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Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 9, may not be the huge overhaul that iOS 8 was, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of new features. In fact, there are a ton of subtle changes that you may not notice right away. Here's a rundown of all the coolest new feature ...more

Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) feature ...more

There's no doubt iOS 13 has dominated the talk around the Apple community this month. Since the announcement and release of the first developer beta, we iPhone users have had a treasure trove of new features and changes to explore and discuss. Now the fun continues with iOS 13 ...more

Christmas came early for Apple, as the company was awarded more than 40 patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, including one covering a system for compositing an augmented reality construct based on image recognition. The patent (US 9,824,495) covers a syst ...more

After joining Google and Huawei in underwriting the UW Reality Lab at the University of Washington in January, it appears Facebook is already seeing a return on its donation. According to results published earlier this month through Cornell University's arXiv service in a pap ...more

Sharing pictures from Google Photos by sending a link saves time because you don't have to download the image from Google, then reupload it somewhere else. But anyone who has your link can access your pictures, and baked into every file is metadata that you may not want prying ...more

Google Earth is the cheapest way to travel the world, i.e., virtually. Their super satellites give us unbelievable access to images from pretty much any place around the globe, turning us all into would-be world explorers. Plus, these images make for stunning wallpapers. If y ...more

Apple's new iOS 16 software update is finally here, and there are over 350 new features and changes for you to enjoy on your iPhone. There are major lock screen and home screen improvements, a pleasant surprise for the Contacts app, and tons of new upgrades to Safari, Mail, Me ...more

Just like Apple and Google, Facebook has been working to develop computer vision shortcuts designed to give mobile apps augmented reality superpowers. And while Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore use computer vision to guess the position of horizontal and vertical surfaces, Fa ...more

Apple released the third beta of iOS 12 for developers on Tuesday, July 3. The update comes exactly two weeks after the release of the second developer beta, which introduced a variety of fixes as well as new issues, and just one week after the release of the public beta. Publ ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In many cases when a computer, phone, or mobile device is seized for evidence, the system will have graphic images that might be used as evidence. Obviously, in some cases these graphic images may be the evidence such as in child pornograph ...more

There's a whole world of wallpapers out there. Apple always includes a selection of stock wallpapers, some unique to every iPhone model you have. Of course, sometimes, stock wallpapers don't cut it. Sometimes, you want to add your own style to your home screen and lock screen. ...more

Last week at Mobile World Congress 2019, Google put an augmented reality twist on its annual Android Partner Walk via its ARCore toolkit. For the uninitiated, the Android Partner Walk is a scavenger hunt for collector's pins hidden through the MWC's exhibition halls. The game ...more

We all got a little jealous of the iPhone 7 Plus's dual-lens camera during the Apple Keynote in September. It's okay, you can admit it. But just because your Android doesn't have two lenses doesn't mean you can't recreate the fun bokeh effect of the iPhone's now wildly popular ...more

Google's new camera app has a highly innovative and unique feature dubbed Lens Blur, and the most interesting thing about it is not necessarily what it does, so much as how it does it. You take a picture, then slide your phone in an upward motion, and the app creates 2 new pi ...more

Apple just released its biggest update to iOS 17 yet, and there are 60 exciting new changes for your iPhone. With iOS 17.2, you get a brand new app, more Apple Music enhancements, upgrades in Messages, and a new security feature that was announced last year, as well as changes ...more

Every photo you take is brimming with metadata such as iPhone model, date and time, shooting modes, focal length, shutter speed, flash use, and geolocation information. Share these pictures with friends, family, or acquaintances via texts, emails, or another direct share metho ...more

Hello, budding augmented reality developers! My name is Ambuj, and I'll be introducing all of you Next Reality readers to the world ARKit, as I'm developing an ARKit 101 series on using ARKit to create augmented reality apps for iPad and iPhone. My background is in software en ...more

When Apple unboxes the next major update to its mobile operating system this spring, iPhones and iPads will gain some significant new features for augmented reality experiences: verticality. In a preview of iOS 11.3 released on Wednesday, Apple unveiled details for iterative ...more

Research group OpenAI, a research institute co-founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, says it is possible to trick driverless cars' neural networks into mistaking images for something else. In a blog post published on OpenAI's website, Anish Athalye, an undergraduate studying comput ...more

In 2018, Niantic unveiled its in-development augmented reality cloud platform for smartphones, the Niantic Real World Platform. A demo showed Pikachu and Eevee cavorting in a courtyard, darting in front of and behind potted plants and people's legs as they walked through the s ...more

Apple Maps has had a rocky history since its introduction, which included limited features and questionable data, earning it a reputation as a lesser alternative to Google Maps. Since then, Apple has worked to close the gap, and in iOS 13, they're introducing Collections, whic ...more

Location services provider Mapbox is expanding the reach of its augmented reality development capabilities to include apps for automobiles as well as smartphone navigation. On Thursday, Mapbox announced a trio of new features for its Vision SDK, which will soon be available t ...more

Occipital's initial augmented reality module, the Structure Sensor, gave iPhones and iPads the depth-sensing abilities of the HoloLens. Now, the company's latest product promises to do the same for Android devices, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality headsets and ...more

The addition of a new research mode for Microsoft HoloLens will enable researchers and developers to tap into a wider range of data collected by the device's sensors. Available in the Windows 10 RS4 update for HoloLens, application code in Research Mode can access computer vi ...more

With developers chomping at the bit to play with ARKit 2.0, Unity has updated its ARKit plugin to enable access to the new augmented reality superpowers of the toolkit. The updated plugin is available now for developers via Bitbucket. "Apple announced exciting news for AR de ...more

This year's big iPhone update, iOS 12, aims to solve many of the issues that arose during iOS 11's controversial, buggy tenure. With that in mind, it may be tempting to jump on board the new software immediately and leave iOS 11 in the dust for good. Here are some reasons why ...more

Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar's mission is to construct a computer vision map the world, with visual recognition of thousands of notable buildings, bridges, castles, holy places. A major step toward that goal has been taken by the company this month with the annou ...more

Augmented reality is beginning to leak out into the mainstream world. This is thanks, in part, to ARKit and ARCore. These releases turned the current smartphones owned by millions of Apple and Android users into AR-capable machines. And while there are definitely some awesome ...more

Modern warfare takes on a more literal translation with the advent of new augmented reality displays revealed recently by the US Army to improve soldiers' situational awareness on the battlefield. A new helmet-mounted displays, named Tactical Augmented Reality (TAR), integrat ...more

Today in Santa Clara, California, at the Augmented World Expo, Scope AR revealed a major new update that will add markerless tracking for their remote assistance application, Remote AR, on standard devices. This update, powered by real-time image tracking solution Wikitude, p ...more

Safari has some cool new features in iOS 8, but the app that seems to have gotten the biggest update so far is Messages. A lot of the new Messages features were discussed during Apple's developers conference, but we found many others and picked out our favorite hidden ones bel ...more

Apple's iOS 13 has been quite the disrupter. The initial update featured over 200 new features and changes, while its successor, iOS 13.1, brought another 22 to the mix. With the company's latest update, iOS 13.2, you'll see an extra 22 amendments on your iPhone, including new ...more

Metadata contained in images and other files can give away a lot more information than the average user might think. By tricking a target into sending a photo containing GPS coordinates and additional information, a hacker can learn where a mark lives or works simply by extrac ...more

Dating websites allow you to see a person in a very intimate context, framing their successes and accomplishments in life to an important audience. The information contained in these profiles often can't be found elsewhere, offering a unique look into the personal life of the ...more

There's a lot of personal information residing on your phone, possibly even more than on your computer, so it's only a matter of time before someone tries to access it. The perp can be anything from a paranoid significant other to a malicious identity thief. Personally, I'm m ...more

|Choose Your View: Quick Bullet Points | Detailed Descriptions Android's newest major update is a special one — it's the tenth full version of the world's most commonly used operating system. The latest release, dubbed simply Android 10 (codename Android Q), was first showcas ...more

When you take a photo of something interesting, like a landmark, piece of art, animal, or plant, there's a good chance you'll also want to know more about that something than just what you see in the frame. When this happens, you can take advantage of Apple's content recogniti ...more

Why do you need augmented reality? Because enterprise, they say. And while that's certainly true for several disciplines, there's still that mainstream use case hanging out there waiting for users to discover beyond the realm of enterprise and gaming. After much thought — and ...more

After announcing at Google I/O 2019 that augmented reality content would come to Search, Google revealed how it would make that happen with the latest round of updates to ARCore. Scene Viewer, the company's web-based AR format, enables developers to embed gITF 3D models into ...more

For photographers, the "plus" in the iPhone Plus models used to mean optical image stabilization, but now that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus both have OIS on board, that "plus" has moved onto something else—the dual-lens camera. Actually, the new dual-lens setup on the iPhone ...more

Thanks to Snapchat, we're all familiar with face swapping and augmentation thanks to some clever, fun technology. But that's just the beginning, because this kind of augmented reality can do so much more. We spoke to Peter Busch, VP of Business Development at Faceware Technol ...more

As the demand for realistic volumetric video for AR experiences begins to grow (along with the available facilities and services for capturing it), researchers at Google have figured out how to improve upon the format. The team has devised a system, called "The Relightables," ...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

Business cards are a great way to keep tabs on the contacts we network with. So why shouldn't our smartphones make them even more useful? Enter Google Lens, which will help you save, search, and expand on the contact information found on all of the business cards you've collec ...more

Welcome back, my hacker noviates! In a recent post, I introduced you to Shodan, the world's most dangerous search engine. Shodan crawls the globe from IP to IP address, attempting to pull the banners of each web-enabled device and server it finds. These banners are what the ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...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

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

With iOS 12, your iPhone's Messages app has more features than ever to enhance iMessage and FaceTime. Included in these changes are the new camera effects, which allow users to add fun and unique customizations to their photos and videos with the in-app camera in Messages. Sti ...more

Face ID is one of the big selling points of the iPhone X, and the reception has been fairly positive so far. It's pretty impressive to watch the iPhone X magically unlock just by looking at it, but it's even more impressive to see how Face ID works its magic. Apple gave us a ...more

Chipmaker Qualcomm introduced the second generation of its Qualcomm Spectra image signal processor (ISP), which has gained capabilities that will enable smartphones to facilitate augmented reality apps. The latest Spectra ISP, which controls the speed at which the camera modu ...more

Apple announced their new iPhones today, and the 7 Plus features two camera lenses on its backside. That could push smartphone photography ahead in a major way. It may also serve as the basis for their foray into virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. HTC Vive Lighthouses. A l ...more

Apple just released the fifth developer beta for iOS 14 today, Tuesday, Aug. 18. This update comes two weeks after Apple released iOS 14 developer beta 4, and 12 days after the release of iOS 14 public beta 4. Apple seeded this new update to developers at 10 a.m. PDT, the sta ...more

Apple's ARKit has built a considerable lead in terms of features over Google's ARCore, but Google's latest update to ARCore adds a capability that makes the platform a bit more competitive with ARKit. On Monday, Google unveiled its new Depth API for ARCore, an algorithm that ...more

The first developer beta for iOS 13 is available to install on iPhone models, but the process for doing so may be a bumpy ride. Apple has not included configuration profiles for the developer beta yet, and many developers are having issues installing iOS 13 even with macOS 10. ...more

In recent weeks we've talked about the growing trend of smartglasses makers moving the brains of their devices to smartphones, and now a veteran of the space has joined that movement. On Wednesday, Epson revealed the Moverio BT-30C, the company's first truly affordable smartg ...more

Now that we've had a chance to jump into the Lumin SDK documentation at Magic Leap's Creator Portal, we now have much more detail about how the device will function and utilize software than any single piece of content released by Magic Leap to date. So now that much of the m ...more

A group of researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University has put together the largest RGB-D video dataset to date with over 1,500 scans of over 700 different locations across the world, for a total of 2.5 million views. This dataset, called ScanNet, has been s ...more

While iOS 11 is ready to take over your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, let's take a step back and check out all of the new features that iOS 10 brought to the public when it was released to everyone in Sept. 2016. Some of the updates from iOS 9 to iOS 10 were huge, as you'll s ...more