Death Road to Canada has finally arrived for Android, and it quickly took over our roundup for the best paid action games. Widely regarded as a top contender for the best video game of 2017, it came as no surprise when it easily surpassed all the other games in our list to gra ...more
Mimesys, whose core focus has always been about creating holographic representations of humans for virtual and augmented reality, has released a video showing off their holographic communication platform in action. This new communication tool uses a combination of virtual real ...more
Many manufacturers add a custom skin on top of their Android builds, but none are more widely praised than HTC's Sense UI. The general consensus among Android users says that HTC's visual tweaks are done in good taste, and the features they add are both functional and warrante ...more
At last month's I/O event, Google demonstrated a set of cool new features that were said to be coming to the Chromecast soon. While we may not be able to set custom backgrounds or cast content without being on the same WiFi network just yet, the biggest feature of them all has ...more
There are over one million apps in the Google Play Store, and many of them are restricted to certain device types, brands, and Android systems. If you're using one of the new, high-end devices like the HTC One M8 or Sasmsung Galaxy S5, pretty much all apps will be available t ...more
Having an open-source platform like Android is great, allowing manufacturers and developers the ability to make their own skins and apps to truly customize the end-user experience. The only downside is that when an update comes to vanilla Android, many of us are left in the co ...more
The "Knock Knock" features on LG's G2 phone have proven popular and useful enough to spawn various apps and mods cloning these abilities for other devices. Porting the "Knock On" feature to our Samsung Galaxy S3 isn't as easily doable, since developers would need to create a m ...more
There used to be a time when I thought that gift cards were whack. And then I realized that I would basically be picking my own presents. And as much as I love my grandma, you really only need so many sweaters. If you are lucky enough to get a Play Store gift card from your " ...more
Just like the HTC One Google Play Edition, the recently released Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition ditches the manufacturer's UI in favor of a pure Google experience, i.e. AOSP, but is also optimized specifically for the device's hardware. One specific optimization for th ...more
If you haven't heard, another big OEM has decided to drop the headphone jack. OnePlus, the hero of the people, has just announced that the OnePlus 6T will not have the popular port. With this decision, audiophiles and others are limited to just three big-name options. Since n ...more
Let's say you're flush with Google Opinion Rewards credits, or you just got a Google Play gift card for your birthday. This is a perfect opportunity to remove ads and unlock new features by upgrading some of your free apps to their paid counterparts, or to finally purchase tha ...more
This year, like every year before it, Black Friday sales are starting earlier than ever. A lot of stores will be opening their doors as early as 5pm on Thanksgiving to get a head start on the madness (and it really is madness). As we've discussed in the past, one of the keys t ...more
Despite numerous reports announcing its stateside arrival, "Final Fantasy Awakening" has yet to show up in the iOS App Store, much to the chagrin of millions of fans in the U.S. Unfortunately, the game seems to be stuck in soft-launch limbo, with no word as to when it'll land ...more
We continue to field stories underscoring the strong trends of Investment in augmented reality in various sectors. This week, one company strengthens their offerings to the enterprise sector, while two other companies capitalize on the promise presented by augmented reality to ...more
Nintendo's first ever game for Android has finally touched down (unless you actually count the abomination that is Miitomo). Fire Emblem Heroes, a classic turn-based RPG optimized for mobile gaming, has come out for Android and iOS in Australia, Europe, and Japan, and is due o ...more
The Google Chrome browser for Android is packed with many great features, but it definitely has a bad rep for being slow and laggy on low-end or midrange devices. Without a top-notch processor, you'll likely notice some stutter with choppy scrolling, and pages can take too lon ...more
New Android versions have always been released on a fairly regular schedule—in late Fall, Google debuts a new Nexus device, while simultaneously publishing the next iteration of the world's leading mobile operating system. But things are different this year, as we now have num ...more
Starting with the original HTC One and now present on the new Nexus 6, dual speakers allow for smartphones to pump out true stereo sound. OnePlus, however, kept their speakers on the bottom of the device and use different sound drivers for each to produce great sound quality, ...more
Aside from the newer HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5, the Nexus 5 still has one of the fastest processors on the market today. However, despite its superpowers, some graphically intensive games can still have a bit of lag to them during gameplay. This lag is mostly due to in ...more
Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP) is a custom recovery for Android devices and the one used by most softModders, mainly because it has touch-based actions, as compared to the more time-consuming button-based approach that ClockworkMod (CWM) uses. With TWRP, you can flash new R ...more
Smartphone manufacturers strive to craft the most powerful cameras they can, but are limited to using hardware that will conform to small form factors. In most cases, the cameras end up fairly underwhelming, unless we're talking about the 41-megapixel shooter in the Nokia Lumi ...more
Starting on Android 4.2, a new feature called Quick Settings was integrated into the Notification tray, which allows you to quickly turn on and off certain device features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc. These toggles also provides a shortcut to the feature's more advanced ...more
As excitement looms for Apple's annual parade of pomp and circumstance for its latest lineup of iPhones, some hidden hints in an internal build of iOS 13 has Apple enthusiasts salivating for what Cupertino is testing in the AR wearables realm. While Apple has yet to even conf ...more
Over the past decade, Marvel Studios has been a dominant force at the box office, raking in more than $21 billion dollars. Averaged out over that span of time, the yearly earnings of those movies outweigh the gross domestic product of some countries. And while those films hav ...more
Last week, Twilio showed off how avatar-based chat communications will work on the Magic Leap One, and now a new startup has unveiled yet another way that augmented reality telepresence and remote collaboration can take place on the device. Emerging from stealth on Wednesday, ...more
While many of you were off surfing and lounging on some sandy beach or trying to figure out how to balance work with sky-high summer temperatures, I've been talking to all the companies that make augmented reality what it is today. My best opportunity came during the recent A ...more
No matter what your holiday preference, you're probably aware that Christmas is now just days away. By now, you've already decked your halls with boughs of holly (either physically or virtually), thanks to our last holiday app roundup. With that in mind, let's take a look at ...more
Most of us don't get the opportunity to see election coverage first hand, but with virtual reality, we're not as restricted. AltspaceVR has teamed up with NBC News to let you log in on your computer or VR headset and actually take part in the action—just not physically. Video: ...more
The future of augmented and mixed reality offers many possibilities, mostly because we're still figuring out everything it can do. While Meta is open to exploration, they've spent a lot of time thinking about what the future of this technology will be. We spoke to Ryan Pampli ...more
LG announced their latest high-end device on September 6 and its specs are pretty amazing: The new V20 sports three cameras, two displays, three microphones, four DACs for high-end sound, and it's all powered by a removable battery. Seriously, it's almost to the point where L ...more
When the Galaxy S6 hype-train was building momentum ahead of the phone's release, many reports had Samsung cutting back on its much-maligned TouchWiz skin. In the end, these reports were either highly exaggerated or entirely fabricated, because while not as egregious as previo ...more
Update: The installation process for Xposed Installer is now dead simple—check out our updated guide! Xposed is a framework created by XDA developer rovo89, which allows the end user to customize their stock or custom ROM without having to modify any system applications or fi ...more
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the out ...more
With smartphone cameras and software getting better and better every year, more and more users are getting passionate about photography. So when you're shopping for a gift to get someone, if they have a smartphone, chances are they'll more than appreciate some tools and access ...more
Over the past several weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of test driving Samsung’s next big thing, the Galaxy S4. After putting the GS4 through its paces, I have a clear picture of what this device is capable of. I’ve covered the features of the device before, and now I’ll tell you ...more
The 2021 season of Major League Baseball (MLB) is in full swing, and now that vaccines are widespread in the US, major baseball stadiums are allowing fans back in at full capacity. But for those either without the time to attend or still comfortable observing developments fro ...more
Action games encompass a wide array of categories, ranging from racing games that pit you against players the world over for track domination, to endless runners that push you to set ever higher scores, and RPGs that let you embark on adventures in fantasy worlds. With such a ...more
These days, it seems new phones get announced every other week. We've grown accustomed to glossing over the specs, looking at some press renders, then moving on to check out the next phone. If you had done this in September 2008, you might have overlooked what would become one ...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
Nintendo set the internet ablaze Wednesday night with two big announcements. First, Nintendo revealed that the Switch's paid online service will begin in September (boo), but it was the other report that really got fans excited — Mario Kart is coming to your iPhone. The news ...more
With the recent launch of the LG V30 and the Pixel 2 XL, LG has reintroduced the world to POLED. This display tech was showcased at CES 2015 and billed as a rival to Samsung's AMOLED displays, then promptly disappeared from the market for two years. But now that two of the big ...more
There is an Indian story called the Legend of Paal Paysam, and while it doesn't seem like it at first, it has a lot to say about what motivated Paul Travers in the augmented reality space. The story is about a king that loved chess and the sage that he challenged. To motivate ...more
One thing that I got more and more excited about as we got closer and closer to the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference was finally learning about the new Acer Windows Mixed Reality head-mounted displays (HMD). Brandon Bray, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, ...more
It's that time of year again. The world's largest electronics companies are sending representatives to the annual Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, and for gadget lovers like us, that means we'll get our first look at some of this year's biggest upcoming flagship smart ...more
Are we about to witness the future of Android OS? Of Google? Of the entire smartphone ecosystem?! Google has just turned 18 today (right?), Android just had its 8th birthday, and the rumor mill is firing on all cylinders in the lead-up to the October 4 launch event where they ...more
When Apple recently unveiled iOS 8, many of the newly-added features in their mobile OS seemed eerily familiar to Android users. This is probably because the vast majority of these new features have been available in Android for quite some time. If imitation truly is the sinc ...more
Facebook just released its new "home on Android" last Friday, appropriately called Facebook Home. Taking a cue from Amazon's Kindle, Home serves as an "operating system" that runs over Android. While the HTC First will be the first smartphone to ship with Home out of the box, ...more
We've already shown you our favorite new action games that have come out this year, but now it's time to share our all-time top ten list. These games are available for both Android and iPhone, they don't have intrusive ads or freemium schemes, and most importantly, they're all ...more
The rise and fall of Meta, the Silicon Valley-based augmented reality startup that looked to challenge the likes of Microsoft's HoloLens, and others, took just six years. Now, as the story of the company draws to a close, we finally have some deeper insight into what exactly ...more
Thanks to ever more powerful smartphones — the iPhone X with its advanced A11 processor and the Galaxy Note 8 powered by Snapdragon's 835 come to mind — the mobile industry is fast closing in on consoles and PCs with regards to gaming. Game developers have been aware of this f ...more
Puzzle games are a great way to kill time and exercise your brain in one fell swoop. They challenge you to think strategically and plan ahead, whether that's to create killer chain combinations for maximum points, or to plain old keep from getting killed. But with so many puz ...more
Quanergy CEO and founder Louay Eldada is, by any standard of measure, a pioneer in the development of LiDARs for driverless vehicles. Eldada's involvement with designing and engineering optical sensors dates back to his research work on LiDAR (light detection and ranging sens ...more
Whether you're riding the subway on your way home from work, or stuck in the backseat of the car on a long road trip, there are times when you need to entertain yourself without a mobile data connection. A good mobile game would pass the time perfectly, but not every game work ...more
Just the fact that you own an Android device means you're privy to an entire world of third-party development. Many of the mods you'll see here on Gadget Hacks can be performed fresh out of the box, but with root and Xposed, the list grows longer. But to truly be able to take ...more
A modern iPhone is capable of running sophisticated, exquisitely-rendered games that rival titles on current-generation consoles. However, there is some value in classic video game titles, whether you grew up playing games on the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and ...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
When you think about it, isn't life just one big open-world RPG just begging to be conquered? We all have a set number of specific tasks or chores we must complete every single day like clockwork. Sometimes, these items on our to-do list can become tedious and cause us to lose ...more
Smartphone technology has become as ubiquitous as automobiles. In Austin, Texas, a city that is widely known as the "Live Music Capital of the World," smartphones have been embraced by the music community not just as a way to document and promote, but to create music. A rock ...more
You can mod every aspect of your phone's software with root, but if you want to make changes at the hardware level, you'll need a custom kernel. If you've looked into custom kernels before, one name undoubtedly kept coming up: ElementalX. It's easily the best custom kernel out ...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