Author: Brett Venter

Oppo’s Reno 5 handset has only recently made landfall in South Africa but already it’s set to add a new member to its family. But, since it lives in China, expect the Oppo Reno 6 — rumoured to be launching a little later this month — to take a little time to get here. Oppo-sight day The brand tends to go a little overboard when announcing new products, especially the Reno lineup, so a claim that there’s a television event planned for 22 May this year with China’s  Zheijang television channel has some credence. The event is expected to focus…

WhatsApp is all about its updates lately, offering improvements to its disappearing messages and its desktop app. But there’s something new in the works — a review tool for that love-it-or-hate-it feature, voice messages. The service, according to WABetaInfo, is calling its new feature Review Voice Messages because… well, you use it to review your voice messages prior to sending them off. WhatsApp with this voice thing, anyway? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfdcGxCRRcE&t=2s Don’t get too excited, yet. You won’t be checking your audio quality prior to sending off your elegantly crafted mini-podcasts to your adoring fans in that one WhatsApp group just yet.…

Apple announced a whole mess of new products at its Spring Loaded event, which isn’t all that surprising. Typically, we were made to wait for local pricing for the new crop of devices but that wait is over. Apple’s local arm has pricing for the new purple iPhone, the speedy new M1-powered iPad Pros, the refreshed Apple TV (plus the new remote) and the AirTags. All of the devices are currently available for pre-order, so if you must have that purple handset, best you act quickly before everyone else has one. Apple’s TV and AirTags If you’re dying to get…

China has its eyes, along with the rest of the world, on other planets and places outside our solar system. The country’s Chinese Space Station Telescope, intended to launch in 2024, is a space telescope in the vein of the famous Hubble but with a few significant differences. The Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) is a little cumbersome, at least as far as a name goes, but the device is known by another title — Xuntian, or Heavenly Cruiser. Here’s what the pending eye in the sky entails: Xuntian rituals Xuntian will, when it launches, be fitted with a two-metre…

Another major tech convention has confirmed that it’ll be going ahead with an in-person event. CES 2022 will return to Las Vegas next year, according to the Consumer Technology Association. The association joins the GSMA, who are pushing to resume in-person events in June this year. At least the CTA is only targeting January 2022 for the return of the event. Are we ready for CES 2022? CES 2022 will have more than 1,000 exhibitors, according to the official announcement, when it hits Vegas from 3 to 8 January 2022. There will be dedicated media days on 3 and 4…

Remember last week when it was rumoured that Spotify would be launching its own podcast subscription system? Guess what? Spotify has confirmed that it is launching its own podcast subscription system, and they’ve detailed what it’ll entail. Sadly, one of the main things you need to know is that the service is only available in the States for now. Other countries will be added later, but there’s no timeline for that just yet. Speaking of Spotify The service will be available though Anchor, the company’s platform. Users will be able to make podcasts as subscriber-only on Anchor, and they’ll be…

Stop us if you’ve heard this one. Husqvarna is teasing a new electric motorcycle concept, called the E-Pilen (which sounds vaguely dirty to our South African ears). The bike doesn’t have a launch date or a price as yet, just a short teaser video showing off the new e-ride. South Africans might be more familiar with Husqvarna as a brand as it pertains to generators or lawnmowers, but, like Honda, they’re responsible for motorcycles as well. The Swedish company’s not quite like their motor vehicle counterpart Volvo, though — it’s hard to be incredibly safe on a motorcycle. That’s the…

Google is giving some of its users Guacamole. That’s not some weird code, that’s an actual menu setting appearing on some Android devices. It’s a new setting, named after the tasty green paste you put on your toast if you can’t afford a house of your own, and it’s related to the Google Assistant. It’s also not officially official yet, so we’ve only got a very basic idea what it really does. Spicy guacamole As spotted by Android Police, some users are finding that there’s a new setting in the Google Assistant menu. It doesn’t, at this point, actually do…

Last week at Apple’s Spring Loaded event, the tech-maker announced plans for paid podcast subscriptions (with Apple taking a healthy cut of proceedings). Spotify, it seems, might follow suit by launching a similar offering for its users. It might be time to dust off that podcast idea and finally start recording. Spotify hits the spot All the more because the anonymous sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal have claimed that Spotify, unlike Apple, won’t be taking a percentage of potential revenue, nor is there supposed to be a fee involved in setting yourself up to take payments. In addition,…

This year’s been all about space exploration, with several countries reaching the red planet and NASA in particular showing off by deploying their first off-world helicopter. Ingenuity has taken the long road there but from its first test flight, undertaken last week, the little chopper has since conducted two more flights. Ingenuity in the air The second of the helicopter’s test flights took place on 22 April and saw the little craft rise to about 5.2 metres above the Martian surface. There it hovered, pitching forward enough to fly about two metres before returning to the ground. It was on…