Author: Brett Venter

BlackBerry’s share of the global smartphone market has seen far better days and it’s going to be getting even smaller, falling to around 0.3% of the market by 2018 according to market research firm IDC. Bloomberg reports that shipments of phones from the Canadian outfit are expected to fall by nearly 50%, amounting to 9.7 million units, citing IDC for the numbers. The 0.3% figure for 2018 sounds bad but BlackBerry’s slide will be starting this year – the company is expected to account for only 0.8% of global shipments in 2014. BlackBerry has been moving away from dependence on…

Okay so we don’t officially have Netflix in South Africa but DStv is making some moves in the same direction as the iconic American streaming service. DStv have just announced that Season 2 of House of Cards will become available on their Catch Up service before it officially airs on DStv proper. The first season of House of Cards will become available on Catch Up from 30 May and will remain accessible for DStv Premium viewers until 26 June. Season 2 will also show up on the service from 13 June until 26 June. The series will begin broadcasting on…

LG has made their G3 officially official, as opposed to the recent leak that detailed a little too much about the smartphone. As it turns out, the LG Netherlands gun-jumping was on the money, as were the images that were briefly published. At LG’s London event last night things got a little more specific, even if they only confirmed much that we already know. The G3 will indeed be a 5.5-inch, 2,560 x 1,440 screened slab of plastic. That’s right, there’s no metal to be found in the body of the phone. Just the impression of metal on the outer…

So by now you will have seen the game, as well as (hopefully) our review, now it’s your turn to get in on a Watch_Dogs giveaway. Local distributors Megarom have given Stuff Magazine a copy of Watch_Dogs (on PlayStation 3) to give away to one lucky winner but if it was just the game, we wouldn’t be as thrilled as we are about this. In addition to the game, we have a Watch_Dogs face mask, notebook (the paper kind), and pen available (pictured below). There’s also a Watch_Dogs keyring, t-shirt and wristband/USB drive (not pictured) for that same lucky person.…

Wait, HiSense has a smartphone? Yes, HiSense has a few smartphones actually but this is the first physical specimen to cross the threshold at Stuff Towers. And, on the face of it, HiSense has a pretty decent phone in the Pure 1 though it wallows in the dust left by the major manufacturers. That’s fine though, the company isn’t known for its cellular tech but they’re making strides. The Pure 1 could be mistaken, at a distance, for something out of LG’s stable what with the 5.5-inch display that it packs and the overall shape. Come a little closer though…

It has finally arrived, after months of hype, a delay from the initial launch period and an almost agonising wait for gamer. Watch_Dogs has landed and it’s both more and less than we were hoping it would be. The odd part of this is that the bit we were counting on being spectacular (the story) was a little bit bland but the game world and online and side-quests, oh my… For those who haven’t been riding the hype-train for the past six months or so, Watch_Dogs is the story of a man called Aiden Pearce, a hacker who stumbled on…

Ubisoft’s Watch_Dogs is hitting stores and consoles around the world today and we’ve been looking forward to it for ages. Also launching today is an Android and iOS companion app called ctOS Mobile. The free app is named after the city-wide operating system found in Ubi’s techno-thriller and gives players a chance to mess with console gamers from wherever they happen to be. Ubisoft has, in an official blog post, detailed just what will be available to mobile gamers who are looking to extend their game. There are two game modes available in the app: Race and Free Ride. Race…

We’re expecting an official reveal of LG’s G3 smartphone later today but LG Netherlands seems to have jumped the gun and given us the details a little early. The official website noticed their mistake and pulled the information (the page is no longer active) but not before the specs were recorded and images were pulled from the site. The specs for the G3 from the Netherlands leak are almost a disappointment when compared to other, earlier leaks so there is some speculation that the device detailed is a regional release that won’t be making its way to the global market…

The Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo has dropped a few images of what is almost certainly Lenovo’s upcoming high-end smartphone. The images, which were apparently taken at an internal company event and should not have been released according to Engadget, show the handset itself and also detail a few details regarding the phone. The smartphone, dubbed the Vibe Z2 Pro, will apparently be a 6-inch metal-bodied phone with a laundry list of decent specs. The Vibe Z2 Pro will feature a quad HD display, so we’re looking at something similar to LG’s G3 in terms of screen, as well…

Stress is something that happens to everyone and it’s a wonder that we haven’t got more tools to measure just how annoyed the world at large is making us. Samsung’s S-Health app for the Galaxy S 5 is adding that functionality in a new update though, in addition to the fitness tracking that the smartphone does. The new update will let users turn the embedded heart-rate monitor into a stress monitor that will give users tracking data based on a per hour, per day or per month basis. That’ll be a handy addition for proving that your entire day can…