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Its foldable phone, or at least its foldable phone UX, might make the big headlines this week, but that is hardly all that Samsung has planned. It’s probably going to take the backseat for a while, but Samsung’s augmented reality ambitions are just as big. At its Samsung Developers Conference, the Korean tech company has alloted six sessions to AR. And while some of them seem to be devoted to the AR Emojis everyones either loves or loves to hate, Samsung might also have big news planned in the form of an AR cloud platform and even an AR headset prototype.

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Pokemon GO might be the game that finally made it money, but Niantic Labs’s real groundbreaking work was on Ingress, perhaps the first worldwide “augmented reality” mobile game. It was a hit for a small niche market when it launched in 2012, a market that may have felt a bit abandoned when Niantic turned its eyes on Pokemon GO. The company is now going back to its roots to take the lessons from both of its games to breathe new life into the game. Welcome to Ingress Prime.

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Augmented reality stickers have become quite the attraction on social media, particularly because of the whimsical fun they bring to the table. Or to your face. or to someone else’s actual table. These AR stickers can also be effective vehicles for advocating causes, marketing film franchises, or even just showing your allegiance to one of the biggest debates of all time: dogs versus cats. Google’s new Playground camera mode for the Pixel 3 launched with only dogs under the Pets category. But since it’s National Cat Day, Google is playing fair by adding cats to the scene as well.

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AT&T plans to launch its DirecTV NOW product on Magic Leap's system in the future. The company says it will be launching a 5G test zone on Magic Leap's Florida campus next year, as well, this making it possible for developers to test apps and devices on the faster mobile technology. The plans were revealed today at the Magic Leap conference in LA.

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Holographic car windshields that overlay augmented reality graphics atop the real world could be closer than you think, with Porsche, Hyundai, and others tapping a smart glass startup developing the transparent tech. WayRay has been working on holographic augmented reality head-up display technologies since 2012, developing a compact hologram projector that could change what you see through your car's windows.

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Lenovo promised regular updates for the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges augmented reality game, and it's been delivering, with the latest being a Dark Side Expansion and a new lightsaber option. The AR game uses a smartphone slotted into Lenovo's Mirage headset, and wirelessly-connected weapons modeled after those in the hit movies.

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It’s really no secret that Apple, or at least CEO Tim Cook, believes in augmented reality, at least more than virtual reality. It does, after all, have ARCore but nothing equivalent for VR. But like its self-driving car, the company has been unsurprisingly mum about its plans to make and sell an AR product of its own. Actions, however, speak louder than words and buying a startup that focuses on AR lenses is pretty much the smoking gun we could be looking for.

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Google made a switch from virtual reality to augmented reality in an apparent hardware-focused move in late 2017. The move was made public this week in a behind-the-scenes confirmation of a cancellation of an IMAX VR project announced previously. Google and IMAX announced a collaboration on a VR camera back in May of 2016 - all that appears to be over right this minute.

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The Apple Car rumor has reignited, with analyst predictions that the Cupertino company will look to four wheels and complex technology for its next iPhone-scale success. Speculation that Apple is considering wading into transportation has been a regular topic of discussion in recent years, as investors and fans alike try to guess what the $1 trillion company might do next.

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This week the folks at Nokia decided to bring their classic game "Snake" back to the public via Facebook Camera. Using the new augmented reality features of the Facebook Camera platform, Nokia delivered Snake to all users starting this morning. To attain said Snake, one needed only to open the Facebook app and click a button in the Facebook Camera. Now, if only they'd bring Tony Hawk Pro Skater there too...

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One of the problems with new computing platforms is the danger to go overboard in trying to present a novel experience. Nowhere is that truer than with virtual and augmented reality where user interfaces are already split into two almost diametrically opposed camps. As one of the most popular proponents of controller-less AR experience, Magic Leap runs the risk of overloading its UI with novel and fancy gizmos and controls. Fortunately, based on images going rounds over the Internet, the startup has exercised some caution and common sense.

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Virtual and augmented reality have created the need for a niche type of content creation, one that requires truly immersive 3D experiences. But while there are already tools for that, a bottleneck is created when you have to put on cumbersome VR or AR headsets just to quickly test their work. Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually see those right on your desk immediately? That would require a holographic display and that is exactly what The Looking Glass is trying to offer.

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