If you're a public beta tester, you woke up this morning with your iPhone running iOS 13.4.5. Today, Apple released the second beta for iOS 13.5. No, Apple didn't skip a version — 13.5 public beta 2 is essentially 13.4.5 public beta 2. So why the name change? Apple included th ...more
When it's hard to hear what's being said, subtitles give you clarity where audio falls short. Thanks to Android 10, your Galaxy S20 now lets you enable a live transcription of your phone's internal audio stream, meaning you can get closed captions in virtually any app — even i ...more
For the most part, Google Wifi and Nest Wifi systems take care of themselves. But there are still a few manual features that might come in handy, like being able to check on network activity to see which devices are using the most bandwidth when your connection gets bogged dow ...more
As first reported by Next Reality last year, game developer Preloaded, in partnership with BBC Studios, has finally launched BBC Earth - Micro Kingdoms: Senses. The experience, which allows the user to become immersed in the world of insects and arachnids, is accessed using t ...more
We're thinking more and more about our digital privacy these days. When we first started using smartphones, we'd download apps with reckless abandon, allowing permissions lists as long as novels in order to play free games. Now, we know that apps have access to things like our ...more
Augmented reality's status as a new storytelling medium has already led to the reinvention of filmmaking and journalism. Now, AR is helping non-profits draw attention to their respective causes. Don't Miss: USA Today Deepens Story on Afghanistan War with AR Experience On Mo ...more
The top five apps of the 2010s were all social media apps of some kind, and the fact that's not surprising to you says a lot. We may use them for other reasons here and there, but our phones are social media machines at their cores. The thing is, some make better machines than ...more
One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is how simple it is to sideload apps that aren't on the official app store. Rather than having to sign IPA files or tell your phone you trust a developer every two weeks, you can just enable a setting and be done with it. Jum ...more
After Android 10 added a system-wide dark mode, hordes of app developers rushed to add support for the feature. This even helped users on Android 9 and below since most apps could be manually set to a dark theme now. Emphasis on most — WhatsApp was conspicuously absent, for on ...more
After entering into settlement talks with Epic Games over the gaming giant's trademark challenge, Nreal is now ready to open up the floodgates to potential early adopters in the augmented reality space. On Thursday, the AR smartglasses maker began taking pre-orders for the Nr ...more
Apple seeded public testers the second beta for iOS 13.3 eight days ago. That update mainly added stability patches to iOS as a whole, as did the public releases of iOS 13.2.2 and iOS 13.2.3. Now, following the release of iOS 13.3 developer beta 3 earlier today, Apple seeded t ...more
Another major retailer is putting all its chips in on the relentless rise of selfie culture. Sally Beauty is rolling out kiosks to try-on "some of its best" hair dyes in 500 of its stores throughout the US. The in-store augmented reality-powered kiosks invite you to view your ...more
According to a study done by Kaspersky, 7.6% of Android users root their phones. That may not sound like a lot, but with over 2 billion Android devices out there, the math works out to over 150 million rooted phones — more than the total population of Russia, Mexico, or Japan ...more
Big-box retailer Target has been on a bit of an augmented reality advertising shopping spree via Snapchat lately. The latest example, revealed on Tuesday, comes via a pair of Halloween-themed experiences, available in the camera carousel in Snapchat. Don't Miss: Snapchat Is ...more
If you need to know whether you are really a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor, then it's time to get yourself an augmented reality sorting hat. The sorting hat game went live for Harry Potter fans this week within Wizarding World, a new mobile app and website launched by Harry Pott ...more
Public Wi-Fi networks that have a captive portal sign-in screen can sometimes be broken on Android. This seems to happen randomly and on some devices more than others. You'll get the "Sign into Wi-Fi network" notification, but it just doesn't work. If that's happening to you, ...more
OneDrive has some really cool features, like being able to lock your files with a fingerprint. If you want to be on the forefront of these new features, you can sign up to the OneDrive beta testing program to get new feature before anyone else. Doing this does put you at the ...more
The growing stock of augmented reality apps filling up the Magic Leap store seems to be picking up pace in recent months. On Tuesday, the latest addition to the Magic Leap World store came in the form of Dinosaur Kit, an app that offers an immersive education path for those b ...more
Increasingly, cutting-edge platforms like blockchain technology and augmented reality are overlapping, forging new digital frontiers that promise to change the way we interact with the virtual and the real world. The latest effort in this area features blockchain startup WAX, ...more
Already among the first game makers to add augmented reality content to an existing game upon the launch of ARKit, Zynga is breaking new ground with mobile AR once again. On Wednesday, the game maker's Custom Street Racer 2 (CSR2) racing game, a free download for iOS and Andr ...more
Cosmetics augmented reality specialist ModiFace appears to be really benefiting from the brand power of L'Oréal, which acquired the company last year. Now, after Facebook added ModiFace to its AR platform earlier this year, online retail behemoth Amazon is following suit and ...more
Apple released the third public beta for iOS 12.4 on the afternoon of May 28. The update arrives roughly three hours after Apple published 12.4's third developer beta, and eight days after 12.4 public beta 2. At this time, it seems beta 3 is a minor update for 12.4, which itse ...more
With the iOS 13 beta right around the corner, Apple is churning out the betas for iOS 12.4 with developer beta 3 out today, May 28. It's the third beta in just 14 days and just eight days after developer beta 2 and public beta 2. The third beta may only house improvements over ...more
Public beta testers, you're in luck. Apple just released the second iOS 12.4 public beta today, May 20. The update comes five days after the release of the first developer beta for iOS 12.4 and seven days after the release of iOS 12.3. Public beta 2 and dev beta 2 were both re ...more
Apple just released the second iOS 12.4 developer beta today, May 20, five days after the release of the first developer beta for iOS 12.4 and one week after the public release of iOS 12.3. In general, the iOS 12.4 update will support Apple Card, Apple's upcoming credit card d ...more
As the industry has shifted toward OLED (including Google's own Pixel lineup), the outcry for dark mode has been louder than ever. Google heard the cries and has been working toward a real system-wide dark mode. To lay the groundwork, they are adding the feature to all their a ...more
Many native New Yorkers, like myself, get a chance to visit the famed Statue of Liberty during school trips when they're a child in grade school. And if you're not lucky enough to be born in the city, you have to make a special trip to the monument as a tourist. Alas, many ca ...more
The Avengers aren't the only shiny new toys available to Pixel handset owners, as the animated stars of the upcoming Pokémon Detective Pikachu movie have arrived in the Google Playground app. Just weeks after bringing the headlining characters of the box office-owning Avenger ...more
Smartglasses maker Vuzix made a big splash at CES 2018 with the inclusion of Amazon's Alexa voice assistant among the AR superpowers of its consumer-centric Blade smartglasses. Now, it's time to tell Alexa to make room, as Vuzix is bringing Google Assistant support to Blade. ...more
Samsung's popular Good Lock app has been updated to work on One UI and now lets you take full advantage of its awesome add-ons to customize your S10 in a few simple taps. One add-on in particular lets you get rid of mostly redundant indicators like the NFC "N" for a cleaner st ...more
Many apps, including Facebook, Twitter, and Facebook, do not let you download videos, even if they are living on your own account. Saving these videos usually requires a third-party app or screen recorder, which is inconvenient and can result in loss of quality. However, TikTo ...more
With the increasing popularity of OLED displays, companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung have all shifted away from traditional LCDs for their flagship devices. An OLED screen provides deeper blacks and is better for battery life since each pixel can be controlled individual ...more
Apple released the iOS 12.1.3 developer beta on Monday, Jan. 7, and the iOS 12.1.3 public beta followed shortly behind. Apple has been pretty on point with its public beta releases for iPhone, always releasing the same day as the dev version unless it's the very start of a bet ...more
According to App Annie, the average person's phone contains 60–90 apps. Such a large amount can easily crowd an app drawer, especially since the same source states that only about 30 are used in a month. Having a way to organize apps in the app drawer can help you avoid wastin ...more
French cosmetics giant L'Oréal isn't wasting any time putting its new subsidiary, ModiFace, to work. On Thursday, the company launched a new tool that enables a photo-realistic augmented reality simulation of nail polish shades and textures to be accurately displayed on a user ...more
Any real Star Wars fan knows that fear is a path to the dark side, as it leads to anger, and then suffering. For players of Star Wars Jedi Challenges, though, access to the antagonistic side of the Force is now available through their mobile apps. The new Dark Side expansion, ...more
In the latest example of non-tech companies taking on augmented reality marketing, online travel site Travelocity has added an AR version of its Roaming Gnome mascot to its mobile app. Available for iOS and Android, the feature, enabled by ARKit and ARCore, respectively, give ...more
After the limited initial release of the massively popular game on the Android platform, many users have been stuck waiting to play Fortnite. That's because, initially, Epic Games only released the game to Samsung Galaxy devices, and asked non-Samsung users to join an invite l ...more
For the majority of phones, Android's volume rocker is wrong. A large vocal part of the Android community wishes the volume buttons' default control was the media volume, not the ringer. Although the Galaxy Note 9 is in the "wrong" camp, Samsung has included multiple ways to c ...more
One option you won't find buried in the Galaxy Note 9's Settings is the ability to return the navigation bar to black. Samsung changed the default color to white with the Note 8, removing any ability to bring the black color back. But thanks to a neat app, Note 9 users can do ...more
Not content to let NFL's official pizza sponsor corner the market for feeding football fans, 7-Eleven has taken a page out of Pizza Hut's playbook with a promotional augmented reality game. Available now through Dec. 31 in the 7-Eleven mobile app for iOS and Android, users ca ...more
After parting ways with Papa John's, the National Football League has drafted Pizza Hut as its official pizza purveyor, and the company has hit the field with an augmented reality game to entertain hungry football fans. After scanning specially marked pizza boxes using the Be ...more
The famous Flappy Bird (technically Flappy Droid) game is still around in Android 9.0 Pie. First introduced in 5.0 Lollipop, the game was originally the version number easter egg for the new Android update. But after Android Marshmallow, Google began to hide it from its usual ...more
Mozilla has created yet another browser for Android. Similar to Firefox Focus, Firefox Rocket was designed to address specific problems: limited internal storage and low data caps. However, in the process of solving these problems, they created one of the fastest browsers on t ...more
On Tuesday, Unity released the latest version of its 3D engine, which brings improvements to the Scriptable Render Pipeline that the company introduced earlier this year. Introduced in Unity 2018.1 as a preview feature, the Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) enables developers ...more
Samsung reintroduced its well regarded Good Lock app, so now you can tweak parts of your Galaxy's interface without the need for root or other labor-intensive mods. Thanks to an awesome add-on, you can even tidy up you phone's status bar — so if you've always wanted to get rid ...more
Although some look to golf for some quick off-the-grid time, the scenic hills and blue skies of your local putting green are not immune from the ever-expanding reach of augmented reality. A new update to the Golfshot mobile app brings new AR features to iPhones and iPads desig ...more
While mobile gaming, in the 10 years since the App Store launched, has matured to console-level quality, premium augmented reality games built with ARKit (or ARCore) have been scarce. Immersive VR is looking to do its part reduce that deficit with the launch of The Ancients A ...more
If two hands are better than one, then two hand-tracking SDKs must be better than one as well. After uSens announced its Hand Tracking SDK at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Thursday, ManoMotion unveiled the latest version of its own SDK. Both technologies give app ...more
Kitten Planet, a spin-off company that grew up in Samsung's C-Lab incubator, has developed a connected toothbrush that teaches and motivates children to brush their teeth better via augmented reality while tracking their performance. Called Brush Monster, the $49 toothbrush c ...more
The crime procedural show is the perhaps the most direct path to the average TV viewer's heart. Could the same hold true for augmented reality games? Exhibit A: Forensic Detective: Inside the Crime Scene, a new, iOS-only mobile game for iPhones and iPads, that will be availab ...more
Part of the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges experience that was once exclusive to users of Lenovo's Mirage AR headset is now available to anyone with an ARKit-compatible iOS device. The updated version of the Jedi Challenges app now lets iPhone and iPad users running iOS 11 to pla ...more
Department store chain Zara is temporarily ditching its mannequins and dressing up its stores with augmented reality experiences featuring virtual versions of real fashion models. Rolling out to 120 of its flagship stores worldwide, customers inside and outside the stores can ...more
If you've unlocked your iPhone lately and noticed some apps aren't fully installed anymore, you're not alone. After updating my device recently to a newer version of iOS 11, I didn't immediately understand what caused a few of my games to uninstall themselves. It turns out, th ...more
Ever since JamCity dropped the first trailer for Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, fans have been eager to get their hands on the game. What Harry Potter fanatic wouldn't want to live out their own Hogwarts adventure on their iPhone or Android device? Well, we now know when the ...more
Google's AI investment arm, Gradient Ventures, has joined a $10.5 million round of funding for Ubiquity6 and its platform for shared augmented reality experiences, just weeks after Google's GV fund backed a competing AR cloud platform. The round was led by Index Ventures, wit ...more
Sketchfab, one of the leading 3D model aggregators, continues to defend its turf from encroachment by Google. This time, the company has deployed a new API that gives developers even easier access to Sketchfab's extensive library. With Sketchfab's download API, augmented and ...more
To help keep potential drama at bay, WhatsApp lets you delete questionable messages before the other person even sees them. If you're on the receiving end and you're curious about the deleted text, however, there's an Android app that lets you view erased messages. WhatsApp n ...more
Samsung's Galaxy S9 is a powerhouse, driven by the Snapdragon 845. Still, this SoC lags behind the A11 Bionic chip that's inside the iPhone X — meaning you'll need a few tricks in order to squeeze out some extra performance from your phone. Fortunately, there's an app made by ...more
If you're a golf fan who can't attend the Arnold Palmer Invitational in person, you can still follow the next stop on the apparent Tiger Woods comeback tour in augmented reality with an iPhone or iPad. The PGA Tour AR, available now on the App Store for ARKit-compatible devic ...more