Author: Brett Venter

We’re all very used to noise on the road. Whether it’s the grind of tyres on tarmac or the whoosh of that insane driver overtaking you at twice the speed limit, road travel comes with more than its share of aural distraction. But not for much longer: Meet audio company Harman’s HALOsonic Road Noise Cancelling (RNC) tech, which is being developed in conjunction with Lotus. What Harman’s noise cancelling tech does is use accelerometers fitted to a vehicle to measure vibration from the road, which is then picked up by the in-system controller. An algorithm is used to create a series…

Sony’s newest Xperia additions are flat slabs of glass, metal and plastic but, despite the difference in screen size between the main Xperia Z3 and the Xperia Z3 Compact, there’s not a whole lot of difference under the surface. Using the Xperia Z3 Compact is almost like looking at the Z3 from the wrong side of a telescope. Read More: Xperia Z3 Review Yet another long story short, if you’ve read our review or had the good fortune of actually handling the slickly-presented Xperia Z3, you’re going to have a pretty good idea of what this review consists of. Flagship…

Perhaps you’ve heard of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, the tablet-based game set in the Warcraft universe that has acted as a massive time-sink everywhere (including the Stuff offices). If that is the case, you’ve been playing it on an iPad or on a Windows 8 tablet rather than anything that runs Google’s Android OS. Fans have been calling for an Android tablet version and there’s some good news there. We’ll see it before the end of the year, unforeseen delays permitting. Blizzard has said in a blog post that “…we’ve got our sights set on a release for Android tablets,…

Teachers everywhere are going to have another reason to keep smartphones away from their students when a new app, called PhotoMath, rolls out onto the market. The company behind PhotoMath, Microblink, is taking a page from the Big Bang Theory TV show and have created an app that will return answers to mathematical formulas and expressions, providing results based on what your smartphone camera is able to see on the page. According to the company the app “…reads and solves mathematical expressions by using the camera of your mobile device in real time”, adding that “PhotoMath currently supports basic arithmetics, fractions,…

It seems like just the other day that we had our hands on Sony’s Xperia Z2 smartphone and already the next version has dropped its thin and stylish form into our laps. Actually it was a bare five months ago that we were reviewing the Xperia Z2 (sometimes these things arrive late) and now we’ve got the pleasure of playing with its successor. Read More: Sony Xperia Z2 review Unfortunately this is more of an incremental release than a full-fledged upgrade: the short ending to this review is that if you’re already rocking a Z2 you might as well keep on…

We honestly can’t wait for cars that are able to (safely) drive themselves and the various car manufacturers are certainly attempting to oblige us with more impressive demonstrations of the autonomous vehicles being seen all the time. The latest, and certainly most incandescent we’ve seen to date, is an Audi RS 7 concept vehicle that spend some time taking a lap at the Hockenheim Ring in Germany. ‘Big deal’, you say, ‘we’ve seen driverless cars before. Yes, you have but not like this. The RS 7 concept was completely driverless throughout the event, other than the GPS information and cameras in…

We’ve known it was coming and it’s been happening for a while but Apple have made it officially official at last: as of 1 February all app that are submitted to the company’s App Store will have to support 64-bit processors. This is something that app developers have known for some time, and since the iPad Air’s 64-bit processor hit the market last year everyone else has at least known that it was coming. But for developers it’s not going to be optional any more, as they will have to make sure that apps “…include 64-bit support and be built…

Vodacom’s second branded Android device, behind the Smart Kicka entry-level smartphone, is the Smart Tab 3G, a 7-inch tablet that comes in at a price point that just about everyone can afford. If you’re looking to go pre-paid then Vodacom’s hardware will set you back a grand, otherwise it’ll start off at R59 per month on a 500GB Top-Up contract (up to a max of of around R160pm for 3GB of data a month). Read More: Entry-level Android Phones Vodacom are obviously hoping to put more tablets in the hands of users in SA and this pretty darned low-cost effort…

Aorus is a gaming-specific brand that has impressed us, though it probably doesn’t hurt that we’ve been getting the fully tricked-out laptops to play with. The newest piece of kit to cross our desks is the Aorus X3 Plus, a 13.9-inch gaming notebook that comes with a wicked sleek design and all of the bells and whistles. Read More: Aorus X7 v2 review But all of those additions, from the high-end processor to the eye-pleasing display to the speedy graphics solution found in this oddly-sized portable gaming rig comes at a price, both literal and figurative. Looks Fast The X3…

HiSense has been a growing presence in South Africa, now claiming the second spot in terms of fridges and TV sets in local homes and they’re going for the upper end of the market with their just-launched addition to their Vision TV lineup. Calling it a “first-of-its-kind” TV, HiSense are bringing a locally-made, Android-powered Smart TV to our shores. HiSense South Africa General Manager Jerry Lui claims that the Vision TV is “…leaps and bounds ahead of our competitors and any other TV in the market”, adding that “…[w]hat is even more exciting for us, is that the Vision TVs…