The United States Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published an Apple patent application related to face and presence detection that could be used to help keep iOS devices secure. Patently Apple said the company’s application describes a technology that could allow a user to unlock his or her device by simply looking at it. Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) already features face detection, but it can easily be tricked according to reports, and doesn’t always work. Apple’s solution de...

Facebook made tagging and sharing photos easier with its new face detection algorithm, a nifty little feature Facebook acquired when it purchased Divvyshot back in April. No more clicking on photos to select the faces of your friends as the new face detection feature will scan your uploaded photos and automatically select the faces in the photo. Once selected, Facebook will prompt you to tag the photo with the names of your friends.  Though it is somewhat rudimentary in its current form, Facebook promis...

Samsung doesn’t have much in the way of sneak peeks at CES, but we did manage to catch a glimpse of two international handsets. First is the Omnia Pro or Samsung B7610. The Omnia Pro doesn’t look too much like its cousin, the Omnia II, and it features a slide out QWERTY keyboard. It’s also a Windows 6.5 device that has a front-facing camera for video chat. Unfortunately, the only carrier in the U.S. that supports video chat of any kind is AT&T and it’s only one-way video chatting. ...

About 50 rungs further down the innovation ladder, some new Apple patent applications revealed this morning are definitely less interesting and complex than the few we covered last week. In fact, considering some of the technology has already existed for quite some time we’re not even sure why Apple is attempting to patent a few of these things. In any case however, it’s never a bad idea to stop and take a look at where the iPhone and iPhone OS may be headed in the future so let’s start at t...

Having long since been given the green light for sale in the US by the FCC, Sony Ericsson announced today that the unlocked W995a Walkman will go on sale July 6th at Sony Style locations across the US. Identical to the W995 Walkman in every way save for the inclusion of a tri-band UMTS/HSPA (850/1800/1900MHz) radio, the W995a is the type of device that we’d like to see SE continue to push out alongside smartphones like the Satio. Here’s why: a 2.6-inch QVGA display, 8.1 megapixel camera with auto ...