Author: Brett Venter

It seems like everyone on the planet is investing in some sort of battery backup technology. Anker’s Solix solution is the latest to take the leap into powering an entire home using solar power and a very large battery. This particular option is designed to be rather more modular than most. The lineup of home power products was revealed at the company’s ReCharge event held in New York earlier this week. The international reveal reckons that the products are in line for a global launch in 2024. We can wait. Load shedding certainly won’t have ended by then – but…

Once upon a time, landing a rocket seemed like something out of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Then came Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the Grasshopper program. You might not remember this but the testing for the space company’s Falcon rockets was extensively documented. And awesome. Now it’s 2023 and the company has been launching and landing rockets for years now. Not all of them have come home safely (and it was hilarious). But enough have landed successfully that it’s now commonplace. As of this week, Elon’s company has racked up 200 successful rocket landings. SpaceX goes big After delivering 72 spacecraft…

Huawei’s Mate X3 smartphone might be the best-engineered folding phone we’ve ever encountered. The question really is: Is this amazingly well-put-together device worth the R45,000 asking price? Even when you factor in the R6,000-ish worth of extras Huawei is throwing in to sweeten the deal, is this work R39k? That’s… actually not a question you’re supposed to be asking. Anyone looking to buy a folding smartphone in 2023 should leave price considerations at the door. The tech is still new, it’s still expensive, and you’re going to pay. If you’re on a budget, opt for a normal phone like the…

South African app VodaPay, which is owned and operated (mostly) by Vodacom, has added a couple of new features. These features, the ability to both send and deposit money via the app, are edging the service ever closer to replicating the features of a bank. Which is probably the point, even if it’s being done in small increments. VodaPay your way The first thing you need to know is that depositing money into your VodaPay Wallet requires that you actually go to a physical location. One day, humanity will perfect the art of depositing cash into a mobile device. Today…

Japanese camera company Canon isn’t typically known for taking massive chances, so when it shows off a new 180°/360° camera at Japan’s Photo Next 2023 event, it’s worth paying attention to. It’s important to note that the company hasn’t said anything about a release at this point. We kinda wish they would, though. But since, according to ProNews, the unit isn’t actually in a usable state, it’s not surprising that release info is lacking. The same goes for specification and other capability information, which are similarly unknown. But there are a few things we can tell just from the images…

Music streaming app Spotify, like every company in tech, suffers a bit from the Red Queen effect. That is, the moment it stops evolving, something else is going to steal its place. We just get to sit and reap the benefits — as long as they are benefits. This newest feature could well be one of those. The company, according to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, is working on an update it’ll call ‘Your Offline Mix’. There are absolutely zero points for guessing what it entails (but we’re going to explain it to you anyway because there’s also this thing called…

Quite often, when you reach a milestone age, you start thinking about doing something crazy. Porsche just turned 75 this week. Its present to itself is a little something called the Mission X. Whether you’ll ever be able to buy this crazy hypercar concept isn’t certain yet but you’re definitely going to want to. The German automaker has built it to similar dimensions to the Carrera GT and 918 Spyder but has given it EV internals capable of charging to full incredibly quickly. It’s Porsche’s birthday The Mission X is the successor to the Mission R, which was seen in…

We know that social media is becoming increasingly wacky but we’re not quite at the point where we’re filming our internal organs. Yet. We’re getting close, however. The NaviCam is a medical device currently in development by researchers at George Washington University (GWU). It is… what you’d expect to get from a product with this name. It’s a camera that can be swallowed. That’s not all that unique. They exist but current versions are reliant on gravity and the body’s whims to get where it needs to go. The team at the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences has…

South Africa is due to receive a new electric SUV soon. The Volvo EX30, announced this afternoon, is being billed as one of the country’s most affordable EVs. Granted, that’s not hard to do, but a starting price for the new compact SUV of R776,000 has it in the running for the best-priced (known brand) electric vehicle in the country. ‘Compact’ is the operative word when describing Volvo’s newest vehicle, though that’s also a relative term for the range. The petrol-driven XC90 measures almost five metres from end to end. By comparison, the EX30 features dimensions of 4,233mm x 1,836mm…

Taiwanese tech maker Asus makes loads of Zenbooks. Perhaps too many, but that’s a rant for another day. The latest entry from the company is the Asus Zenbook S 13, an update on a model released last year that, amazingly, Stuff didn’t actually get to test. We might have… but this model’s lacking an S. It’s a pity, too, because we’d have loved to have something to compare this unit directly to. The Zenbook S 13 does a lot to justify its R33,000 price tag, being among the neatest, lightest Windows machines we’ve ever had the pleasure of using. But…