Author: Brett Venter

A fresh year, a fresh set of expectations. Except when it comes to Apple’s iPhone what we’re expecting is always “better than last year”. They haven’t really managed to disappoint, though some updates have been incremental at best, but 2016 is going to be a rough year for them. How do you take something like the iPhone 6s and improve on it without going the Samsung route and dropping the mobile phone equivalent of a V12 engine into it? Well, the rumours below suggest a few ways Apple might raise our eyebrows in 2016. A Double Camera? Really? Apple might have…

L’Oréal’s UV patch will indicate sunburn, won’t help much in cases of extreme insults There’s getting a burn and then there’s getting a burn. And while it might be devastating to have your friends or a random stranger completely destroy your self-confidence, sunburn tends to have much more lethal effects in large enough doses. Cosmetics company L’Oréal has come up with a way to monitor your UV absorption (other than checking yourself for blisters) so that you know just how much sunlight you’re getting. Called the My UV Patch, this is a flexible sticker-type thing which changes colour based on…

BMW’s CES 2016 i8 Spyder concept is what daydreams are made of If you’re any kind of BMW fan, and we know that the company has their fans in South Africa, then you’re going to want to check out the BMW i8 Spyder concept that BMW have cooked up for CES 2016. It’s not so much a car as it is a showcase of upcoming vehicle technology, though it’s been packaged in a doorless car that looks like it would be a dream to drive. Until you took a corner too sharply. But on the inside… oh, there’s a revised…

Well that took freaking long enough. Netflix, in case you’ve been under a rock for the last 24 hours, expanded their service pretty much globally late yesterday and South Africa is one of those destinations. Superficially it means that there’s no more need to muck around with American VPNs and spoofing your IP to enjoy the streaming service so beloved of the States and UK. Or is there? There are loads of streaming services available in South Africa all of a sudden but there’s really only one that offers enough content to stand toe-to-toe with Netflix’s brand new local offering.…

Misfit has a little Ray of sunshine headed your way Misfit makes some legitimately attractive fitness tech, with the Shine lineup being the er… shining moment for the company. But there’s a newly-announced fitness tracker from the Misfit misfits called the Ray which should be able to brighten up your day. In keeping with the company’s style, the Ray is basic, a metallic tube with a single multicoloured LED which is used for notifications. Functionally it’s more or less the same as the Misfit Shine, capable of tracking the same metrics and able to withstand water but you can remove…

You might have heard rumours that motor vehicle company Faraday Future is actually Apple in disguise, putting together their vehicular ambitions in (more or less) secret. We’re still not totally sure on that score but what we are sure of is that Faraday’s FFZero 1 concept electric vehicle, on show at CES 2016, is probably a time machine in disguise. How else do you explain the design, which wouldn’t look out of place in a video game or a billionaire superhero’s underground parking lot (Stark or Wayne – your call). There’s a massive tail-fin (which can display digital information on…

Samsung haven’t done what they usually do and attempt to take over the whole of CES but they’re also not resting on their laurels. We’re expecting big things from the company’s Unpacked event at Mobile World Congress a little later this year but in the meantime they’ve announced a few things that have nothing to do with smartphones. And, well, here they are. Samsung’s hoping to scratch the Surface with the TabPro S Samsung’s TabPro S leaked out a little earlier than it should have but it’s still perhaps the highlight of the company’s CES 2016 showing. It’s a tablet,…

It’s that time of year again. We’ve taken stock of the best that 2015 had to offer, weighed the options available and rendered judgement. That’s right, the January/February 2016 issue of Stuff Magazine contains our 2015 Gadget Awards winners! As if the bright red cover wasn’t the biggest giveaway ever…  That’s obviously not all. We’ve got one of our biggest game review sections ever in the current issue of the mag, touching on all the highlights from the 2015 year-end madness. If you somehow missed these experiences, you’ll have the tools needed to correct that the right way. Also: What…

Star Wars Sphero BB-8 – A New Droid (which can be controlled with a… Force Band?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTBsBKrRR0k Just about the last thing we did at the Stuff offices before going off the grid last year was give away two Star Wars Sphero BB-8 app-controlled droids. And we’re hoping that we’re going to have a chance to give away the updated version, which is slated for launch some time this year. The droid doesn’t appear to have changed much but Sphero are planning on including a gesture-control ‘Force Band’ with the updated droid, so you can really feel like a Jedi…

The Samsung Galaxy S7 rumour train pulled out of the station in September last year and it’s still picking up steam. There are said to be several versions of the new flagship headed our way and they’re going to be quite different to their predecessors if the latest reports have any credence to them. Let us see what is trailing behind the rumour engine in early 2016, shall we? Bigger Screen Samsung likes big phones, we saw that with the S6 and S6 Edge as well as the monster Galaxy S6 Edge+. But it seems that they’re going to be incrementing screens for one…