Author: Stuff writer

It hasn’t been an easy few years for BlackBerry but the company is still (just about) afloat – and in an attempt to stay that way it’s working on a new smartphone that echoes the classic BlackBerrys of yore. It’s called, of course, the BlackBerry Classic. Revealed in an open letter by BlackBerry CEO John Chen, the upcoming Classic will hark back to older models in its shape, size and keyboard layout. There’ll be a top row of navigation keys and a trackpad too, and Chen describes it as “the device that has always felt right in your hands and…

With quadcopters getting a lot of bad press lately (mainly due to the fact that any idiot can buy one then fly it over sensitive locations or in an airport’s landing corridor), it’s high time (no pun intended) for an alternative aerial gadget. And the Bionic Bird just might be it. Designed by French aeronautics engineer Edwin Van Ruymbeke, the Bionic Bird weights just 9g and can fly up to 10 eight-minute sorties in a session (the battery charges from empty to full in only 12 minutes). It has a range of 100m and can be flown both indoors and…

HP has just announced an oddity of a PC, and it’s actually rather exciting. Dubbed the Sprout (no, we’re not quite sure why either), this machine initially looks like a pretty ordinary all-in-one desktop. But peer closer and you’ll see it’s far from that. Mounted above the Sprout’s 23in LCD screen is an array of cameras able to scan physical objects placed in front of it, creating 3D models of them that can subsequently be rotated, resized, edited and otherwise manipulated on the computer. The cameras can also parse printed text from documents and books and capture normal photos and…

Word out of Japan this week is that Sharp isn’t content to let 2K smartphone screens rule the market for long – the company reportedly plans to launch 4K mobile LCD displays in little more than a year. The report from Feng.com (via GSM Arena) claims that demands from Chinese manufacturers for even larger and more pixel-dense panels are pushing Sharp to bring much sharper screens to mobile before long. It’s unclear whether the LCD screens will arrive at 4096×2160 or 3840×2160 – both are typically given the 4K designation – but we’d guess the latter given the typical dimensions…

We figured official word was imminent after the odd series of overnight leaks, and sure enough, here it is: the Microsoft Band is very much real, and it’s even available now in the United States. Microsoft says the band – which works with Windows, Android, and iOS phones alike – is launching in limited quantities at this point, and is only available in Microsoft Stores and its web store in the States for now, with a launch price of $199 (R2,190). Putting health and fitness tracking at the forefront, the Microsoft Band keeps tabs on your vitals throughout the day,…

Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t grant many interviews, so when he does take the hot seat there’s always a lot of interest in what he has to say. In this case – an on-stage grilling at the Wall Street Journal’s global tech conference – Cook spoke about the upcoming Apple Watch’s battery life, Apple Pay, the company’s plans to reinvent television and its attitude to customer privacy. Apple has been cagey on the subject of the Watch’s battery until now, with most pundits suggesting the company was still looking for a way to extend it, but it seems they’ve settled…

Fitbit was one of the first to the smartband party with its Flex health tracker – but now that everyone and their granny is getting in on the wearable tech market, it needs to step up its game. Fitbit’s responded with a wave of new smartbands – ranging from the budget Fitbit Charge to the smartwatch-rivalling Fitbit Surge. Fitbit Charge At the entry-level end of Fitbit’s new smartband line-up sits the Fitbit Charge, effectively a Fitbit Force replacement with Caller ID functionality. The Charge tracks steps, distance, calories burned and floors climbed, displaying them on a OLED screen; you also…

The Alienware Graphics Amplifier. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But despite not having a name like Pixel Annihilator 4000, the PC gaming company’s newly revealed little black box could usher in a new era of hybrid PC gaming. Essentially, the Amplifier is an external graphical turbo-charger for the new Alienware 13 laptop (more on that later). It’s got its own power supply, and a slot for a single full-sized PC graphics card, and that’s it. No processor, no RAM, no full motherboard. But it does’t need any of that stuff. When you connect it to the Alienware 13, it…

LG has introduced a new variant of the G3 dubbed the “G3 Screen”. As its moniker suggests, the G3 Screen has a larger (but lower-res) screen than the regular G3 – a 5.9in full HD screen compared to the G3’s 5.5in 2K display. But that’s not the only big difference: there’s also a new octo-core processor on board, and it’s actually been designed and manufactured by LG. THE POWER OF EIGHT The ARM-based NUCLUN processor is LG’s first mobile CPU, and features four cores running at 1.5GHz and four at 1.2GHz. The first batch are used for intensive processing and…

Spare a moment of silence and pour a drink out for Nokia. Its name has finally been axed from gracing Lumia smartphones. Instead, Microsoft will replace it with, well, ‘Microsoft’, ushering in a new era of Microsoft Lumia phones. Have we said Microsoft enough yet? Microsoft. There. It’s unclear when the new Nokia-less phones will land, but the name itself isn’t completely dead. Areas of Nokia that Microsoft’s vast riches didn’t snap up can still use the name, and Microsoft can still choose to label its less powerful ‘feature phones’ with the legendary Finnish brand, for the next ten years.…