Author: Stuff writer

THE BASICS Try new things Resident Evil Village on an iPhone is a great technical feat, but it’s horrible to play without a controller – and not ideal with one. For some titles, then, it’s best to stick with a console or PC. So rather than replicating your console experience on a phone, try new games – especially ones designed specifically for touchscreens. Be happy, not IAP-py In-app purchases increasingly infest console and PC gaming, but they’re endemic on mobile. Ideally, find paid games that avoid such nonsense, or those with a one-off purchase to unlock the main game, with…

Seeing as we’re well into the throws of winter, here are a few wintery-themed mobile games in case you’re the type who likes the idea of cold but doesn’t like to feel it in your bones. These go really well with a blanket and a mug of something warm. A Good Snowman Monsters get a bad rep, mostly because of their tendency to go GRAARHHH and eat people. Not this one – it just wants to build snowmen. The snag: all the snow sits inside claustrophobic gardens surrounded by hedges. To make the snowmen, you must carefully plot out the…

South Africa’s minister of electricity and energy, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, recently told the Sunday Times (paywall) that his ministry was close to finalising plans to secure funding approval for a new local nuclear power station. The minister first announced the project in December last year which aims to add a further 2.5GW (2,500MW) of power generation to the country’s grid. That should go a long way to help alleviate the electricity shortage that has plagued South Africa — when it is eventually completed. Don’t expect that to be anytime soon, however. Nuclear power takes time Putting aside the fact that these…

Now you’re talking. This one had a proper keyboard, unlike your newfangled phones. Yes – and that was a big deal at the time. The BlackBerry 850 was tiny, yet had all the keys you needed to rapidly smash out messages – even if you did sometimes wish you could file your fingers down to points. Still, that was better than mashing numbers on a Nokia until it revealed the right letter, or braving its terrifying autocorrect system. In fact, the 850 even excelled there: you could quickly craft custom entries, for example, to expand ‘mon’ to ‘Monday’. Just as…

Halfway through the year, the office can seem a little low-vibrational… But there’s a revival coming, an upscaling that’ll change a low-quality office into a Wow one! Catch Samsung’s Unbox & Discover 2024 event, live-streamed on Stuff’s YouTube channel, Facebook page, and X.com profile, at 17h00 on 12 June. Samsung Unbox & Discover 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW-CrDF9wTg

After weeks of anticipation, the Huawei Pura 70 series is finally in South Africa. This bold new flagship series packs a punch in design, photography, and performance, showcasing that Huawei is aiming high with its new range of smartphones. Huawei sent Stuff the Pura 70 Pro to unbox, so that’s just what we did. If you like what you see, the Pura 70 series is already available online and in stores, starting at R19,999 with the Pura 70 Pro going for R26,999. Unboxing the Huawei Pura 70 Pro

If you’re a South African app developer, the June-July 2024 issue of Stuff should be on your radar. That’s doubly true if you answered Stuff’s recent call for entries into its 2024 App Awards, which is one of the highlight features of this issue of the mag. But it’s far from the only reason to purchase this newly-dropped copy of Stuff. As ever, there’s always more to see.  Smartphones. Everyone has one. Or they really want one. Either way, it’s an excuse for us to immerse ourselves in the very best smartphones to come out in 2024. Oh, sure, there…

It’s the first brick of Apple’s walled garden! A beige brick! With a tiny screen! It was also revolutionary: the first successful all-in-one computer with a built-in display, controlled with a mouse, and with a graphical user interface rather than a command line. As Apple saw it, the company was defying conformity. Nowhere was this more evident than in its launch commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, which featured an athlete sprinting past drone-like workers before hurling a sledgehammer into a TV screen depicting Orwell’s Big Brother. Ironic, given Apple’s famous penchant for control and locking things down… Indeed. And the…

Wow, IBM. Has Stuff been taken over by suits? What next: “Why spreadsheets are fantastic”? Sure, ‘IBM PC’ might evoke people doing dull things in dull offices, rather than the cool things people do with computers today. But this was 1981. IBM’s debut PC, the 5150, revolutionised the market … despite the fact that it failed to outperform its rivals and was light on features unless you became light of wallet buying a load of upgrades prior to plugging the thing in. But to borrow a later Apple phrase, IBM quickly won out because it could ‘think different’. Hang on,…

Some do it for the recognition. Others out of a sense of social responsibility. Still more were going to do it anyway. It doesn’t matter why you design and develop apps; Stuff wants to hear from you. You could be a South African app developer who has made and launched – or is about to launch – an app on the South African or international market, either way, the important thing is that Stuff and its panel of judges get a chance to use, test and review your app. You will then qualify and be in the running for Stuff’s…