Author: Brett Venter

For those of you who don’t follow the inner machinations of companies like Apple, the company ordered between 70 and 80 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus handsets ahead of their launch last year. That way they were able to meet demand and the resulting record-breaking sales were the payoff. Now a Wall Street Journal report claims that Apple’s betting even bigger for 2015, with a reported 85 to 90 million iPhone 6S and 6S Plus handsets expected to be on hand for the launch period this year – including that all-important Christmas window. That’s a lot of confidence…

Microsoft bought up Nokia’s Devices and Services devision last year and we were all envisioning the company entering the smartphone market with a will. But they don’t really seem to know what to do with Windows Phone right now, so they’re going to be downsizing it. Microsoft has announced redundancies, to the tune of 7,800 jobs, that will affect mostly the folks working the company’s relatively new phone arms as well as a write-off of assets related to their Nokia acquisition. The write-off comes to a total of $7.6 billion, more than the $7.2 billion that Microsoft paid for Nokia…

September is fast approaching and that means that we’re going to be seeing a swathe of new phones popping up at IFA 2015. One of these is the Galaxy Note 5, Samsung’s updated phablet, and the rumours have been coming in steadily ahead of the announcement. Now it looks like the design files for the handset have also been leaked. The actual CAD design file, that is, as found by leaker OnLeaks – which has a pretty darn good track record in telling us stuff companies don’t want us to know about yet. The design render has been rotated in a…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcjvIQJns0 We’ve been excited by No Man’s Sky since we first heard about it, if only for the scale that Hello Games is hoping to achieve with this open-universe sci-fi explore-em-up. But we’ve seen little of what the game will entail, aside from brief snatches of the game as a whole. Until now. Gaming website IGN has released the first of a series of looks at No Man’s Sky and they’ve got Hello Games founder Sean Murray doing a voice-over as he plays through what you can expect from a very, very tiny portion of the game. What you need…

Sony’s recent phone announcements have left something to be desired. The Xperia Z3+ and the Z4 were a little meh but a new report indicates that the Japanese smartphone maker is going to be firing all cannons for the Xperia Z5. Expected to be revealed in September this year, the Xperia Z5 is thought to arrive toting all the specs, giving our current favourite the Samsung Galaxy S6 a serious run for its money. That’s quite a bold claim but if the specifications listed for Sony’s next flagship are correct, it’s also an accurate one. The Xperia Z5 will reported…

GoPro has taken the wraps off a new action camera and before you ask, no there is no info on when it will be available in South Africa just yet. But you’re going to want to get your hands on the new GoPro Hero4 Session, the company’s take on a severely compact camera. It’s about half the size of the standard Hero4 models, and lighter to boot, but it features the same video functions. So if you’re married to your current model, you won’t be losing out but if you’d like a more versatile action chronicler, you’re now sorted. The…

All MacBooks are created equal, right? Wrong. There might be design parity across Apple’s range of notebook solutions but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the same performance for your premium payment from everything in the lineup. There are factors to consider, from size and weight to what it has inside to what you’re planning on using it for. And, of course, how much of a gouge it’s going to leave in your bank account. While the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the wordsmith weapon of choice in the Stuff offices (yes, we all use Macs for work), that’s…

You must recall BlackBerry’s possibly-Android handset, called ‘Venice’, that has the folks at Stuff excited even while they’re a little confused. It looks as though its Android OS is all but in the bag, info that comes from a new render by prolific Twitter leaker @evleaks. The new render (above) shows what Venice would look like running Android – an unusual tack that we really hope BlackBerry intends to explore. There’s little doubt that this is Venice, with the slide portion down over the keyboard, but with a wide selection of Google’s apps on the screen. Oh, and note the…

Paying for things on the internet is fraught with peril. Password theft is a sad reality and having your credit card details stolen is something that can definitely happen but Mastercard has plans to make authentication a little more unique. Unless you’re one of a set of twins, that is. Mastercard is currently trialling a new biometric payment authentication system that uses your smartphone’s camera to capture your grinning mug, which will in turn get that online order heading to the depot. That’s right, selfie-centred online payments are now going to be a thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fCMUxiIIlY Users will be able, via…

The Apple harvest is always a fruitful one, with the orchard of rumours frequently littered with scattered speculation. Okay, enough with trying to stretch the metaphor, there’s a fresh crop of rumour (sorry) for the iPhone 6S concerning the camera, modem and battery life of the handset. Seeming to confirm previous reports is a leak that claims that Apple’s rear camera will indeed be making the jump from 8MP to 12MP but the megapixel upgrade isn’t going to be alone. The report, coming anonymously by way of Chinese website Sina Weibo, says that the iPhone 6S’ camera will also support…