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ZTE has just unveiled its new Nubia Z20 smartphone that has a next-gen "flexible display" that doesn't quite make it a foldable smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X, but it's an interesting product nonetheless.

The new ZTE Nubia Z20 is one of the only smartphones in the world capable of recording 8K video, something the company will be marketing towards professional videographers and enthusiasts. There will be included editing tools, something that will be interesting to see -- on-device 8K video editing? Hmm.

The flexible display sees ZTE using a "flexi" panel that it, and the protective glass, will be curved. This means there will be less of a bezel around the display according to ZTE, which will be interesting to see. We should expect Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855 or new Snapdragon 855+ inside of the phone, a bunch of RAM and high amounts of storage to match the flexible display tech and 8K video recording abilities.

Tesla has just announced its new Megapack, a new gigantic battery system that will replace "peaker" power plants that will see energy being generated when the local electricity grid gets overloaded.

The new Tesla Megapack is already being deployed, with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) using multiple Megapacks at Moss Landing on Monterey Bay, California. This is just 1 of 4 locations that will see Tesla's new Megapack batteries installed, with each of them storing up to 3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy at a time.

They can be daisy-chained to store over 1GWh of energy storage, something that Tesla claims is enough energy to power every home in San Francisco for six hours. In typical Tesla engineering fashion, the new Megapacks will include "battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls".

Sony today confirmed its PlayStation 4 system has sold-in 100 million units in the six-year period since launch.

Sony's recent Fiscal Year Q1'19 financials show a subtle decline in the PS4's overall potency. The system, which has now sold-in (shipped, not sold-through to consumers) exactly 100 million units across the globe, still tops the charts but will soon be overshadowed by its mighty PS5 next-gen successor. Sony's figures reflect the company's decision to start ramping down the PS4's lifecycle so it can live on through the next console.

In the three-month period ending June 30, Sony sold 3.2 million PS4s, roughly even with last year. News of the upcoming PS5 has deterred gamers from buying PS4 hardware, Sony says, so the plan is to double-down on services, digital subscriptions and game sales. Sony also knocked 1 million PS4s from its sales projections, and now expects to sell 15 million consoles in FY2019, the lowest in a four-year period.

As the Switch continues making nearly all of Nintendo's sales revenues, the hybrid system cements itself as Nintendo's gaming future.

The Switch is basically Nintendo's sole system right now and will instead become a platform that branches out to multiple form-factors. Case in point: the new $200 handheld-only Switch Lite. Mobile gaming is ancillary, and the 3DS is all but dead (sales declined by a further 40% in the quarter). The only place to carry on Nintendo's dedicated gaming brand is the Switch. And carry on it does: the Switch made over 90% of Nintendo's recent quarterly revenues.

In its latest Fiscal Year Q1'19 financials, Nintendo confirmed two things: the Switch has now sold 36.87 million units worldwide since launch, and the system made up a whopping 94% of its total net sales for the quarter.

Nintendo's ever-popular Switch has now sold more than 36 million units worldwide.

Nintendo today reported its Fiscal Year Q1'19 earnings punctuated by the obligatory Switch sales update. The results aren't bad, and Nintendo kicks off the new fiscal year with 36.87 million handheld-consoles sales since launch in March 2017. The company managed to ship 2.13 million Switches from April - June 2019, up 13.2% year-over-year, and a mighty 22.62 million software units to accommodate (up a sizable 25%).

But the Switch sold more units last quarter (Q4'18's 2.47m versus Q1'19's 2.13m) and Nintendo moved an astronomical 9.42 million consoles last holiday period.

We all know that since AMD had launched the Ryzen 3000 series, there would be non-X model CPUs coming eventually. If the recent posting by EEC is to be believed, we may be seeing many new models showing up very soon.

EEC lists several models which are ranging from the top end to the more midrange, along with several Ryzen PRO models which will be added to the stack. Now, this is a translation of the EEC listing, but being the way the data is listed and the information available, it lends a bit of credence to the listing being an excellent lead to what we may see launching soon.

The EEC listing shows many new models, which if following the European standard would be 7/8/2019. If the EEC is using USA standard, it will be 8/7/2019 as far as the listed 'notification registration date.' We cannot be sure as of the time of this posting if that means we may see an official announcement of new models within the next nine days. But, with what AMD has pulled off with Ryzen 3000 thus far, nothing would surprise me.

Thanks to an exchange rate dive, Nintendo's Q1'19 earnings profits plummet by almost 50%.

Nintendo today reported its earnings for the Fiscal Year Q1'2019 period, and the results are quite good despite a foreign exchange rate hit. Against the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen saw dropped roughly 3% to 107.75 yen/1USD in the three-month period from April to June 2019, causing Nintendo to lose roughly 12.062 billion yen ($111.94 million) from exchange rate drops (reported as non-operating expense losses).

By raising expenses, this exchange hit affected Nintendo's Q1 total profits, which were down by 45% year-over-year to 16.6 billion yen ($154.09 million).

Obsidian's new singleplayer-only sci-fi RPG shooter is coming to the Nintendo Switch, but we don't have a release date just yet.

Obsidian is working with outsource dev Virtuous to port The Outer Worlds on Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid. The Switch port will delayed to an undetermined period and won't launch in October alongside the PS4, Xbox One, and Epic Store flavors, the devs confirmed.

This could be an iffy gamble on Obsidian's part, but I'm betting Private Division, the Take-Two Interactive spin-off label funding the project, has final say in the matter. Running games on the Switch usually involves significant compromises in frame rates, visuals and graphics, and overall performance, so we can expect The Outer Worlds to mirror similar trade-offs (maybe ~600p 30FPS handheld, 720p 30FPS docked?). Sure the Switch is getting a 16nm Tegra X1 revision to improve thermals, battery efficiency, and shore up a backdoor hardware fault that led to hacking, but it's not getting any kind of CPU or GPU boosts.

AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series has released with significant fanfare and some excellent performance. However, like any considerable platform launch, it also was shaken with several issues from improper throttling to incorrect reading and even select games not wanting to start at all. The latter is the case with Destiny 2 which players were understandably upset and lambasted AMD for a fix as soon as the issue was discovered.

AMD's Robert Hallock has been a beacon of knowledge for AMD users on social, especially Reddit, where this very story broke.

Robert took to the community with the strong messaging that AMD is serious about making the best experience possible. With that in mind, once AMD learned of the issue, their driver team got to work on a chipset driver to tackle the Destiny 2 issues.

Call of Duty players are accustomed to the reward of getting multiple kills via killstreaks. Infinity Ward, has just confirmed that killstreaks will be included in the updated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

According to the announcement on the official Call of Duty Twitter page, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players will be able to enjoy killstreaks in the form of White Phosphorus, Infantry Assault Vehicle and Juggernaut. The White Phosphorus gas brings smoke down on the marked area and confuses and disorientates enemies. The Infantry Assault Vehicle is quite self explanatory, it has a .50 caliber gun on top and can be operated by players.

The Juggernaut suit can be called down via a Care Package and will give players access to the famous heavy suit. This tease comes just before the official full reveal of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer reveal that is scheduled in just a couple of days. Infinity Ward and Activision will be releasing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on October 25th, 2019 and it will be available on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

If you've just purchased or are in the market to grab a new X570-based motherboard and new AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPU then you should match it up with a PCIe 4.0-capable SSD for those insane up to 5GB/sec speeds.

ADATA has just added its name into the pile of PCIe 4.0 SSDs with the release of its new XPG GAMMIX S50 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 solid state drive offers some blistering speeds. We're looking at 5GB/sec reads and up to 4.4GB/sec writes, and is backwards compatible with PCIe 3.0 if you don't have the write board.

ADATA provides its new XPG GAMMIX S50 SSD with an aluminum heat sink, which will reduce temps of the SSD by up to 10C and keep it operating at those up to 5GB/sec speeds. There's also SLC caching, a DRAM cache buffer, and up to 750K IOPs for random read/write operations.

The International Space Station (ISS), just like anyone's room or house, accumulates garbage or rubbish over time. ISS astronauts have now disposed some of their built up garbage by using Earth's atmosphere.

Just recently, Elon Musk's space exploration company, SpaceX launched a cargo ship to the ISS via their Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 was carrying their Dragon Capsule that contained supplies for numerous scientific experiments, and other necessities for the astronauts aboard. This morning, the docking compartment on the Russian section of the ISS released the Progress 72 cargo spacecraft. This craft was at the ISS for 4 months and once its supplies were extracted after its arrival it was literally used as one big bin.

When re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, the object is introduced to extreme friction which causes sparks and intense flames to be produced. This is the disposal method for the rubbish on the ISS as Progress 72 is now currently making its way down to Earth's atmosphere loaded with "trash and discarded gear for a fiery, but safe disposal over the Pacific Ocean." In other news about the ISS, the supplies that SpaceX's Dragon Capsule were carrying will allow for scientists to test 3D human tissue printing in low gravity, more on that here.

Considering the thought that glasses technology will soon be adopted by the mainstream, what would be the extent of that technology? Perhaps some sci-fi level contact lenses that allow the user to have mini-binoculars in their eyes.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have designed and created some brand new contact lenses that can do just that. The lenses are capable of measuring the electrooculographic signals the eye creates when it is moved up and down. Since these signals are tracked, the lenses measure the impulses that are generated by the eye and when users blink twice the focal length on the lenses is adjusted.

The focal length on these contact lenses can be changed by as much as 32%, simply by the user of the contacts moving their eyes and blinking twice. Shengqiang Cai, a lead researcher for the new contacts told New Scientist, "Even if your eye cannot see anything, many people can still move their eyeball and generate this electro-oculographic signal." Since these signals are always being sent from the eye, researchers say that these contacts could have applications in "visual prostheses, adjustable glasses, and remotely operated robotics in the future."

Tik Tok, the Android and iOS app that's for sharing short video clips that range in the forms of comedy, talent and just things you most likely wouldn't expect happen. Tik Tok's parent company is taking that all to a new level with their soon to be released smartphone.

The parent company of Tik Tok is ByteDance, and they have just confirmed through a spokesperson that a smartphone had been part of device maker Smartisan Technology's development plans. Here is what the spokesperson had to say: "The product was a continuation of earlier Smartisan plans, aiming to satisfy the needs of the old Smartisan user base."

According to a news outlet called Caijing, this smartphone has been in development for seven months now, and that Wu Dezhou, a former executive at Smartisan was leading the course. It probably most likely best to assume that we won't see this phone outside of China, judging by the companies that are developing it. What we can notice though is that its awesome to see ByteDance branch out into different markets.

The future of gaming is definitely ray tracing whether you like it or not, as it's the next evolution in graphics, lighting, and so much more for games.

NVIDIA has just dialed the ray tracing hype meter to 11 with NVIDIA staffer Morgan McGuire saying the first AAA title that will require a GPU supporting ray tracing will ship in 2023. McGuire said: "I predict that the first AAA game to REQUIRE a ray tracing GPU to run will ship in 2023, and every gaming platform will offer accelerated ray tracing by that year".

So we're expecting every single gaming platform to have accelerated ray tracing by 2023, meaning Nintendo will jump into the ring with ray tracing in the near future. NVIDIA above all would know, as they're the supplier of the Tegra chip inside of the Nintendo Switch family of devices.

Remedy has less than a month before it releases Control into the world, with the developer releasing a new story trailer that oozes Hollywood cinematic feels and a huge conspiracy that I want to be dunked in, all in RTX.

The new trailer is oozing with style and a huge conspiracy which I'm loving the look of both, with Remedy Entertainment wanting to tell their story more and more over the yewars. It began with one of my favorite games: Max Payne, continued into Alan Wake and Quantum Break, and culminates with one of the most interesting games of the last few years; Control.

Control will also be a huge showcase for RTX features on compatible NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards, with real-time ray tracing looking out of this world in Remedy's latest title. I went hands-on with Control and its RTX features at E3 2019 for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX SUPER reveal event in LA, and it had me blown away. Control with all of its RTX bells and whistles enabled looks next-level good.

In something out of an evil villain from a superhero movie, the French government is pushing to have lasers and guns on its satellites by as early as 2030.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced news of a French space force defending its satellites recently, which has quickly morphed into seeing France's Ministry of Defense announcing a new project that would see guns and lasers attached to satellites. The country is spending $780 million of its military budget in space defense, adding to the existing $4 billion military program for 2019-2025.

The country has planned for its military to build next-gen satellites that are capable of detecting enemies and other objects with cameras, and then the successor to that gets huge upgrades with on-board submachine guns, and even lasers that will be used in a destructive force to "disable other satellites" by shooting their solar panels.

Microsoft's goal in the industry isn't to oust competitors like Sony and Nintendo, but rather work with, innovate from, and generally coexist with them.

Microsoft has a very healthy attitude when it comes to rival games companies. The current gaming landscape has shifted tremendously and brands are no longer so hostile or closed-off--we're seeing Sony team up with Microsoft to use its Azure servers for the competing PlayStation Now service, and Nintendo is adding in Xbox LIVE integration on the Switch. Cross-play is becoming a new trend. Services are taking off and the walled gardens will soon be open to everyone. Times are a-changing, the console wars are nearly over, and this newfound era of maturity and growth could foster all sorts of exciting innovations in the industry.

According to Xbox's Phil Spencer, this kind of mutualism is important. It's never been about eradicating the opposition with cut-throat tactics. The industry would be a far worse place without competitors like Sony or Nintendo around, Spencer says.

Even with cloud game streaming on the rise, Microsoft has no plans to kill off Xbox consoles.

In a recent interview with Fortune, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterates that Xbox consoles are here to stay. And rightly so: consoles are massively important to the Xbox brand as a whole. Project xCloud streaming is just a part of a whole and compliments the ecosystem. It won't replace consoles.

Microsoft's next-gen Project Scarlett aims to push the bar with high-end specs like a Navi GPU and Zen 2 CPU from AMD. But it's not the end of the Xbox hardware brand, Nadella says. "The living room is not the only place where people play games-the living room is a super important place where they play games," Nadella said. "We still love our console, we're going to have another console. We're going to keep at it, because we think that there are people who want to play games on the console."

Microsoft's yearly gaming earnings performance continue to underline its strengths (services) and weaknesses (hardware).

Microsoft recently reported its Q4 and yearly earnings for the Xbox division, and despite a quarterly dip, the results aren't too bad. Xbox gaming made roughly $11.4 billion in Fiscal Year 2019, once again accounting for less than 10% of Microsoft's total revenues for the period ($125.84 billion). Xbox's Q4 revenues dipped by 10% year-over-year to $2.05 billion, but Xbox One hardware sales crashed tremendously by nearly 50%.

There's a silver lining though. Xbox LIVE monthly active users are now up to 65 million, a new all-time high for the company. This is Microsoft's real bread and butter. The company cares mostly about services, game sales, and recurring subscriptions driven by online engagement--microtransactions, multiplayer, the Xbox Store, etc--simply because they're more profitable in the long run. The entire Xbox business has multiple hooks like Xbox Game Pass, Play Anywhere, and soon game streaming via Project xCloud, and is set up to be one big cycle of online playing and paying. It's the main reason the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition even exists.