Author: Duncan Pike

Xiaomi makes another smartphone battery advancement Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has developed yet another improvement to smartphone batteries. Following on from the blitz of its currently available 120W superfast charging and with 200W HyperCharge tech in the works, Xiaomi has now turned its attention to batteries. The company recently announced it’s been working on a new High-Silicon Lithium battery. This announcement came from the Chinese social media platform Weibo. The new battery tech in question will offer increased capacity at the same volume. The company has been able to improve on the amount of silicon present as well as a…

WhatsApp has started its trial of a feature that lets users send and receive funds within a chat, but not like you think. Before you get excited, this trial is only available to a select few in the US. If it goes well it will likely roll out to other places but that might take some time. The feature in WhatsApp integrates Meta’s recently launched digital wallet, Novi. It uses the Pax Dollars (USDP) stablecoin and Coinbase as its custody partner. According to Novi’s website, sending cash works the same way as sending a location pin or meme. Users can…

Last night saw the best games of 2021, and the people responsible for them, awarded for their efforts at the annual video game award show — The Game Awards 2021. With a name like that, what did you expect? The show was hosted by video game journalist Geoff Keighley and featured The Matrix Resurrections stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss as award presenters. They were joined in their hosting duties by Simu Liu from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Jim Carrey and Ben Schwartz from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, industry friend Guillermo del Toro and Giancarlo Esposito…

In typical Oppo fashion, the company has teased at some new camera tech for smartphones that it’s been working on. The brief video, tweeted by the company on Tuesday, shows a “self-developed retractable camera” which does exactly what you’d think. The camera extends out of the phone’s body and then retracts back inside in what we believe is known in some circles as ‘ground hogging’. The short piece of cinema also alludes to the fact that the mechanism is waterproof as seen from the sprays of water onto the device and camera module. If you tend to drop your phone…

If you’ve only just come out from under your rock then you missed the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, the best game that’s ever been released in the history of — okay no sorry, we can’t keep that up. Although it received massive amounts of hype leading up to its 10 December 2020 launch, the game that everyone received was definitely not what they were hoping for. The game was riddled with bugs, glitches and performance issues which made it unplayable for many people, especially if you tried to play it on the previous generation of consoles. Sony even went as…

Xiaomi has consistently impressed us with the devices it’s bringing to the table in recent months. It has somehow managed to find the right balance between value and compromise. We got to spend some time with Xiaomi’s newest device to launch in SA and the first Xiaomi device to drop the ‘Mi’ branding — the 11T Pro. Going on our experience with past devices, namely the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6, we were expecting another solid device. We weren’t disappointed. Looks the part Right out of the box, we have to admit the 11T…

When WhatsApp introduced the disappearing messages feature in November last year it wasn’t what people were expecting. Messages would delete themselves after seven days unless you backed the chat up or something was sent to you. You also couldn’t change the timeframe. So it was more of a convenience thing than a security thing before you start thinking you’re Deep Throat. For an app that wants you to think it’s privacy-focused, there sure are a lot of workarounds to save something someone sent you that should be deleted by the feature. In a chat with the feature on, messages sent…

Stuff says –  4.5/5 The fact that Røde’s NT-USB Mini microphone can also be read as the Rødent-USB Mini is a subject of some confusion and a little trepidation at Stuff. They have to know there’s a mouse joke in the name, right? And that it implies there is a regular or large Rødent-USB and we don’t think we’d like to see that. The mouse, that is. We’d be happy to use any other Røde microphones.But small mammals don’t actually have any relation to a well-built but compact cardioid condenser microphone. Mice don’t have a bit-depth of 24-bits, a…

Tell the Cybertime like a Cyberpunk with this Cyberwatch If you’re looking for a new cyberwatch to add to your cybercollection, Cyberpunk developers CD Projekt Red and Blonie Watches have something you might be interested in. The pair are teaming up to release the T-2077, a limited edition Cyberpunk 2077 themed cyberwristwatch. The cybercase and cyberbracelet are both made of pure grade 2 cybertitanium. The cyberbracelet has a butterfly cyberclasp while the watch uses a cyberquartz mechanism and a yellow cyberLED display. Unlike in the game, the cyberwatch will survive underwater up to 50m.The watch uses a CR2032 cyberbattery. It’s…

Following the abysmal launch that Battlefield 2042 faced and is still trying to recover from, it isn’t surprising that EA wants to make a few changes. The game publisher announced on Thursday that it would be creating a ‘Battlefield Universe’ that will span multiple titles and platforms under different developers. This is a rather transparent step in the same direction that Ubisoft took with the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It seems that Battlefield will henceforth follow the games-as-a-service model, instead of the uninspired standalone games we’ve been subjected to in recent years. Battlefield is now Battleuniverse EA has also made some…