folks, after weeks of constant leaks and speculation surrounding the highly anticipated OnePlus 5, the company has decided to release a high-res image of the new phone on the official OnePlus Google+ page. The picture appears two days after the company officially a ...more

Any stoked Coachella-goers out there? Well, get even more excited, because the celebrated music festival has partnered with virtual reality company vantage.tv and software platform Camera IQ this year to take the Coachella VR/AR app to augmented reality paradise. If you were ...more

There are so many apps out there that it can be hard to decide which ones you should keep on your phone, especially if you're working with limited storage capacity. Sure, you can install and uninstall apps depending on when you need them, but that can be a little tedious. Tha ...more

Seemingly out of nowhere, something strange started happening on my Nexus 7. Every time I restarted my device, the camera application on the far right of my dock kept disappearing on me. What the hell is going on?! I placed the app icon back again and again, only to have it k ...more

All kinds of people pretend to be someone they're not on the internet, including scammers, people attempting to wind others up, hackers and web predators. Almost all of these people will leave bases uncovered and they're all easy to expose when you understand how to. Here are ...more

Just days after Google released the official Android 11 update, Samsung already had a pre-beta build of One UI 3.0 available for developers to test their apps on. So this year's main OS upgrade is likely hitting Galaxy phones even earlier than we thought. Some features in the ...more

All of the the tech industry giants, including Apple, Facebook, and Google, are working on new smartglasses and/or AR headsets, but this week, Google took a major step forward with gesture recognition technology that could make its way into AR wearables, posing a threat to Lea ...more

Facebook added a new feature that lets you post 3D versions of your portrait mode photos for all your family and friends to see on their smartphones, computers, and virtual reality goggles. These new 3D photos add a whole new dimension to your images with movement and more dep ...more

TouchWiz might not be the Android skin of choice for hardcore aficionados, but the Galaxy's OS still has a ton of great features up its sleeve that help provide one of the most enjoyable smartphone experiences out there. Many of these are relatively hidden and overlooked featu ...more

In 2017, major breakthroughs in smartphone-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) opened up new doorways for developers and users of both Apple and Android phones. Unfortunately for Android users, the solution that Google is previewing, ARCore, currently only works ...more

So, you want to install the Oreo beta on your Galaxy Note 8 but you're not sure if it's stable enough. It is a beta, of course, so waiting until others have tried it out sounds safer. Well, over the past five days, I've used the T-Mobile version as my daily driver and there ar ...more

If you ever imagined turning the surface of your desk into one large augmented computer, well the future might not be far off, my friends. Lampix, the company that transforms any surface into a smart surface, is currently working on a portable and quite fashionable lamp to pro ...more

Starting with the Priv, BlackBerry's become an Android manufacturer. This move gives BlackBerry's phones access to Google's sizable app store, but it also presents several hurdles to keeping the security brand they've built intact. For example, Android encryption still lags b ...more

Chance are, you or someone you know is that person in the gym: flexing in front of a mirror, posing for the perfect photos to show off your workout results. But finding the right picture is hard. The thing is, it doesn't need to be. A good gym selfie or workout video doesn't ...more

The newly-announced Moto G7 Play offers some of the same upgrades as its sibling, the Moto G7, but at a much lower price. The upgrades are pretty significant when compared to last year's Moto G6 Play, taking this phone from the "only if you're on a strict budget" category into ...more

LG is really coming strong at the flagship smartphone market in 2018. They have already released three new flagship caliber smartphones this year: the V30S ThinQ, V35 ThinQ, and the G7 ThinQ. But LG isn't done with flagship phones yet — they've just announced the V40 ThinQ. T ...more

Chances are, you just point, shoot, and share photos and videos on your iPhone without a second thought about how your privacy is affected. It's fairly easy to do so since the Camera and Photos apps that Apple provides seem so innocent. But there are a few things you need to k ...more

For most mainstream users, LiDAR sensors for precision depth sensing remain the exclusive domain of Apple iPhones and iPads, but Google is helping Android device makers close the depth gap on the software side via its ARCore toolkit. After introducing new AR features for Sear ...more

After the mobile augmented reality platforms of ARKit and ARCore moved Google's previously groundbreaking Project Tango (the AR platform that gave us the first smartphones with depth sensors) into obsolescence in 2018, we've seen a bit of a resurgence of what was then a niche ...more

Smartphones are more like computers than actual telephones. Unfortunately, thieves, hackers, and other bad actors know this and are always looking to make money off your personal data. Thankfully, your Galaxy S20, S20+, or S20 Ultra has tools to combat these threats — as long ...more

OnePlus has always pushed the boundaries with specs. They give their phones the premium treatment, which, yes, includes the camera nowadays as well. But even though they have become pretty solid in the photography department, it could always be better. One of the tricky aspec ...more

What if, back in 2013, Google Glass had launched not as a Star Trek Borg-like eyepiece, but as a pair of seemingly normal shades, with the augmented reality lens and camera hidden within the frame? Google Glass has been almost permanently tagged with the "glasshole" moniker, ...more

Whether we like it or not, our personal information and smartphones are tied together at the hip. The former needs the latter to deliver a personalized experience that matches our individual needs. This personal data, however, makes your phone a prime target for thieves of all ...more

Since iCloud's introduction in 2011, you get only 5 GB of complimentary cloud storage with your Apple account. With iPhone backups, app data, iCloud Drive files, and even emails (if you have a Mac, Me, or iCloud email address), you'll quickly run out of space to back up photos ...more

People say that money makes the world go 'round. And it's no different in the world of augmented reality. If there are any doubts about the future of the AR industry, it doesn't seem like many venture capitalists or corporate investors share those doubts. According to Digi-Ca ...more

This time last year, we got our first taste of what mobile app developers could do in augmented reality with Apple's ARKit. Most people had never heard of Animojis. Google's AR platform was still Tango. Snapchat introduced its World Lens AR experiences. Most mobile AR experien ...more

They're finally here — Samsung has officially revealed the Galaxy S9 and S9+, which run Android Oreo out of the box. Since we've spent plenty of time with the Oreo beta for the Galaxy S8, we already know about some of the best new software features coming to the Galaxy S9. Lik ...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

So it's 2017 and there are no flying cars and teleportation devices around, but there might be holographic smartphones sometime soon. As cool as that sounds, should we trust a holographic smartphone from a company that has never made smartphones before? RED announced their fi ...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

When you're browsing the internet on a computer, you just need to hit Ctrl F (or Command F) and type something out to find all instances of that word in the webpage. It's a handy feature baked into most browsers (nearly all mobile browsers have a "find" feature, too), but unfo ...more

Past video recording apps we've covered made it easy to turn your Android device into a hidden spy camera, even allowing you to inconspicuously record videos using your volume buttons. While both are viable options that can secretly capture video, today we're going over an add ...more

If Android is all about options, then iOS is all about new features. Every year without fail, Apple announces a cool software component that brings something new to the table, and this year was no different. The headlining feature to go along with the iPhone 6s is called "Liv ...more

Today marked the official unveiling of the HTC One M9 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The newest HTC flagship will be released by the middle of March globally, and come in gold, gunmetal, pink, and silver. And if you were wondering, yes all of the leaks were pretty much ...more

With the Nexus 6, you get a very clean software experience with minimal bloat. While this is generally the main selling point for most Nexus fans, it can be a bit of a detraction for some. Default software and system apps can seem a bit bare-bones at times, and this is most n ...more

For the first time ever, iPhones will be getting live panoramic wallpapers in iOS 7, but it's something Android devices have always embraced. On your Samsung Galaxy S3, you can have anything as your Home or Lock screen background, from a static wallpaper, to a live interactiv ...more

In this jam-packed October, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro has flown under the radar in the US. Due to Huawei's lack of presence in the States, many are unfamiliar with the second largest OEM in the world. Huawei has continuously put out amazing mobile devices, and this year they rele ...more

These days, there are Android apps for every budget—forgive me if that sounds like a car commercial, but that's just the way things are in the age of the smartphone and tablet. You've got apps that require monthly subscriptions, paid apps that will run you a $30 one-time insta ...more

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 ...more

It's (virtual) developer conference season, and this week was Facebook's turn with F8 Refresh. Like Google and Snap, Facebook had some new AR capabilities to show off. And while Google and Snap made big AR hardware reveals, Facebook did not. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg did r ...more

The holidays are here. From the week of Thanksgiving until the end of the year, retailers will be offering massive discounts on your favorite items. So if you're looking for smartphone accessories, this is the time to buy. From Walmart to Best Buy, there are deals everywhere o ...more

QR codes are supposed to make life easier, but having to install potentially shady third-party apps just to scan one is more trouble than it's worth. Thankfully, there's a QR code reader built into all Google Pixels, but you wouldn't know it unless you stumbled across the feat ...more

The mobile augmented reality war for dominance between Apple and its Asia-based rivals is in full effect. On Wednesday, Samsung continued the pattern it established with the Galaxy S10 4G smartphone by adding adding a depth-sensing camera to the new Galaxy Note 10+, which giv ...more

Alongside its official unveiling of the lower-cost Pixel 3a smartphone at Google I/O, Google took the opportunity to extend its early preview of AR walking navigation in Google Maps to all Pixel devices. After introducing the capability at last year's Google I/O Google began ...more

You don't have to be a frequent flyer to know how indispensable navigation apps have become. Many of us rely on these apps for traveling from state to state and getting around in foreign cities, but even more of us count on these apps to beat rush hour traffic and find the qui ...more