Author: Brett Venter

This month it seems as though everyone has a double-folding smartphone on the way to market but it looks like Huawei will be the first to introduce one on stage. If you don’t count TCL in 2019. And Samsung in 2021. But since Samsung is (still) working on the concept, as is Tecno, the Chinese giant may steal a fair bit of thunder. From Apple specifically. Reports indicate that Huawei has an event planned in Beijing, China for 14h30 CST (China Standard Time) on 10 September. In case you need us to do the math, that’s less than twelve hours…

It’s been a minute since anyone said anything new about Midjourney. You remember them, right? The service that popularised creating custom images using little more than a sentence prompt before OpenAI and ChatGPT came along to suck all the oxygen out of the room? In a bid for everyone’s attention, the company has announced a mysterious new hardware product. It’s not saying what it is or even giving proper hints as to what it has in mind, it’s just looking for interested souls to join the team. A Midjourney to the future We’re officially getting into hardware. If you’re interested…

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold devices are excellent, even if they’re retreading old ground more and more frequently. Something new is needed and that something might well be another version of the phone. Noted leaker Evan Blass (@EVLeaks) revealed, in a now-protected tweet, that Samsung’s upcoming folding smartphone release — also taking place in 2024 — will be called the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition. Samsung summons backup It’s likely that someone at Samsung got to Blass (temporarily, we’re sure) but not before the information spread… well, all over the place. The Special Edition handset will, according to the leak, feature an…

LG has a funny way of drumming up interest. The South Korean company likes to pre-announce its announcements so you know what it’s announcing when it announces it. The newest announcement from LG? ThinQ ON, a new smart home hub, will turn up at IFA 2024 in Berlin next week. It might look like a hockey puck (or an Amazon Echo) but this little pucker has some personality, according to the company. That’s because this smart home device includes a voice assistant, powered (of course) by AI. ThinQ ON that ThinQ ON isn’t just intended to control LG’s own products,…

Like a tie-in video game that was somewhat delayed, Nokia owner HMD is finally getting around to releasing its Barbie smartphone. If you recall, the best Ken movie ever made was released to general acclaim at the end of last year. For a time, everything was pink. Now it can be again. HMD mentioned that it was releasing this phone, as well as its hard-to-locate Heikenen edition, at the beginning of this year. It’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, being a dumbphone (what did HMD mean by that?), but it’s astonishingly retro. And pink. Come on, Barbie,…

Windows 8. Juicero. Any hardware made by Facebook/Meta. The blockchain. NFTs. Artificial intelligence. All are famous (but stupid) products that didn’t (or don’t) offer any real utility to customers. The next technology blunder? On-demand sunlight. If you’re an investor sitting in a pitch meeting for Reflect Orbital, the company ‘attempting’ this, it has to sound cool as hell. The ability to call in sunlight on a darkened area of the world using nothing but a smartphone app? Incredible. Here’s a billion dollars. As a practical idea? Maybe that’s a stupid thing to invest in. Stupidity in orbit On the surface,…

UPDATE 28/8/24 – South Africa will get Sony’s WF-C510 wireless buds in all available colourways — blue, yellow, black, and white — in November this year. Pricing will be announced later. Sony’s recent bout of budget releases has turned up some very interesting sets of headphones but its new WF-C510 wireless buds could well be the best of the lot. The newly announced in-ears are set to be extremely affordable but with features that belie their price point. The new in-ears will replace Sony’s WF-C500 budget beater (currently on sale for about a thousand bucks) but will offer more advanced…

Nobody will ever accuse certain companies of spending too much time on a product name. iClever is one of these, with its Kid’s Bluetooth Headphones BTH18 being a particularly clunky example. As you can tell from the name, these are headphones… designed for kids. Kids as young as three and as old as fifteen, though these LED-fitted cans are aimed at the younger end of the spectrum. iClever is a Chinese brand so you might think that you’ll have trouble laying hands on these. As it happens, they’re sold via Amazon (in the US). The price, including shipping and customs…

Samsung’s range of folding smartphones has hit a wall when it comes to design. Each iteration of the Fold and Flip series seems only grudgingly incremented. Whether this is a lack of imagination or a limitation on what can be done with a smartphone (it’s not a lack of imagination), the result is the same. Or is it? Samsung has been confirmed to be working on something a little different for its folding smartphone lineup. A so-called “double-folding” smartphone is in development at the company, according to executive Chung Yi. Samsung doubles up Yi was speaking at last week’s International…

Samsung’s Galaxy Ring wearable isn’t coming to South Africa — at least, not this iteration — and that might be a blessing in disguise. The folks at iFixit laid hands on the wearable tech and took it apart. As it happens, that’s a one-way operation. iFixit is known for… well, fixing things but also for taking tech apart to see how much of a pain it would be to repair. Samsung’s newest product is right up there, being ranked as ” 100% disposable”, a trait it shares with Samsung’s new style Galaxy Buds 3. Exploring the Galaxy Ring The major…