Smartphones News
News: Apple's ARKit 2.0 Could Make These 10 Mobile AR Apps Even Better
With the announcement of ARKit 2.0 at WWDC 2018, Apple is bringing some powerful new capabilities to mobile augmented reality apps this fall.
Market Reality: Magic Leap Steps on Apple's Big ARKit Moment, DreamGlass Starts Selling Its Meta 2 Competitor
Last week's Augmented World Expo felt like a distant memory by this Monday, as Apple unveiled ARKit 2.0 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Certainly, this news would overshadow anything augmented reality this week as it nearly eclipsed AWE when early reports leaked of the toolkit's new superpowers.
News: 5 Snapchat Lenses You Have to Try Out This Week — Maroon 5, Markiplier & More
As summer is upon us, new musical Snapchat lenses are as well. This week has entries from Maroon 5, Simon and Garfunkel, and Snow Tha Product with entertaining visuals to match. As kids start to leave school for the summer, expect the lens scene to be kicked up a notch with anticipation.
Hands-on: DreamGlass Looks Like a Cheaper, More Mobile Meta 2, But This Is What We Really Think After Trying It
Earlier this week, we told you about the new DreamGlass augmented reality headset from Dreamworld, a company started by a former Meta executive. The device looks great, and the features sound good, but is it worth your hard-earned cash? I recently took it for a brief spin to find out.
News: Escape Room Experience Comes to Mobile via Futuristic 'The Lockdown' Augmented Reality Game
Escape rooms, those real world puzzle games that challenge teams to solve a mystery and gain their freedom from a locked room, are all the rage right now. But augmented reality games such as The Lockdown could make them obsolete.
News: The Ancients AR Puts Mystical Sea Battles in Your Living Room in Augmented Reality
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.
News: Build Your Own AR Headset Using Leap Motion's Open Source Project North Star Design
Less than two months since unveiling Project North Star, Leap Motion has released the reference design that will allow developers, makers, and even manufacturers to build their own augmented reality headsets based on Leap Motion's work.
News: Magic Leap Finally Delivered a Live, Public Demonstration of the Magic Leap One, Here's What Happened
On Wednesday, June 6, the people at Magic Leap finally (FINALLY) decided to give the public a dedicated, slow, feature-by-feature walkthrough of the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. How was it? About as good as it gets without actually getting to see what images look like through the device when wearing it.
News: Former Meta Exec Launches DreamGlass AR Headset, Shipping at End of June for $399
Just a year after facing trade secret theft allegations from his former employer, ex-Meta Company employee Kevin Zhong and his new company are ready to ship the product that triggered the lawsuit.
News: Magic Leap Reveals Partnership with Oscar-Winning Effects Studio Behind Marvel's Biggest Hits
For years, Magic Leap has promised to deliver stunning augmented reality experiences that will outperform any other competitor, and a newly revealed partnership hints that the company may be able to deliver on those promises.
News: Adobe's Project Aero Takes on Unity & Unreal for AR Content Creation Supremacy
Using the ARKit 2.0 announcement as its springboard, software maker Adobe is looking leap up to the level of Unity Technologies and Epic Games, the companies making the go-to tools for creating augmented reality experiences.
News: HoloLens Can Now Wirelessly Tap Rendering Power of Any Desktop PC via UWP Apps Built in Unity
Looking to inject a little more processing juice into your HoloLens? Unity can fix you up with the Standalone Universal Windows Platform Holographic Emulation.
News: Magic Leap Focused on Creators & Content Ahead of Shipping Magic Leap One
As Magic Leap prepares to ship the Magic Leap One later this year, the company is putting its focus on mentoring developers and creators to build a content ecosystem for the spatial computing platform.
News: 7 Features iOS 12 Stole from Android
The great thing about competition is it drives innovation. But when a company tries to one-up its competitor, it's not always with something brand new. Sometimes, one party will draw heavy inspiration from the other — but hey, it's still all good, because the consumers benefit either way.
News: Apple Brings New Characters & Features to Animoji — Then Destroys Samsung's AR Emoji with Memoji
Alongside ARKit 2.0, Apple revealed new Animojis alongside new Memoji virtual doppelgangers that compete with functionality quite similar to that of Samsung's AR Emoji.
News: ARKit 2.0 Brings Persistent, Shared Experiences & 3D Object Detection to Apple Mobile Apps in iOS 12
As expected, Apple revealed today at the WWDC keynote that ARKit 2.0 will support multiplayer gaming support and persistent content, which will arrive this fall with iOS 12.
News: NBA AR App Launches on Android & Adds Portals to Playoffs
The NBA Finals is underway, and now basketball fans with iPhones and Android devices can get closer to the action for free than they ever could with expensive courtside tickets.
Market Reality: Apple Assembles AR Team, Google & Amazon Invest in New UI, & Qualcomm Powers Next Vuzix & Meta Devices
The Augmented World Expo is winding down in Santa Clara, where Qualcomm, Vuzix, and Meta Company were among the companies making big announcements.
News: Re'flekt's Sync Tool Wants to Help Companies Embed AR Content into Real Objects via CAD Data
Germany-based Augmented reality software maker Re'flekt has added a new tool to its enterprise app development platform that makes it simpler to link AR content to physical objects.
News: Wikitude 8 Gives App Developers the Ability to Create Private Micro AR Clouds
While numerous startups are competing to convert the AR Cloud from a pie-in-the-sky to a reality, Wikitude is thinking smaller with the latest edition of its augmented reality SDK.
News: 5 Snapchat Lenses You Have to Try Out This Week — Post Malone, Arrested Development & More
This week's crop of Snapchat lenses is jam packed with pop culture, and spot-on examples at that. Post Malone and Famous Dex are super hot right now, and there's a ton of buzz surrounding Arrested Development's latest season.
News: Apple Staffing Up for Augmented Reality Software & Product Development
Between acquisitions, hirings, patent applications, and insider reports, all signs point to Apple building a smartglasses product that could ship as soon as 2020, but the company has not officially confirmed such plans.
News: Apple's ARKit 2.0 Intends to Match & Surpass Google's ARCore with Multiplayer & Persistent Content, Says Report
On the one year anniversary of the introduction of ARKit, Apple is planning to reveal major updates its augmented reality toolkit for mobile apps at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California next week.
News: Lumus Looks to Sweden's Tobii for New Smartglasses Eye Tracking Solution
On Thursday, at the Augmented World Expo, Stockholm, Sweden-based eye tracking company Tobii announced that the augmented reality display company Lumus will integrate its eye tracking technology into the Lumus DK50 AR development kit.
News: Vuzix Smart Glasses Getting a Major Upgrade in 2019 with Light Engine from Plessey
While Vuzix is beefing up the processing power of its next-generation smartglasses with the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1, the company will also give its devices an upgraded display engine.
News: First App for Meta 2 Headset Lets You View 3D CAD Models in Augmented Reality
Augmented reality headset maker Meta Company unveiled Meta Viewer, its first software application, during its keynote at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Wednesday.
News: ManoMotion Updates Its Hand Tracking SDK for Smartphones with Skeleton Tracking
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 apps the ability to track hand gestures with just a smartphone camera.
News: Scope AR Merges Its AR Workflow & Remote Assistance Functions into One App
Enterprise augmented reality software maker Scope AR is bringing the powers of its two productivity apps together like the Wonder Twins into the form of a single app.
News: Hand Tracking for Augmented Reality Apps Comes to Smartphones via uSens
This time last year, computer vision company uSens introduced a stereo camera module capable of hand tracking. Now, uSens can achieve the same thing with just a smartphone's camera.
News: Epson's Moverio Smartglasses Line Gets Major Upgrades with New SDK and Web-Based Publishing
Electronics maker Epson is courting developers to its Moverio smartglasses with an updated software development kit (SDK) and integration with a web-based tool for publishing augmented reality experiences.
News: Project Fi Adds 3 New Supported Phones — Moto G6, LG G7 ThinQ & V35 ThinQ
Google's MVNO carrier, Project Fi, can save you a ton of money in the right circumstances, but it's always had a limited selection of supported phones. Because the service uses Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular towers as its backbone, you could only use Project Fi with a Pixel, Nexus, or the Android One Moto X4 until now.
News: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 Will Power New Augmented Reality Headsets from Meta & Vuzix
Confirming a previous report from last week, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon X1 platform designed for augmented and virtual reality devices during an event at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara on Tuesday, with Meta and Vuzix among the first manufacturers to adopt it.
News: Google, Amazon, & More Invest $28M in Nerve-Tapping Technology from CTRL-Labs
New York-based startup CTRL-Labs has closed a $28 million Series A round of funding from Google parent Alphabet's GV and Amazon's Alexa Fund, among others, for its next-generation neural interface technology for AR/VR and robotics.
News: Snapchat Adds Sound Recognition to Its Augmented Reality Arsenal
As Facebook, Apple, Samsung, and others offer augmented reality selfie effects and content that challenge its platform, Snapchat has continued to innovate with its augmented reality capabilities.
News: Snow App Brings Animoji Alternative to Everyone with a Smartphone
Augmented reality avatars that mimic facial expressions are no longer the exclusive province of Animojis on the iPhone X or AR Emojis from Samsung. Camera app Snow has added its own alternative to Apple and Samsung's features, which it also calls AR Emoji, for iOS and Android.
News: New 'Jurassic World Alive' AR Game Takes Everything Great About Pokémon Go & Adds Dinosaurs
The premise of Jurassic World revolves around splicing genes to create new dinosaurs, so it is fitting that the location-based AR game is a clone of Pokémon GO merged with the DNA of the Jurassic Park franchise.
News: Samsung's AR Emoji Gets Super with Addition of Pixar's 'The Incredibles 2'
Just in time for the release of Pixar's highly anticipated sequel, AR Emoji based on characters from The Incredibles 2 have arrived for Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+.
Market Reality: Qualcomm & DigiLens Prepare Components for AR Wearables & Retailers Get an AR Reality Check
It will likely take a few more years before smartglasses are ready for primetime as component makers achieve the innovations necessary for consumer-centric device designs. Nevertheless, two technology companies are making steps in that direction as Qualcomm is rumored to be working on a chip dedicated to AR & VR headsets, while DigiLens has reduced the size of its waveguide displays for motorcycle helmets.
News: 5 Secret Snapchat Lenses That Will Make Your Weekend — Infinity War, the Chainsmokers & More
One word to sum up this batch of Snapchat lenses: complex. Lens creators like ApocTheLegend and Jinnie the Wew have been at it long enough to start making some really cool stuff, stretching the limit of what's possible using Lens Studio. I'm really looking forward to what they continue to pump out in the future.
News: Coors & KFC Court Consumers for Memorial Day Weekend via Snapchat AR
Many Americans will celebrate the start of the summer this Memorial Day weekend with backyard cookouts, and two brands hope to solidify their invites to those parties through augmented reality experiences in Snapchat.