Author: Duncan Pike

Chinese tech maker Xiaomi held their event last night (or this morning if you want to be technical), sneaking in ahead of Samsung’s Unpacked event later today. During the event, it confirmed some rumours surrounding some of the products it showcased and had a few surprises as well. Xiaomi Mi Mix 4 The Mi Mix 4 was one of the more anticipated products slated for launch at this event. The big buzz here is Xiaomi’s first use of a technology called Camera Under Panel (CUP) to give you a completely bezel-less screen without losing the front-facing camera. There have, of…

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE) has finalised the deal to buy the anime streaming site Crunchyroll for a sizable R17 billion, in a deal that’s been on the cards for nearly a year at least. It’s a little more complicated than that, with parent companies and majority shares and joint ventures, but the gist of it is now SPE controls both the Funimation and Crunchyroll anime streaming sites. Crunchyroll + Funimation = ??? SPE’s CEO Tony Vinciquerra said the company’s next goal is to “create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible.” But that’s all we’re getting for now.…

An explosion has completely destroyed generation Unit 4 at Eskom’s newly ‘completed’ Medupi power plant on Sunday. This is clearly a massive setback on a project that has seemed doomed to fail since its commencement in 2007. The explosion has taken the 800MW generator in unit 4 completely off the grid. That doesn’t bode well for the country’s already weak generational capacity. Load shedding has not been confirmed yet but we wouldn’t be surprised if an announcement isn’t too far off. Energy analyst, consultant and electrical engineer Chris Yelland posted pictures on Twitter that shows the destruction. https://twitter.com/chrisyelland/status/1424761349238894598 According to…

Audi's hybrid RS Q E-Tron completes test run ahead of Dakar 2022 Image: Audi Audi is looking to push its E-Tron tech even further this year with its all-new, purpose-built prototype, the RS Q E-Tron. Judging by how the latest endurance test drive has gone, things are looking good for the German automaker. Audi conducted

Xiaomi has been in the news a lot lately. From surpassing Apple in second place in the global mobile market, going on to overtake Samsung as the top phone manufacturer in Europe, releasing a TV in India and now this. The company announced via a Weibo post that they will be reviving the Mi Pad range with the upcoming Mi Pad 5 line. If you aren’t on Weibo then you’ll have to take our word for it. Who wants a Mi Pad 5? Do you? Because Mi do It’s been four years since the Chinese company last released a tablet and it’s looking to wow with this…

Hot on the heels of the Pixel 6 announcement, the rumour mill has ground out some interesting reports about the supposedly upcoming Pixel 5a. When we saw the Pixel 6 announcement, we thought Google would be skipping the 5a, seeing as the Pixel 5 didn’t quite live up to the hype it garnered. Google, however, has other plans. Google says Let them eat(have) cake(the Pixel 5a) A new rumour has suggested the Pixel 5a will be launching on 26 August, but only to the USA and Japanese markets, for around $450 or just over R6,500 at current exchange rates. Its fairly…

Comic Con Cape Town finally has a new scheduled date. The event will take place on 2 October, barring any further major shutdowns. Reed Exhibitions Africa, the event organiser, took to Twitter on Tuesday to announced the new date. https://twitter.com/ComicConCPT/status/1422482386412003328 The company added, “There will be a strong focus on connecting the geek & pop culture communities of Cape Town, with these pop-up activations at various locations with Covid–19 regulated capacities.” Something for every Comic Con fan out there Attendees can look forward to a variety of events including cosplay competitions for the professionals, casuals and kids. There’s also something for…

Mere days before Samsung’s next Unpacked event, an unboxing video of the upcoming Galaxy Buds 2 was released on YouTube from a relatively small channel, The Mobile Central. This channel previously released a video of the Galaxy Watch 3 before it officially launched, so it seems like distributors in this area like to make a habit of jumping the gun. The video confirms many rumoured features that were leaked not too long ago. In this video, we see the buds in the olive green colourway, which we’ll admit isn’t our favourite, but we’re sure there’ll be others to choose from. Samsung’s Galaxy Buds…

Xiaomi has confirmed this morning that its next smartphone flagship, the Mi MIX 4, will launch on 10 August in China. There have been many leaks and rumours leading up to this phone’s launch and a little more hype than usual. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 4’s selfie camera is where? According to several rumours and a few render leaks, the Mi Mix 4 will feature an under-display selfie camera. The next step towards that coveted 100% screen-to-body ratio. Make no mistake, there have been previous attempts to achieve this in a host of different ways, notably, Xiaomi’s own Mi Mix…

At the beginning of the month, WhatsApp began beta testing a ‘view once’ feature, now it’s finally rolling it out. If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘didn’t we already have this?’ you’d be right. Sort of. WhatsApp already had a ‘disappearing messages’ feature but that didn’t go down as well as you may have thought. If we’re honest, it’s more like an auto-delete button than anything else, something to clear out your chats if you’re that type of person. To say it is limited would be putting it lightly. You can’t change the timeframe of how long the messages last, it’s stuck…