Hot Smartphones News Stories
![iOS 18 Tips, Tricks, How-Tos, News](https://img.gadgethacks.com/img/15/56/63854300537190/0/ios-18-secrets-revealed.600x696.jpg)
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News: Save Data on Hulu by Choosing the Right Streaming Quality
It seems almost every carrier now has an unlimited data plan, and free Wi-Fi is now available in more places than ever before. If you want to be connected, it has never been easier — but that still doesn't mean that everyone can stream as much as they please.
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News: HoloLens Assists in Live Surgery
Numerous examples exist of doctors and surgeons using HoloLens to plan surgeries. The device has even been used to view reference images during a procedure and stream it to a remote audience. Until recently, it has not been used to augment the surgeon's view of the patient during a live surgery.
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News: Zillow Invests in Augmented Reality Interior Design App Hutch
Hutch Interiors, Inc., makers of an eponymous augmented reality home design app for iOS and Android, has closed a series A round of funding, led by online real estate company Zillow Group, totaling $10 million.
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YouTube 101: How to Upload Videos from Your Phone
What makes YouTube such a special platform is that anyone and everyone can upload their own content. Big players upload their videos to the same site that the little guy does.
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News: Battlefield AR Game 'Recoil' Takes Tag to a Whole New Level
The new battlefield AR game announced by Skyrocket Toys today is similar to the childhood game "Tag", except the stakes are much, much higher.
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Hands-On: Up Close & Personal with the Meta 2 Head-Mounted Display
Last June, Meta began shipping their Meta 2 mixed reality headset, to the delight of many. In September, it was announced that shipping had been delayed until the end of the year. Then it appeared that Christmas would bring something magical when Meta sent out an email four days before the big holiday saying that the Meta 2 developers kits were finally shipping. Unfortunately, having a few on order here at Next Realit,y we are still patiently waiting for ours to arrive.
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News: Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses Gains Mac & PC Screen Mirroring via iDisplay
Screen mirroring app iDisplay has arrived for Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses. With the app installed on the M300 and the companion software running on a Mac or Windows computer, users can mirror or extend the computer's desktop to the headset's display, which is connected to the computer via Wi-Fi or USB cable. The app does not yet appear on Vuzix's app store.
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Prime Users: Get Up to $80 Off Nokia, Alcatel & Moto Phones
Honestly, this deal is pretty sweet. As of today, Amazon has added five new devices to their "Prime Exclusive Phones" program. The program allows Prime users to buy midrange handsets unlocked at a discount that goes up to $80.
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News: Merged Notifications Could Make Life Easier for Facebook, Instagram & Messenger Users
Online lives could be made easier now that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger are testing merged app notifications. 'Could' being the operative word!
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News: New Tool Makes It Easy to Check if a Phone Was Lost or Stolen
Buying a smartphone used is an excellent way to save money, but those savings come with a risk that your seller isn't as forthcoming as they claim. You don't want to end up buying a stolen smartphone because it might not work correctly ... and, you know, it's wrong. Luckily, there's an easy way to check if the phone you're about to buy is legit.
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News: Drone Prix Finishes as First AR Game for DJI Drones
Augmented reality software developer Edgybees has launched Drone Prix. The new mobile app immerses DJI drones and their pilots in more than 30 augmented reality obstacle courses.
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News: Disney's AR Projection Tech Morphs Actors into On-Screen Monsters
The Disney Research Lab is using projector-based illumination to paint actors' faces during live performances. You know what that means? Disney just took Halloween to a whole new level.
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News: Neurable Planning to Bring Brainwave Controls to AR Headsets Later This Year
Within the coming months, software startup Neurable plans to introduce the next paradigm in virtual and augmented reality: the brain–computer interface (BCI).
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News: The Fake Review Saga Continues—Gmail & Messenger Latest in Google Play's 5-Star Spam
Earlier last week, there were a number of fake five-star WhatsApp reviews to be found on the Google Play Store. Now, Gmail, Chrome, Messenger, and Firefox are all the latest victims to be saturated in five-star spam that wrongly refers to the word "game" in reference to non-game apps.
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News: 360world's Windows Mixed Reality Tools Will Help Air Traffic Controllers See in New Ways
360world, a Hungary-based tech company involved in motion control and augmented reality, released information today about their latest products, the CLAIRITY HoloTower and CLAIRITY SmartBinocular. These tools are designed to bring augmented reality into the hands of air traffic controllers, via Windows Mixed Reality, to greatly improve their workflow over tools already in use.
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News: Scope AR Brings Live, Interactive AR Video Support to Caterpillar Customers
Customer service just got a lot more interesting. Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar just announced official availability of what they're calling the CAT LIVESHARE solution to customer support, which builds augmented reality capabilities into the platform.
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News: Phantom AR Platform Seeks to Make Augmented Reality More Accessible
A development team in Silicon Valley is nearing early access release of a new hardware-independent augmented reality platform called Phantom AR.
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Proof of Concept: Music Everywhere Uses HoloLens to Help Piano Students Learn Improvisation
Students from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center have been working on an augmented reality system to help teach music in a project called Music Everywhere.
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News: We're Very Close to the Dark Future of Deeply Augmented Reality in Black Mirror's 'Playtest'
Black Mirror, Netflix's technology-horror anthology, never fails to provide thought-provoking entertainment centered around emerging and futuristic technologies, and the third season's second episode, "Playtest," delves deep into the worlds of mixed, augmented, and virtual reality. While designed to leave you haunted by the end, offering a more "evil" narrative than we'll likely see in our actual future, the episode explores possibilities that aren't as far off as one might think.
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News: Play Games & Share Live Experiences in Virtual Worlds with AltspaceVR
People fear virtual reality will isolate us, but the right experience can prove it does the opposite.
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News: WhatsApp Is Now Sharing Your Data with Facebook, but Opting Out Doesn't Solve the Problem
When Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19.3 billion back in 2014, we all knew this was coming—it just took longer than we thought. But starting today, the data mining became official, and now, information from your favorite messaging app is no longer out of reach for the world's biggest social media site.
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News: The 7 Best Weather Apps for Android & iPhone
Checking the weather ranks among the most mundane but essential tasks you can do on your smartphone. Thankfully, both the iOS App Store and Google Play are loaded with weather apps that add some much needed spice to this daily routine, giving you less of a reason to be caught unaware.
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Hot or Not: The Original Ego Scaler Is Now on Android, iOS, & Windows
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Besides being one of the most notorious misquotes of all time (the line is "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all"), it's a question that men and women probably have asked themselves more than once.
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News: The Finnish-Made Jolla Phone with Sailfish OS That Runs Android Apps
Say "hola!" to the independent Finnish phone company, Jolla, and its new eponymous smartphone of the same name.
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News: Snapchat Sees Major Update with Temporary Chat Messages & Live Video Chatting
Popular photo-sharing service Snapchat has released a major update to both its Android and iOS applications today, bringing secretive chat messaging and live video chatting.
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News: 10 Photography Tips for Mastering Your Camera Phone
If you're always taking blurry and underexposed pics with your mobile device, try using some of the tips below to turn your phone into a valuable photography asset. It doesn't matter if you have an iPhone, Android smartphone, or even a first-gen camera phone... you can still take some beautiful, winning photographs.
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News: 'Diminished Reality' App Does Augmented Reality in Reverse
Coming soon to an Android device near you: Diminished Reality! What's Diminished Reality? A lot like Augmented Reality, really, but with one big difference: Where AR giveth, insinuating virtual elements into a live representation of the real world, Diminished Reality taketh away, hiding actually-existing objects within a live feed.
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News: New iPhone Feature Piques Interest of Porn Industry
The day of interactive porn has arrived, all thanks to Steve Jobs. The iPhone 4's new video-call feature, FaceTime, enables users to have live video chat sessions over a Wi-Fi network, via the iPhone's camera and screen. Unsurprisingly, the porn industry was immediately inspired.
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News: Sony Might Be Working on a DualShock Controller with Built-in Phone Dock for Dedicated Mobile Gaming
A new Sony patent shows the company doubling down on mobile gaming, and it could mean more advanced controller features for your iPhone or Android phone, similar to those in PlayStation's DualSense and DualShock controllers.
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News: The Future of Apple Augmented Reality Wearables Through the Lens of Steve Jobs & His Legacy
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website.
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News: Microsoft HoloLens 2 & Unity Used to Highlight the Threat to Endangered Whales at the Smithsonian
Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market.
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News: BlueJeans Video Conferencing Giant to Launch Native Google Glass App for Remote Assistance
If you're a normal, non-corporate video conferencing user, you may not have heard of BlueJeans, but in the corporate world, the software has long been a major staple when it comes to remote meetings.
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News: Vuzix Smartglasses Factory Reveal Gives Another Glimpse of Next-Gen AR Wearable
Away from the hype around Facebook's smartglasses, the high-end fascination with the Microsoft HoloLens, and the unending rumors about Apple's AR wearable is the small but powerful darling of the enterprise AR world—Vuzix.
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Market Reality: Instagram Smartglasses, Oculus AR Gaming, Google AR Search, & Facebook Exec Shuffle
As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways.
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News: This Billie Eilish Oculus Quest 2 Video Inadvertently Offers a Peek at AR Gaming on the VR Headset
It's always fun to get an unexpected glimpse of the future, especially when that peek is so close you can actually feel the excitement of the new emerging dynamic.
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Opinion: Facebook's Big Smartglasses Mistake—Not Pairing Ray-Ban with Instagram Instead
One of the best recent outings in the Marvel universe is the animated series What If...?, which explores alternate universe takes on various superhero storylines that deliver fascinating scenarios if one single factor had been different in the story.
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Market Reality: The Matrix vs. The Metaverse, Xiaomi AR Wearable, & Snap Art AR History
This was a busy week in the tech space. After everyone got over the major announcements of Apple's latest, we examined the metaverse through the lens of Hollywood, and then took a closer look at Facebook's first smartglasses.
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News: Registration Open for 2021 Facebook Connect AR & VR Conference, Speakers Include Mark Zuckerberg & John Carmack
It's about that time again: Facebook has announced the dates for its annual Facebook Connect (formerly known as Oculus Connect until last year).
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News: Snap Teams with Sotheby's to Launch Historic AR Lens Hailing the Art of Christo & the Arc De Triomphe in Paris
One of the most iconic architectural landmarks on the planet, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, will become a part of augmented reality history thanks to a new project from Snap.
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News: How to Sample the New Apple iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro in Augmented Reality
The much-hyped Apple event is now history, and we finally know what the Cupertino tech giant had up its sleeve: new iPhones.