Author: Brett Venter

Huawei’s smartphone woes are far from over but the company is putting on a brave face. Case in point: The announcement of the new Mate X2, Huawei’s next folding smartphone. Announced on Chinese social media platform Weibo, we’ve got a weirdly ambiguous look at what the Mate X2 will look like. More on that in a second, though. We also know when it’ll be revealed — 22 February this year. What’s better than a Mate? A Mate X2, of course But, beyond the official date, there’s little the company is giving away. The launch takes place in China, with the…

We’ve seen all sorts of fake meat in recent years. Now, the McPlant is set to join the likes of the Impossible and Beyond burgers, as well as whatever fake chicken KFC was fielding and then Pizza Hut’s Incogmeato. Yeah, that’s a real thing. The McPlant, if the name and the headline haven’t given it away, is a plant-based burger from the global purveyor of *-based foods, McDonald’s. But don’t expect to see it at your local drive-thru any time soon — the burger is being tested in Sweden and Denmark for the moment. McPlant your flag somewhere The new…

It wasn’t all that long ago that Chinese tech-maker Huawei was sitting on top of the smartphone world, but Donald Trump’s actions are finally starting to tell against the company. From being the world’s top smartphone vendor midway through 2020 (yes, we know there were extenuating circumstances), Huawei has fallen out of the top five smartphone vendors list for the first time in six years. Huawei gonna fix this? That’s according to market research firm Canalys, published a report showing just how well Apple’s lovely iPhone 12 range is doing. But that’s not all the report showed. Huawei’s shipments declined…

Well, that’s just inspirational. Private space company SpaceX will be sending several “civilians” to space at the end of 2021, as part of a mission called Inspiration4. It will be “…the world’s first all-civilian mission” to space, helmed by one Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of a company called Shift4 Payments. There’s… sort of a point to this –and that’s to raise money for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and it’s doing that by making the two available seats accessible to folks who engage in fundraising. Specifically, giving folks the opportunity to become one of the “…crew members…

Samsung’s phone design was novel back when it first turned up in the wonderful Galaxy S8. Now, almost four years later, it’s just business as usual. From the front, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G apart from its older siblings, stretching all the way back to 2017 (as long as the screen’s not lit up). Which sort of sets the tone for this handset. It’s Samsung’s best yet, there’s no doubt about that. With R28,000 as an entry point for the Ultra (with the 512GB version setting you back R30,000), it bloody better be. But if…

Apple has long been rumoured to be working on a form of virtual reality or augmented reality hardware, even if the rumours can’t quite seem to nail down when exactly we’ll see either of these. A new report from Bloomberg is the most detailed yet. It claims that Apple has both AR and VR gear in the works, with a VR headset slated to launch first before more consumer-friendly AR hits the market. Virtually Apple The report cites “people with knowledge of the matter”, giving more information on the apparent project than we’ve seen to date. In terms of design,…

Wait, some of you were still on holiday? MTN has launched a new set of combined hardware/data deals for subscribers old and new, as well as people who use pre-paid rather than contracts. Most deals include a bit of hardware, plus data, and are aimed at kids heading back to school — though they’re likely going to be having classes in your lounge once more. Some data might be useful in that case. MTN your wallet Prepaid customers have several options available to them. R600 (once-off) will net them a Sharelink H220M Mi-Fi LTE router, along with a once-off 13GB…

That was quick — Smartphone brand Honor, following its sale to a Chinese consortium, has announced the Honor V40 5G, its first Huawei-less smartphone. As you might expect, it’s no slouch in the hardware department. In addition, the handset follows the company’s trend of being more affordable than most, especially considering the hardware you’re getting. Where’s the Honor V40? Which, expectedly, included a few interesting choices. MediaTek’s Dimensity 1000+ processor is handling the workload, with 8GB of RAM and a couple of storage options in the background. The display is almost certain to impress — Honor’s gone for a 6.72in…

We’d be lying if we said that we weren’t expecting something like this — LG is considering backing out of the smartphone industry. That’s according to the Korea Herald, citing the company’s CEO Kwon Bong-seok. Life without LG LG’s head sent out an internal memo hinting at something large on the horizon for the company’s smartphone division — which included the following reassurance: “Regardless of any change in the direction of the smartphone business operation, the employment will be maintained, so there is no need to worry.” This was followed by a company spokesperson saying, “Since the competition in the…

Eyes play a very common role in tech, but we’re usually confined to tracking them rather than fixing them. That’s about to change. An Israeli company called CorNeat Vision has performed its first cornea transplant using a wholly-synthetic replacement. The operation, performed by Professor Irit Bahar at the Rabin Medical Centre in Israel, saw its patient, a 78-year-old man, regain enough vision to read an eye exam chart and to recognise his family members immediately after the operation concluded. The implant itself is composed of a synthetic material that “…mimics the microstructure of the Extracellular Matrix (ECM) – the natural biological…