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Category: mobile phones

Metasurfaces show promise in boosting AR image clarity and brightness

Researchers have designed and demonstrated a new optical component that could significantly enhance the brightness and image quality of augmented reality (AR) glasses. The advance brings AR glasses a step closer to becoming as commonplace and useful as today’s smartphones.

“Many of today’s AR headsets are bulky and have a short battery life with displays that are dim and hard to see, especially outdoors,” said research team leader Nick Vamivakas from the University of Rochester. “By creating a much more efficient input port for the display, our work could help make AR glasses much brighter and more power-efficient, moving them from being a niche gadget to something as light and comfortable as a regular pair of eyeglasses.”

In an article published in the journal Optical Materials Express, the researchers describe how they replaced a single waveguide in-coupler—the input port where the image enters the glass—with one featuring three specialized zones, each made of a material, to achieve improved performance.

Physicists Discover Bizarre “Quantum Pinball” State of Matter

Physicists have discovered how to make electrons “freeze” and “melt” into bizarre quantum patterns, forming a new kind of matter where solid and liquid coexist. Electricity drives nearly every aspect of modern life, from powering vehicles and smartphones to running computers and countless other d

Magnetic materials discovered by AI could reduce rare earth dependence

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have harnessed artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of new functional magnetic materials, creating a searchable database of 67,573 magnetic materials, including 25 previously unrecognized compounds that remain magnetic even at high temperatures.

“By accelerating the discovery of sustainable magnetic materials, we can reduce dependence on , lower the cost of electric vehicles and renewable-energy systems, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base,” said Suman Itani, lead author and a doctoral student in physics.

The newly created database, named the Northeast Materials Database, helps to more easily explore all the which play a major role in the technology that powers our world: smartphones, , power generators, electric vehicles and more. But these magnets rely on expensive, imported, and increasingly difficult to obtain rare earth elements, and no new permanent magnet has been discovered from the many magnetic compounds we know exist.

Samsung Mobile Flaw Exploited as Zero-Day to Deploy LANDFALL Android Spyware

It’s assessed that the attacks involved sending via WhatsApp malicious images in the form of DNG (Digital Negative) files, with evidence of LANDFALL samples going all the way back to July 23, 2024. This is based on DNG artifacts bearing names like “WhatsApp Image 2025/02/10 at 4.54.17 PM.jpeg” and “IMG-20240723-WA0000.jpg.”

Itay Cohen, senior principal researcher at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, told The Hacker News that they have not observed any significant functional changes between the samples from July 2024 and February 2025, when the most recent LANDFALL artifact was uploaded to VirusTotal.

LANDFALL, once installed and executed, acts as a comprehensive spy tool, capable of harvesting sensitive data, including microphone recording, location, photos, contacts, SMS, files, and call logs.

New LandFall spyware exploited Samsung zero-day via WhatsApp messages

A threat actor exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Samsung’s Android image processing library to deploy a previously unknown spyware called ‘LandFall’ using malicious images sent over WhatsApp.

The security issue was patched this year in April, but researchers found evidence that the LandFall operation was active since at least July 2024, and targeted select Samsung Galaxy users in the Middle East.

Identified as CVE-2025–21042, the zero-day is an out-of-bounds write in libimagecodec.quram.so and has a critical severity rating. A remote attacker successfully exploiting it can execute arbitrary code on a target device.

Mapping a new frontier with AI-integrated geographic information systems

Over the past 50 years, geographers have embraced each new technological shift in geographic information systems (GIS)—the technology that turns location data into maps and insights about how places and people interact—first the computer boom, then the rise of the internet and data-sharing capabilities with web-based GIS, and later the emergence of smartphone data and cloud-based GIS systems.

Now, another is transforming the field: the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as an independent “agent” capable of performing GIS functions with minimal human oversight.

In a study published in Annals of GIS, a multi-institutional team led by geography researchers at Penn State built and tested four AI agents in order to introduce a conceptual framework of autonomous GIS and examine how this shift is redefining the practice of GIS.

Quantum ‘pinball’ state of matter in electrons allows both conducting and insulating properties, physicists discover

Electricity powers our lives, including our cars, phones, computers, and more, through the movement of electrons within a circuit. While we can’t see these electrons, electric currents moving through a conductor flow like water through a pipe to produce electricity.

Certain materials, however, allow that electron flow to “freeze” into crystallized shapes, triggering a transition in the state of matter that the electrons collectively form. This turns the material from a conductor to an insulator, stopping the flow of electrons and providing a unique window into their complex behavior. This phenomenon makes possible new technologies in quantum computing, advanced superconductivity for energy and medical imaging, lighting, and highly precise atomic clocks.

A team of Florida State University-based physicists, including National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dirac Postdoctoral Fellow Aman Kumar, Associate Professor Hitesh Changlani and Assistant Professor Cyprian Lewandowski, have shown the conditions necessary to stabilize a phase of matter in which electrons exist in a solid crystalline lattice but can “melt” into a , known as a generalized Wigner crystal. Their work was published in npj Quantum Materials.

A computational camera lens that can focus on everything all at once

Imagine snapping a photo where every detail, near and far, is perfectly sharp—from the flower petal right in front of you to the distant trees on the horizon. For over a century, camera designers have dreamed of achieving that level of clarity.

In a breakthrough that could transform photography, microscopy, and even , researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new kind of lens that can bring an entire scene into sharp focus at once—no matter how far away or close different parts of the scene are.

The team, consisting of Yingsi Qin, an electrical and Ph.D. student, Aswin Sankaranarayanan, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Matthew O’Toole, associate professor of computer science and robotics, recently presented their findings at the 2025 International Conference on Computer Vision and received a Best Paper Honorable Mention recognition.

Engineers achieve record 31% efficiency in red quantum LEDs for enhanced display color and brightness

A research team led by the School of Engineering of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has made significant advances in quantum rod light-emitting diodes (QR-LEDs), setting record-high efficiency level for red QR-LEDs. This innovation is poised to revolutionize next-generation display and lighting technologies, offering smartphone and television users a vibrant and enhanced visual experience. The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials.

LEDs have been widely used in for decades. Recent developments in have given rise to quantum dot LEDs (QD-LEDs) and QR-LEDs. QD-LEDs offer superior color purity (color vividness) and higher brightness compared to current mainstream LEDs. However, outcoupling efficiency has now become the primary obstacle, as it sets a fundamental ceiling for external quantum efficiency (EQE), thereby hindering any further performance improvements.

Quantum rods, on which QR-LEDs are based, are a type of elongated anisotropic nanocrystals with unique optical properties that can be engineered to optimize the light emission direction and ultimately improve outcoupling efficiency. However, QR-LEDs encounter two significant technical challenges: first, the ratio of emitted to absorbed photons (photoluminescence quantum yield) is relatively low after the material absorbs photons; second, there is a substantial leakage current due to poor thin-film quality.

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