We knew it was coming but now we have an exact date and time: Samsung will be hosting its Galaxy Unpacked 2021 event on January 14 at 10AM EST or 7AM PST -- virtually, of course.

Samsung teases its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked 2021 event: "Over the past year, mobile technology has taken center stage in everyday life as people are working remotely and spending more time at home. The accelerated transition to a mobile-first world brings with it the need for devices that can transform everyday life into an extraordinary experience".

We should expect to see Samsung unveil a bunch of new devices, which will be led by the new Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ and the new Galaxy S21 Ultra. We should also see a new release and improved wireless Galaxy Buds, which will take a few swings at Apple and their AirPods, and newly-released AirPods Max headphones.

Tesla might have its Autopilot Full Self-Driving (FSD) in beta but that doesn't mean people aren't trying it out... with one Tesla EV owner taking their FSD-capable Model 3 vehicle and driving from SF to LA without a single intervention.

This is the first video that I've seen with a full trip using the Full Self-Driving (FSD) ability, without making any adjustments or human-intervention. The only time the owner puts his hands-on the wheel, is when he explains: "there was one tiny intervention where a giant piece of debris on the road popped up suddenly after a car moved out of the way. To be cautious I couldn't wait to see if FSD would avoid it and had to make sure to move over myself. But besides that one second of grabbing the steering wheel, there were no interventions from start to destination".

You can read more about his adventures, and watch the full 15-minute video (sped up of course) here.

We were all on our smartphones more this year with over 1.4 billion voice and video calls being made on New Year's Eve 2020 globally on WhatsApp... that's a helluva lot of calls, and a record number of calls made on a single day for WhatsApp.

The news comes directly from Facebook -- which owns WhatsApp -- and a new post on their website providing the world with some NYE celebration stats across their services. WhatsApp wasn't the only app lit up like a Christmas tree in terms of activity, but FB also owns Messenger, Instagram and Facebook Live.

All of these services were flooded with users but didn't come close to the 1.4 billion voice and video calls over WhatsApp, with over 55 million live broadcasts across both Facebook and Instagram globally on New Year's Eve.

Sony is ending production of certain PS4 and PS4 Pro models in Japan, overseas retailers report.

Sony plans to end production on the original 2013 PS4 launch variants as well as a particular PS4 Pro SKU. The news was relayed by Twitter user and Japan native Cheesemeister, who visited a retailer in Japan that warned consumers certain console models won't be available again: "Due to the manufacturer ending production, the following products will not be restocked," the retailer said.

Five PS4 consoles were listed as ending production:

SUP3R5 is making custom PlayStation 5 consoles stylized with a PlayStation 2 color scheme and design, but you'll have to act fast to get one.

We've seen gamers create their own custom PlayStation 5 models by simply adding a paintjob to the detachable sides. Now an online retailer is selling a batch of PS5 consoles made to look like Sony's old-school 2000s titan, complete with some nice black DualSense controllers.

The new consoles are being made by SUP3R5 and will cost a hefty $649, which is roughly $115 over the standard MSRP after taxes. Outside of the black paintjob, a smaller colorful PlayStation logo, and a purple badge on the side, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the custom model and the base PS5. The site is also selling a black DualSense for $99, but these look much better with stylized face buttons along with the black paintjob. Sadly, this customization voids the DualSense's warranty.

Cross-platform play is one of the biggest new features in gaming, but it's almost worthless without cross-saves. Luckily publishers like Ubisoft have you covered with platforms like Ubisoft Connect.

Playing the same game on multiple systems can be really awkward, especially if the games don't support cross-saves. This revolutionary new feature makes game saves universal and platform agnostic, letting gamers access their progress regardless of where they play. It's a feature available on the Xbox/PC/mobile trifecta, and now it's starting to make its way into mainstream games.

Titles like Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, and Destiny 2 all support true campaign cross-progression alongside cross-play. We've seen games like Call of Duty Black Ops support cross-progression for multiplayer, but not every game will do the same for offline singleplayer campaigns.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer confirms Bethesda Softworks is working on a few unannounced games...what could they be? Fallout 5? The new Doom sequel? The next-gen ZeniMax MMO IP?

Right now ZeniMax Media's dev teams are working on a bunch of projects. Some we know about; id has a new Doom game in the works, Arkane is making Deathloop, MachineGames is making Wolfenstein 3, Bethesda Game Studios is making Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, and ZeniMax Online is gearing up for a new mysterious IP. There's also some projects we don't know about, and these games should tremendously benefit from the big Microsoft acquisition.

In the most recent Major Nelson podcast, Xbox's Phil Spencer talked about Bethesda's ambitious new games and how the team is working on new projects we haven't seen yet. This could include a next-gen Fallout 5 built on the same engine as Starfield and TESVI...but something like that will happen way down the line.

Tesla shipped a record 499,550 vehicles throughout 2020, just 450 electric cars short of Elon Musk's own goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles in the year. Tesla has said these numbers could shift by as much as 0.5% which would rip Tesla over the 500,000 mark, so there's that. There's also this:

Elon Musk himself tweeting that he is "So proud of the Tesla team for achieving this major milestone! At the start of Tesla, I thought we had (optimistically) a 10% chance of surviving at all". It's funny how far it's come from "oh yeah, this business venture might survive" to the heights that Tesla is at now.

The thing is, Elon Musk predicted that back in 2014 -- yeah, check him out saying it in the video above during an interview with Fox Business in 2014.

LG has just announced the world's first 48-inch Bendable Cinematic Sound OLED (CSO) that is optimized for gaming, and will be shown off during CES 2021.

The new 48-inch bendable display uses the benefits of the paper-thin OLED technology that has up to a 1000R curvature, providing a very immersive and large gaming experience. Better yet, LG's new display can be turned into a regular flat screen for when you're watching TV or a movie, and then into its bendable state for immersive gaming.

Dr. Chang-ho Oh, Executive Vice President & Head of the TV Business Unit at LG Display explains: "LG Display's 48-inch Bendable CSO display is optimized for gaming as it maximizes the use of advanced technology that produces another level in terms of providing an immersive experience. In other words, it offers the very best gaming environment to gamers".

Valve smashes into 2021 by breaking a new player record as coronavirus lockdowns and precautions stay in effect.

According to SteamDB, Steam just hit a new concurrent player high of 25 million for the first time in its 18-year history. The record was set about 13 hours ago and Steam now has a new record concurrent player peak of 25,415,080. The previous record was achieved in March 2020, where 24.38 million PC users logged on and played games at the same time.

We can only imagine what kind of revenues Valve is enjoying thanks to the rise in active players. Since Valve is a privately traded company, we don't get access to their earnings or sales figures, but we did get a nice breakdown of the top most-played games of 2020. Among Us was the fourth best-selling game in 2020 and enjoyed a player count that beat PUBG.

PUBG Mobile and its Chinese port have made nearly $3 billion in 2020, topping the worldwide mobile charts.

Mobile gaming is big business: In 2020, Newzoo estimated that mobile gaming would generate $77.2 billion and make up 48% of total industry earnings. Monetization was to make up 74% of revenues, or an incredible $117 billion, driven by a combination of free-to-play and premium games.

Now we're seeing the proof in those numbers. According to analyst firm SensorTower, five mobile games have generated over $1 billion in revenues in 2020. Titles like PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, Pokemon Go, Coin Master, and Roblox all pulled in more than $1 billion in revenues during the year, which is more than some games publishers make altogether.

GIGABYTE has just silently made some changes to its new GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, a new AORUS Master variant of the card. Check it out:

The new AORUS RTX 3080 Master has been modified from using 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, to 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The new revision now has 3 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors but it might use the same board design as the AORUS XTREME version which rocks triple 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

What can do you do with more power? GIGABYTE could be increasing the TGP for this model up from the dual 8-pin PCIe connectors + PCIe socket offering 375W up to 400W+ with a good enough design. As for the GPU frequency, we're looking at 1845MHz boost GPU clocks which is an out-of-the-box overclock of just under 8%.

NVIDIA is expected to launch two new high-end graphics cards sometime this year, with the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and now the newly-rumored GeForce RTX 3080 SUPER graphics card.

But joining the new rumor of the GeForce RTX 3080 SUPER is the GeForce RTX 3070 SUPER, but why? Well, the RTX 3080 has 10GB of VRAM and the RTX 3070 has 8GB of VRAM. Both of their competitors in the Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 have 16GB of VRAM and I'm sure NVIDIA wants to something about that.

The new rumors are coming from kopite7kimi on Twitter, who says that there are "some new SKUs" coming and they might be the GeForce RTX 3080 SUPER and GeForce RTX 3070 SUPER graphics cards. We could expect the RTX 3080 SUPER to be a tweaked RTX 3080 with 16GB of VRAM -- while the higher-end RTX 3080 Ti would pack 20GB of VRAM.

Bitcoin was flirting with $30,000 on the edge of 2021 but it easily broke $30,000 and went up and above to a new all-time high of just over $33,000 before stabilizing at around $32,000 at the time of writing.

With this meteoric rise to $33,000 it means that Bitcoin is more valuable than some of the largest companies in the world, with BTC market value at around $580 billion. To put it into comparison TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is worth $488 billion, Tesla Motors is worth $668 billion, Facebook is worth $778 billion, Alphabet (Google) is worth $1.18 trillion and Apple at a whopping $2.25 trillion.

Read more: Bitcoin's new all-time high close to $30,000: could tip over by 2021

Russian natural gas giant Gazprom is getting into a new business: Bitcoin mining. The company is using the oil and gas reserves in Mother Russia to mine Bitcoin.

The company is Russia's gas monopolist and world's 10th-biggest oil producer, with Gazprom leading up major projects with cross-border gas pipelines like the Nord Stream and the South Stream, which delivers gas from Europe to Russia. But now, Gazprom is pushing into crypto mining with its direct subsidiary Gazpromneft.

Gazpromneft's new facility is in Khanty-Mansiysk region of northwestern Siberia, and is using local gas from oil fields as the energy source -- not only that, but it has its own power plant that is transforming that gas, into electricity. All of this is for mining Bitcoin.

AMD is working on GPU chiplet technology for a future GPU release, but on December 31, 2020 as the world was about to ring in the New Year, AMD submitted a new patent to the USPTO.

The new patent describes a GPU chiplet design that would be quite the advancement over NVIDIA right now, with the GPU chiplet be direct 'communicably coupled' to the CPU with each of the GPU chiplets in the array would be coupled to the first GPU through a passive crosslink.

AMD sees a future where a passive crosslink is used for communication wires between GPU chiplets, which are all on a single interposer. This means that the groups of GPU chiplets work work like a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) which is divided into separate functional chips.

This new Hitman 3 footage showcases the improvements IO Interactive has made with its in-house Glacier engine, including atmospheric effects and NPCs.

IO Interactive is sending off the Hitman trilogy off with a bang. Hitman 3 makes some hefty upgrades over the first two games, starting off with 4K 60FPS on PS5 and Xbox Series X, but a bit of new PC gameplay footage illustrates how the game will look on gaming's most powerful platform.

The new footage shows off 5 minutes of the opening Dubai mission. There's not a whole lot of action--there's no killing and mostly subterfuge and tons of beautiful atmospheric effects--but arguably there doesn't need to be. Agent 47's exploits have mostly been about spy-style stealth and disguise. We do get a nice glimpse of Agent 47 atop one of the world's tallest buildings in Dubai, India, and a direct look at the Glacier engine's new NPC rendering technology, which can pack up to 300 NPCs in a single area at one time.

Grim Dawn, one of the best action RPGs ever made, is just $5 right now on Steam. You should definitely check it out.

If you're a Diablo fan who grew up with the original Blizzard classic, or even Diablo II and it's epic Lord of Destruction expansion, then you might want to pick up Grim Dawn. This aRPG is a lot like those older games with a darker tone, more streamlined mechanics, and a few innovations thrown in for good measure. Grim Dawn is a pure loot-driven aRPG and even features online multiplayer so you can team up with your friends.

Diablo 4 is a long ways away, and the market simply doesn't have many aRPGs. You might've picked up Torchlight II for free on the Epic Store and that'll hold you over for a while. But if you're looking for something that's more violent, more mature, more grim, then definitely drop a fiver on Grim Dawn on Steam.

Is your PlayStation 5 making mysterious noises? The console's power supply could be to blame.

The PS5 is mostly a silent, cool machine even when it's belting out 4K 60FPS gaming and ray-traced visuals. In my PlayStation 5 review, I called the system a marvel of console engineering for its stellar thermal design. Not every PS5 is perfect. In fact, not every PS5 even uses the same fan design. On closer inspection, some PlayStation 5 consoles are making strange sounds during operation.

YouTuber TronixFix just put out a new video investigating the mysterious noises. He identified a fait buzzing sound emitting from the PS5, which some refer to as coil whine. As it turns out, the culprit for the so-called coil whine is a metalized film capacitor from the PS5's power supply unit. In fact, the PS5 uses the exact same capacitor as the PS4 Pro.

CES 2021 is right around the corner, beginning on January 11, 2021 and running for four days through to January 15, 2021.

The new CES 2021 is an all-digital event with organizers Consumer Technology Association (CTA) expecting CES 2022 to be a physical event as they're hoping COVID-19 vaccines will be rolling out and people are vaccinated by then.

There will be 1000 exhibitors at CES 2021 virtually with AMD, LG, NVIDIA, Samsung, and many other still hosting online events. CES 2021 being all-virtual means boat loads of bandwidth will be required, with VentureBeat interviewing CTA CEO Gary Shapiro recently where he said they have "serious bandwidth" available, and will have a media day with 100 hours of programming ready.