Author: Trent Meikle

When Nintendo isn’t putting out GOTY-worthy titles, disappearing emulators or gunning down YouTubers for pointing potential customers in their direction, it’s… also not building the Switch 2. That’s right. The Switch 2 was a lie, a cover-up, hiding the real thing. Meet Alarmo, the R1,700 ($100)… alarm clock. Wait, we’ve got our maths wrong there. Being the mastermind of customer satisfaction it is, Nintendo limits the sale of Alarmo units to the sixteen or so people who subscribe to the Switch’s Online service. That’s another R260, knocking up the price to the R2,000 mark for something our smartphones can do.…

The PS5 Pro, the unholy matrimony of mediocre tech upgrades and an ill-fitting price increase, is officially coming to South Africa. Despite the already too-high $700 overseas price translating to roughly R12,300, South Africans will have to pay a mighty price to get the most ‘innovative’ console released: R19,500. The Pro and Cons We wish more than anyone that was just a figure we pulled from thin air to get more eyes on the website but no, that’s the official price you’ll have to pay if you’re a dedicated gamer trying to get a higher framerate without first degrading the…

After what was certainly a shaky start where the country’s petrol and diesel prices are concerned at the beginning of 2024, things have taken a turn for the better. Since June of this year, South African motorists have experienced a flurry of fuel price drops, with October’s drop bringing about the fifth consecutive price cut for 2024. And now, the Central Energy Fund (CEF) is foretelling even more petrol price gains this November. That’s just what the early predictions are telling us, mind you. A lot can change between now and the beginning of November – when the Department of…

Samsung’s not done yet. After a busy year that’s seen Samsung sticking Galaxy AI into anything and everything it can reach, the company is taking a break and heading back to its budget roots with the launch of the Galaxy A16 5G. At least, it will. Samsung has yet to officially announce the thing, which is only out in the wild due to a premature listing on the company’s Dutch website. As such, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect when the A16 5G eventually turns up locally – minus the pricing and available colourways. The Galaxy…

It wasn’t all that long ago that BYD Auto launched ‘the most affordable EV’ in South Africa, and the company is ready to do it all over again. Except this time, it’s given up on all that goodwill and launching the BYD Seal, the company’s latest EV. That’ll set you back R1 million when all is said and done. R1.2 million if performance is a must. That’s… not bad. Sure, a whole million isn’t something everybody can easily rustle up. Compared to other EVs that have come our way, BYD’s kept things, not exactly reasonable but it’s kept things relatively tame…

Get out of the way, Jim. It’s finally time for Avatar: The Last Airbender to shine. The world of Nickelodeon’s Avatar is finally getting an honest-to-God AAA title. An RPG title, no less. And that’s not even the best bit. The development will be headed by Paramount Game Studios and, more importantly, Saber Interactive. You know, the guys who recently pumped out Warhammer: Space Marine 2? Oh my God, okay it’s happening That’s according to IGN, which got the scoop from the developers – who are, incidentally, in “close collaboration” with Avatar Studios, the division run up by the show’s original creators Michael DiMartino and…

Living in South Africa means putting up with some drawbacks: the occasional loss of signal – or worse, Wi-Fi – being two of them. We can’t promise to make it any better, but we can promise that Spotify is working on a way to make those moments a little less torturous. It’s doing so with Offline Backup, a new feature that’ll keep the hits rollin’, no matter what. Did we mention that no data is required? You want some backup? Offline Backup will automatically generate a playlist when the internet disappears. It isn’t doing so by sneakily downloading a playlist…

Meta believes smart glasses are the future of augmented reality (AR). It might have a point. Sticking in a camera in a pair of stylish glasses without anyone being any wiser is an impressive feat – one that was bound to be exploited in Terminator-level scenarios eventually. A pair of Harvard students have done that by turning Meta’s smart glasses into a privacy nightmare with some simple code and facial recognition software. AnhPhu Nguyen, one of those Harvard students, posted a video showcasing the Orwellian world we currently face, centring around Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses doxxing unsuspecting folks. All it takes…

Dread it. Run from it. Nintendo arrives all the same. And arrive it has, with a single agenda: terminate the Switch emulator Ryujinx, which it has now done. The site’s download page now leads to a dead-end, the GitHub page has been disappeared, and the lead developer took some sort of deal from Nintendo to ensure it remains that way. No, really. According to a post from Ryujinx’s X account, ‘GDKCchan’, the lead developer behind the massive emulator was “contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he’s…

Another day, another budget-beater smartphone hits the market. Only this time, it isn’t coming from Realme, Honor or Vivo – all three have already blown the lids off their budget-centric smartphones for 2024, leaving the path clear for the last piece of the puzzle – Oppo. The Chinese manufacturer has officially released its R6,000 Oppo A60 in South Africa, hoping to nab your attention away from the rest. Let’s get down to business Whether it’ll manage the feat is another matter altogether. Oppo’s wading into a sea of far-too-similar (and frequently cheaper) smartphones that we could easily see eating up…