Author: Brett Venter

Despite being named like an electric-green motorcycle, the Zeiss ZX1 is an incoming piece of camera equipment. Or, at least, that’s the theory. The Android-powered camera was first announced a few years back before parent company Zeiss went dark about its development. But now, it seems, the unusual camera is actually hitting the market. But it’s not going to be cheap. So it’s quick, then? Zeiss, if you’ve been paying attention, often sees its tech turning up in Sony cameras and Nokia smartphones so they’re at least familiar with Android and camera lenses being in the same place. But the…

Say what you like about Huawei, the Chinese tech-maker has no idea how to stop going in the face of…. well, just look at everything. A new handset has hit South African shores in the shape of Huawei’s P Smart S. That would be a mid-range handset that has landed here at R6,000. So what do you get for your six grand? Well… We could do with a P The spec for the Huawei P Smart S is actually not bad at all. The company’s own Kirin 710F octa-core processor is inside, with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage…

Microsoft’s Surface hardware is finally in South Africa, which means that every new Surface announcement is now a call for excitement, rather than sadness and longing. This is the newest, and perhaps the most exciting, announcement we could possibly get from Microsoft — but only if it makes its way to South Africa. This is the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go. Gotta gotta gotta Go The Surface Laptop Go is a 12.4in version of the company’s existing 13in and 15in Surface Laptop range, but with a focus on affordability in addition to features. The smaller screen size, obviously, means a smaller…

We’re not sure if Nissan’s been keeping a closer eye on the general Eskom situation or if they’re just with us in watching the rest of the world burn in 2020. But the auto-maker has opted to turn its Leaf electric vehicle into a disaster recovery specialist. Its new title? The Nissan Re-Leaf, if you can be-leaf it. Turning over a new Leaf The Nissan Re-Leaf is designed to “…to provide a mobile power supply following natural disasters or extreme weather”, according to the company. Nissan unveiled the vehicle that it hopes to use as a disaster response vehicle in…

If you were using Facebook back in 2009, before Instagram was a thing and when WhatsApp was still a minor contender, chances are you were plagued by the sort of notifications that were considered ‘normal’ back then. Notifications to help water crops and to start your very own virtual farm. Yeah, we used to use the internet for serious business a little over a decade ago, if you consider Farmville in any way serious. Beyond ‘seriously irritating’, that is. But that irritation is finally coming to an end. Farmville, the game that filled your feed (such as it was) with…

Google’s free Maps service is massively useful (while also being the reason just about nobody owns a dedicated GPS unit). And, in this time of pandemic, Google Maps has become just a little more useful. The service has added broader COVID-19 data to Maps as a layer, letting users see country data at a glance. Infection here It’s not, as you might have hoped (or maybe it’s just us), a detailed look at your neighbourhood’s infection rates. It won’t show little Red Zones that need avoiding, like you’re navigating a Resident Evil game. Rather, the new Google Maps layer shows…

We all used to be a lot more connected with our smartphone batteries. Well, it was a different time. Every phone used to have a removable battery, and removing it was your go-to when something wonky happened to your phone. Just pop the case open, pry the battery out and stare at the thing like it insulted your mother before reassembling it and hoping that fixed the software lockup that called for an unscheduled rapid disassembly. Back then, there were a lot of myths and legends about your cellphone battery as well. You had to take the phone out the…

Now this is a feature we’d dearly love to see in South Africa but, somehow, we think the Americans need it just a little more right now. Ring, which has a very interesting camera/drone combo on the way in the new year, also has a fancy new dashcam due. And the Ring Car Cam has a fancy new feature to go along with it. Racing Rings around the competition Ring’s new car camera (they don’t seem to be calling it a dashcam) works just like any other moderately-priced dashcam — it’s got a front and rear-facing camera and it’ll record…

It’s the sort of thing you might expect from a movie about a smart building that kills people (there is at least one and it wasn’t even made by the Sharknado folks). Ring, they of the smart doorbells and cameras, have announced the Always Home Cam, a smart camera that’ll fly around your house to see what’s going on when you’re not there. Droning on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2jFN_QEcS4&feature=emb_logo Part drone, part IP camera, the Always Home Cam works in a few ways. When it’s first unpacked, you can map your home and send it commands to check a certain room on demand.…

So you’ve been eyeing Chinese brand Oppo’s technologically-advanced range of smartphones, have you? So have we, truth be told, but it’s such a mission to try and get them here from China or another country that actually has them. Until, that is… until now. Oppo is officially launching in South Africa. But they’re not going balls to the wall right at the start. Oppo’s bringing in a trio of its mid-range handsets this year to test the waters, before its flagships descend on South Africa in the first half of 2021. And those will be its new flagships, not the…