Report: Samsung readying foldable smartphone for January release

As soon as next year mobile phones are set to fully embrace the new generation of foldable screen technology that will completely change the dimension and scope of the devices. While LG wants to have rollable HDTV's by 2017, it looks like Samsung plans to unleash its foldable smartphone displays as early as January 2016 across two different iterations.

SamMobile reports that Samsung will market its new flexible display model, codenamed "Project Valley", as soon as January of next year.

While no specs are confirmed at this point, Project Valley's SM-G929F model number is closely related to that of the S6 Edge+ model number SM-G928, hinting that the handset might match the Edge+'s hardware. Samsung's Project Valley phone will sport a foldable AMOLED display that can be squeezed into a wallet-like shape. A recent patent filing shows hints on how the foldable tech will work, showing a new "hinge system" that bisects the phone's display.

Continue reading: Report: Samsung readying foldable smartphone for January release (full post)

PlayStation 4 sales are 'well over 25 million', says Sony exec

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 28, 2015 3:05 PM CDT

Sony's PlayStation 4 has traditionally dominated console sales charts over Microsoft's Xbox One and Nintendo's beleaguered Wii U, and that trend shows no signs of slowing. At Paris Games Week 2015, a Sony exec let slip that the PS4 still reigns supreme in terms of global consumer adoption and has overshot the 25 million sales milestone by a margin.

PlayStation 4 sales are 'well over 25 million', says Sony exec

"I don't think there's a better time to buy into PlayStation - PS4 particularly. Our installed base now is well over 25 million," said Sony exec Michael Denny in an interview with Games Industry Biz. "That gives us a massive community of gamers, supported by a lot of new community features. We've got great games out there, more coming through. We're looking forward to 2016, it's an exciting time."

Interestingly enough, VG Chartz notes the PlayStation 4 has sold 25.45 million units worldwide, but Sony probably has more specifically updated sales data on-hand. In light of the stalwart sales, the Japanese console-maker bumped its fiscal year PS4 projections from 16 million units to 16.5 million units sold.

Continue reading: PlayStation 4 sales are 'well over 25 million', says Sony exec (full post)

Motorola's new Droid Turbo 2 smartphone features shatterproof display

Motorola teamed up with Verizon on two new smartphones that were unveiled at a press event in New York City yesterday, where we were introduced to the new Droid Turbo 2 and Droid Maxx 2 smartphones.

Motorola's new Droid Turbo 2 smartphone features shatterproof display

Starting with the Droid Turbo 2, which features a 5.4-inch AMOLED display with a 2560x1440 resolution (540 PPI). The display has Motorola's impressive ShatterShield technology (check out the video above), which truly protects the display from shattering if you drop it, on every surface. Inside, it rocks Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 processor at 2GHz, 3GB of DDR4 RAM, and either 32GB or 64GB of storage, expandable through a microSD card.

We also have a 21-megapixel rear-facing camera with an f/2.0 aperture, phase detect auto-focus and dual-LED flash that is capable of recording 4K video at 30FPS. Up front, we have a 5-megapixel shooter with a wide-angle lens. There's also dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi with MIMO, Bluetooth 4.1 LE and NFC technology.

Continue reading: Motorola's new Droid Turbo 2 smartphone features shatterproof display (full post)

AMD working on a new Catalyst Omega-like driver release for November

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Oct 27, 2015 7:35 PM CDT

Can you believe it has been nearly a year since AMD released its Catalyst Omega drivers, which unleashed a bunch of new features and squashed just as many, if not more bugs. Well, according to the latest rumors, AMD is working on another 'Special Edition' set of Catalyst Omega drivers for Radeon owners.

AMD is expected to launch the new Catalyst drivers next month, but we shouldn't expect them to keep the 'Catalyst Omega' name. What we can expect, are hopefully the same vast features and changes that AMD pushed out with the Catalyst Omega drivers last year. I would expect some big improvements to the Fiji-powered cards in the R9 Nano, R9 Fury and R9 Fury X as well as the entire Radeon 300 series.

I'm sure we'll see some big improvements in the DX12 side of things, where AMD has seen NVIDIA catch up on the DirectX 12 front in Ashes of the Singularity. As soon as AMD drop the new drivers, you can be sure we'll be reporting on them, and running over our usual benchmark suite.

Continue reading: AMD working on a new Catalyst Omega-like driver release for November (full post)

No Man's Sky release date is June 2016 on PS4

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 27, 2015 1:28 PM CDT

Hello Games' procedurally-generated space sim No Man's Sky is one of the most anticipated games in recent memory, and now studio founder Sean Murray finally has a release window planned for the game.

No Man's Sky release date is June 2016 on PS4

According to an announcement made at Sony's showcase at Paris Games Week, No Man's Sky will be available on June 2016 for the PlayStation 4. We still have no word on when the PC version of the game will release, and we might even see another timed-exclusivity deal for No Man's Sky on PS4. Hello Games' founder and boss Sean Murray also announced the news on the PlayStation Blog, and affirms that Sony and the studio will reveal a ton of new information in the coming months.

"Since E3 our release date has now become clear. The game, our ambition and some key developments have fallen into place. It's incredibly hard work, but development is going really well," Murray said, iterating that No Man's Sky is the studio's swan song, their ultimate pipe dream fantasy made into a reality. "This is a game that means everything to our team. I have wanted to play something like No Man's Sky since I was a kid, and many of you have told me you feel the same. For all of us, we get one shot to make this game and we can't mess it up. Our small team knows the world is watching, we've come from the bottom and we don't take it lightly."

Continue reading: No Man's Sky release date is June 2016 on PS4 (full post)

Xbox One's backward compatibility launch date revealed

Derek Strickland | Gaming | Oct 27, 2015 8:49 AM CDT

Xbox One gamers have been looking forward to the console's new Xbox One Experience update for quite some time. Not only does the update bring much-needed UI changes, it introduces backward compatibility, opening up new doors for a host of yesteryear games. While we've been told in the past to expect the update in November, Microsoft has finally revealed a specific date when the NXOE will roll out.

During last night's Halo 5 livestream celebration, Xbox boss Phil Spencer unveiled that the substantial Xbox One update will hit on November 12, just two days after the anticipated launch of Fallout 4. The update is set to completely optimize the Xbox One in a slew of different ways, including offering backward compatibility across 100 different Xbox 360 games, letting users set their own specific customized button-mapping profiles via controller settings, and a cleaner, much more responsive Xbox One UI.

One of the biggest additions comes with Windows 10 integration, which will come wrapped up within the console's big update. In order to bring the new OS to the Xbox One, Microsoft developed a console-specific kernel called OneCore, which aims to boost productivity and further optimize the Xbox One's cross-platform unification into the Windows 10 ecosystem. OneCore will also plant the seeds for DirectX 12 integration onto the console, which could boost the console's ESRAM performance by 15%.

Continue reading: Xbox One's backward compatibility launch date revealed (full post)

LG's new V10 smartphone capable of 150MB/sec, thanks to SanDisk iNAND

One of LG's most interesting phones would have to be the new V10 smartphone, with dual screens and so much more. But inside, it rocks some serious storage performance thanks to SanDisk's "best-in-class embedded storage solution for imaging", the iNAND 7232 embedded flash drive (EFD).

LG's new V10 smartphone capable of 150MB/sec, thanks to SanDisk iNAND

LG's V10 smartphone is the first handset to meet SanDisk's guidelines for 'Extreme Photo-Imaging Capabilities', or EPIC. SanDisk's EPIC guidelines were designed by SanDisk for its OEMs, so that it could differentiate handsets which are EPIC-capable, from other handsets. The impressive iNAND 7232 storage solution used in the V10 smartphone is optimized for high frame rate, 4K content.

Christopher Bergey, VP and GM of Mobile and Tablet Solutions at SanDisk explains: "LG has once again reaffirmed their leadership in smartphone imaging and video with the LG V10, and we are proud to recognize it as the first SanDisk 'EPIC' smartphone. The LG V10 smartphone is an exciting step forward for the SanDisk EPIC initiative. Leveraging SanDisk's deep understanding of flash storage, digital imaging and the mobile ecosystem, our EPIC marketing initiative is uniquely bringing together ecosystem hardware, software and storage to break new ground in smartphone imaging".

Continue reading: LG's new V10 smartphone capable of 150MB/sec, thanks to SanDisk iNAND (full post)

Corsair unveils its new Katar gaming mouse, MM300 mouse pads

Anthony Garreffa | Peripherals | Oct 27, 2015 4:01 AM CDT

Corsair has just unveiled its latest peripheral, the Katar gaming mouse. Corsair's latest product is a new competitive gaming mouse for huge eSports titles like CS:GO and League of Legends.

The new Corsair Katar has been created "with the help of top pro-gaming teams around the world" and even goes as far as including a "pro player mode" which lets you "get up to speed with preconfigured performance and tuning settings customized by the world's top players". The Katar has an 8000 DPI optical sensor, a 'zero lag interface' with the Katar polling at 1000Hz, and more. Corsair will be selling the new Katar gaming mouse with an MSRP of just $39.99.

The company also unveiled its new MM300 mouse pad, in three sizes: small, medium and extended. The new Corsair MM300 includes a "Textile-weave surface designed for pixel-precise targeting and low friction tracking" and "Surrounded stitched edges guard against surface peeling". The MSRP on the new Corsair MM300 mouse pads are as follows: Small for $14.99, Medium for $19.99, and Extended for $29.99.

Continue reading: Corsair unveils its new Katar gaming mouse, MM300 mouse pads (full post)

AMD also rumored to be using GDDR5X on its next-gen 14nm GPUs

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Oct 27, 2015 2:35 AM CDT

When we heard whispers of NVIDIA using GDDR5X on its upcoming Pascal GPUs, it made sense. HBM2 is going to be sparse, and with AMD reportedly having 'priority access' to HBM2, the use of GDDR5X is going to come in handy, big time. Not only is NVIDIA said to be set to reveal GDDR5X-based video cards, but AMD will, too.

According to a new presentation, GDDR5X is going to provide twice the data rate per memory access. We're going to see it jump from the current 32B data per memory access, to 64B data per memory access. GDDR5 has hit a ceiling at around 7Gbps, but GDDR5X is going to have a much higher I/O rates of around 10-12Gbps.

It looks as though GDDR5X is going to be used well into 2018, while GDDR5 will most likely be kept for lower-end cards. I think we're going to see $50 - $300 cards with GDDR5, $300 - $500 cards (and possibly higher) with GDDR5X, and $500+ left for the higher-end HBM2 technology. The use of GDDR5X by AMD and NVIDIA is going to save much more money on R&D, because instead of moving over their entire next-gen GPU product lines, they can continue to use GDDR5X, which is not all that different to the current GDDR5 technology.

Continue reading: AMD also rumored to be using GDDR5X on its next-gen 14nm GPUs (full post)

Bethesda confirms Fallout 4 preload headed to Xbox One, PS4 and PC

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Oct 26, 2015 8:33 PM CDT

Bethesda has just confirmed that Fallout 4 will be preloading onto the Xbox One, PS4 and PC very soon. In an official post on the Bethesda Softworks Twitter page, the developer said: "We can confirm that #Fallout 4 will have pre-loading on Xbox One, PS4, and PC so you have a few days to download the game before 11/10".

When exactly can we expect it, if Bethesda says gamers will have "a few days" before launch to get it preloaded? Bethesda boss Pete Hines posted on Twitter, saying: "We will be preloading for Fallout 4 on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Exact day/time TBA. All should be available a few days before launch day".

As for the size of Fallout 4, we should expect it to weigh in at around 28GB (on the Xbox One at least). It might be a bit bigger on other platforms, however.

Continue reading: Bethesda confirms Fallout 4 preload headed to Xbox One, PS4 and PC (full post)