Author: Duncan Pike

Qualcomm has officially unveiled its Snapdragon X Plus computing platform, following recent rumours of its launch. It lands six months after the company announced its flagship chipset, the Snapdragon X Elite, in October last year. As the name implies, the SD X Plus is a small step down from the SD X Elite. It features a 10-core Oryon CPU which, if our math is correct, is two fewer than the 12-core X Elite. It supports up to 64GB of LPDDR5x system memory and boasts a 135GB/s bandwidth. It’s supposed to be 37% faster than competitors, although Qualcomm didn’t say which…

Across the seas in China, Huawei Technologies Co. recently released a quartet of new ‘Pura’ smartphone models that seem to replace the company’s long-standing P-series devices. Other than the name change, Huawei presumably hopes its new line will maintain the momentum it has built after a somewhat surprising (at least for most folks around the world) resurgence in 2023 owing to the launch of the Mate 60 range and its Chinese-manufactured Kirin 9000s 5G-capable chipset. Pura leads the wei Huawei made little fuss about its latest launch, with an announcement post on WeChat doing the heavy lifting. That appears to…

The handful of you who still subscribe to DStv might’ve already noticed the new ‘1max’ channel among the tens of others you hardly watch. MultiChoice quietly launched 1max on channel 103 at the start of April for Premium and Compact Plus subscribers which turned out not to be a weird joke. The new channel is home to select content from the newly relaunched Showmax streaming service — which explains how the creative folks at MultiChoice arrived at the name. So, just the 1max, then? “The content on 1max gives viewers only a sample of what’s available on the streaming service…

Ever since the Vision Pro was first unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on 5 June 2023, the fruit company has made a big deal about it being the next step in the evolution of how we use technology. The company even came up with a fancy new term for its fancy new device: ‘spatial computing’ – because now you’ll be doing your work in the space around you. Ignoring the fact that similar devices have existed for more than ten years already, Apple’s presumably well-paid marketing team managed to make a computer you strap to your face seem appealing.…

After three years of lossless audio edging, Spotify could finally give fans the release they’ve been begging for. Once again, lossless audio streaming on the platform could be right around the corner. That’s if new strings of code uncovered by a Reddit user are anything to go by. Spotify’s lossless audio streaming ambitions were first announced in 2021 as ‘Spotify HiFi’. But, as recently as last year, the company seemed to change direction with hints that hi-res streaming would form part of a more expensive, internally-named ‘Supremium’ tier. Now it seems like the streaming giant has changed direction again. HiFi…

If you don’t already farm your share of free money from Google Opinion Rewards then you should definitely download the app and start now. All you’ll need to do is provide your very real and definitely not made-up opinion about whatever the app is asking. After a few taps you should see your Google Play Store wallet increase. While you’re busy doing that or waiting for another survey to pop up, you may also want to know that your payouts might increase with a future update if the findings of X.com user and Google app investigator AssembleDebug are anything to…

First announced in February this year, Truecaller for Web promises to make dodging annoying spam calls and texts even easier – for Android users in India, anyway. Well, that was the case when the company first announced the feature a few months ago. But a message we received from the caller ID app today made us look a little further. Just as well we did, as the feature’s rollout seems to have reached South Africa. Truecaller’s web client, accessed through a web browser in the same way as WhatsApp or Telegram, seemed a little underwhelming at first, but at least…

A new report from MyBroadband Insights has named MTN the best overall mobile network in the country for the first quarter of 2024, with Vodacom hot on its heels in second place. 7,197 unique devices were recorded performing a collective 285,839 speed tests on the MyBroadband speed test platform all over South Africa from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2024 to arrive at these findings. These speed tests, together with drive tests carried out in cities, towns and on the country’s main roads provide the basis for MyBroadband Insights’ findings and offer real-world performance metrics of South Africa’s mobile…

One of the main draws for buying a laptop over a desktop is its versatility and that’s exactly what Huawei’s latest MateBook D model is geared towards, hoping to curry favour with hybrid workers, students, and young professionals. If your workload is mostly answering emails, filling in spreadsheets, and typing up documents, you probably won’t care too much that Huawei’s 2024 MateBook D16 can’t do fancy things, like turn into a tablet. It’s more focused on getting you through the day without wasting your time making you wait for things to load or getting bogged down when you open more…

Several things became immediately obvious when the Beosound A5 from Bang & Olufsen first showed up at Stuff HQ. The first was that it was nearly lunchtime because let’s face it, the Nordic Weave model featured here wouldn’t look out of place on a blanket in a park along with some sandwiches. Once we got over that and took a closer look at the anodised aluminium plates, oak wood handle, and paper fibre weave covers, we were reminded of Bang & Olufsen’s esteemed heritage – and that this speaker was probably a pricey one. The Danish audio company has been…