Latest News - Page 2303

While gaming in handheld mode, Nintendo's new Switch console actually runs quite cool and only hits a max of 37C in demanding games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

While attending a Nintendo Switch event a Swedish gamer took some FLIR images of the system in handheld mode to see how hot the device gets. Considering the Switch can deliver dedicated on-the-go gaming, thermal heat mitigation is extremely important, and we're happy to report the device runs pretty cool.

Thanks to recent teardowns we know the Switch is actively cooled by a fan system that works in tandem with an L-shaped heat sink, and, of course, the customized and highly efficient 20nm NVIDIA Tegra X1 chip.

According to a well-known leaker Roland Quandt, Samsung's next Gear VR headset could come with a controller, similar to the one that is used in Google's Daydream.

It is possible that Samsung will unveil the new Gear VR next month because it is apparently designed to work with the Galaxy S8 and S8+.

The design of the headset looks similar to the one of the current-generation Gear VR, but it does come with certain adjustments and improvements.

Xiaomi has confirmed on the Chinese social media website Weibo that they would launch their own 'Pinecone' processor on February 28th in Beijing.

The company earlier announced that they wouldn't be present at this year's MWC in Barcelona cause "they have nothing to show," but they chose a date for the official Pinecone launch exactly during MWC.

The company hasn't provided any additional info, but it was previously speculated that we could see this chip in Xiaomi's upcoming Mi 5c.

Since Samsung won't unveil the Galaxy S8 and S8+ at MWC in Barcelona, the company decided to introduce the Galaxy Tab S3, which they hinted in their official invite.

Rumors say that the tablet will be available shortly after launch, and now the images of the device have leaked from the Taiwanese NCC.

The images aren't the best quality, but they show that the Tab S3 will rock a so-called glass sandwich design, meaning that both the front and the back will be covered with glass with a metal frame between them. This is something that Korean company introduced with their Galaxy S6.

Qualcomm is slowly moving its chess pieces around the 5G board, with a tease of Gigabit LTE in Sydney, Australia a couple of weeks ago - and a full detailing on 5G technology and its race to 5G leadership at Qualcomm HQ in San Diego, California.

Qualcomm has announced their first successful 5G connection "based on the New Radio (NR) work in 3GPP", something the company expects to "become the global 5G standard". The successful 5G test used Qualcomm Technologies' sub-6GHz 5G NR prototype system, something that is capable of operating at mid-band spectrum from 3.3-5.0GHz.

This huge speed allows for multiple Gbps in bandwidth, and better yet - at "significantly lower latency" than today's 4G LTE networks. 5G NR will take advantage of the wide range of spectrum bands, as it can use spectrum bands below 6GHz, something Qualcomm says is "critical for achieving ubiquitous coverage and capacity to address the large number of envisioned 5G use cases".

Qualcomm has already teased Gigabit LTE in Sydney, Australia with speeds of 930Mbps over a small router that fits into your pocket, but now they've announced their new Snapdragon X20 LTE chipset that will eventually find its way into next-gen mobile devices.

The new Snapdragon X20 LTE modem is capable of "fiber-like" speeds, with download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps - providing over 100MB/sec download speeds... on your smartphone. Qualcomm reaches this with the new LTE Category 18 technology, with support for up to 5 x 20MHz download Carrier Aggregation (CA) over unlicensed FDD and TDD radio frequencies, as well as 4x4 MIMO on up to three aggregated LTE carriers.

Qualcomm's super-fast Snapdragon X20 LTE chipset is capable of 12 simultaneous unique streams of data, and on each download stream the X20 LTE's modem and its support for 256-QAM, we're looking at peak throughput of around 100Mbps. Uplink bandwidth with 2x20MHz carrier aggregation plus 64-QAM sees upload speeds of 150Mbps.

Horizon Zero Dawn has been receiving some amazing compliments so far, and after Digital Foundry's analysis on the PlayStation exclusive, it looks like it's the best-looking PS4/PS4 Pro game to date.

The game maintains its 1080p resolution on the PS4, but the beefier PS4 Pro can run Horizon Zero Dawn at 4K - while performance, stays roughly the same. We're looking at a "near-locked and well-paced" 30FPS, with "very few drops below" 30FPS - with both of these drops in performance happening at the "same spots regardless of the console", which means we should see updates for Horizon Zero Dawn that will improve those dips in the near future.

Guerrilla Games harnessed the additional horsepower inside of the PS4 Pro to not only crank up the resolution to the non-native "checkerboard 4K presentation" - but the graphical detail is increased. There's higher antistrophic filtering and texture resolution on the PS4 Pro version of Horizon Zero Dawn. There will also be an update pushed out on day one for Horizon Zero Drawn that will offer a high-performance option.

A gamer recently bought a Nintendo Switch early and showed off the system's startup screens, revealing that the console-handheld hybrid only has approximately 25.9 GB of the advertised 32GB of onboard memory will be available for games, downloads, and screenshots.

The Nintendo Switch is supposed to come with 32GB of flash storage. However, as any tecchie will tell you, the advertised memory isn't what you actually get (and here's why).

Given that a 32GB flash drive will only actually have about 29.8 GB of usable space, we can assess the Nintendo Switch's customized operating system takes up about 4GB of space by default, leaving about ~26GB left over for gamers to use (29.8GB - 25.9GB = 3.9GB).

NVIDIA is expected to unveil their GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card during their event at GDC 2017 next week, but the GTX 1080 Ti has been teased... with Halo Wars 2.

Halo Wars 2 is coming soon, with Microsoft and developer THQ Nordic listing NVIDIA's unreleased and unannounced GeForce GTX 1080 Ti as the GPU of choice for Halo Wars 2's Ultra graphics requirements. We should expect NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 Ti to be a slightly gimped Titan X, which is not a bad thing - 3328 CUDA cores, 12GB of GDDR5X, and 10.8TFLOPs of performance - enough for Ultra settings in Halo Wars 2.

While the originally planned 3D theatrical re-release of James Cameron's masterpiece 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' was delayed from the original 2016 release date, Studio Canal has confirmed that the film will hit cinemas in the around the world on August 25th 1997 - 4 days before the 20th anniversary of the fictional Judgment Day event which wiped out humanity thanks to the machines.

Originally release in 1991, 'Terminator 2' went on to re-define the action genre , and took Arnold Schwarzenegger's career to new heights. StereoD, the firm who previously converted Cameron's 'Titanic' and 'Jurassic Park' have been responsible for the 3D conversion, from a brand new 4K restoration of the film.

'Terminator 2: Judgement Day 3D' will hit cinemas in US, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand on August 25th 2016.

Microsoft first kicked off its intruiging HoloLens product two years ago now, as Windows 10 was being pushed onto PCs, and while developers are using the first-gen HoloLens it looks like Microsoft might be skipping HoloLens 2 in favor of the third generation headset.

The news is coming from Microsoft insider Paul Thurrott, who sources said that Microsoft is skipping the second-gen HoloLens headset for the "third generation" that Microsoft had been planning at the same time. It looks like Microsoft might have been priming a true leap in AR headsets in the background, and is now ready to compete with Apple's purported mixed reality (MR) headset that will arrive with the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X smartphones in June.

A company spokesperson said: "Mixed reality is the future of computing, and Microsoft HoloLens is the future and present of mixed reality. Our commitment requires no roadmap". This new HoloLens 3 headset would reportedly arrive in 2019.

Microsoft is going to shake up the console space later this year with the 4K-capable Project Scorpio console, the fastest Xbox ever made - but Microsoft seems to have moved away from making PC gaming the best gaming platform there is.

Over the years this has happened, even with the release of DX12 and Vulkan, we haven't seen giant technological leaps and bounds from our increasingly faster hardware. But, Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked about Microsoft's commitment to PC gaming heading into the future, something he touched on during the Halo Wars 2 launch party.

Spencer hinted at PC exclusive games that haven't been announced yet, as well as upcoming Xbox One exclusives that will be unveiled in the coming months. We have Crackdown 3 on the way, which should be a big hit when it launches in a few months.

Nintendo's next-gen Switch console is nearly here, so we're finally seeing the retail packaging for Switch games - and what a huge waste of plastic for such a small cartridge.

The game cartridges that Nintendo Switch games comes in at 31mm x 21mm x 3mm, making them small - as the 3DS cartridges are just 35mm x 33mm x 4mm. But, Nintendo has used a gigantic case for the cartridge, coming in at 170mm x 104mm x 10mm. SomeSwitch game packages won't include instruction manuals, registration cards, legal health warning or anything else that would use more physical space in the case. However, Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ will have a 20-page full-color game manual, and we can clearly see where the actual game manuals go in the case.

This isn't an unusual thing for Nintendo, as 3DS cartridges only use 2% of the volume in the package, Sony isn't any different with Vita cartridges taking just 0.8% of its total packaging volume. The retail boxes seem to be for those who want to have a library of games on their shelves like previous-gen games - but we live in a new world, Nintendo.

I admit I had my worries about BioWare's new Mass Effect: Andromeda game. But after watching the latest combat trailer, most of those worries were dispelled. The game's battle system is a breath of fresh air. The same way Dragon Age: Inquisition pushed the bar for its own franchise, ME: Andromeda does the same for Mass Effect. The latest game was built from scratch on DICE's advanced Frostbite 3 engine, and it clearly shows: this time around we have such massive freedom and flexibility that it genuinely feels like a next-gen sci-fi action game.

via GIPHY

LG will announce the G6 at MWC 2017 in Barcelona on February 26th, and we've seen numerous leaks about the upcoming flagship.

Now, the Korean company itself have revealed the G6 camera specs. According to their official teaser on the LG website, the G6 will have wide-angle cameras on the front and the back.

The selfie shooter will have a 100-degree field of view, but the resolution hasn't been mentioned.

NASA has announced that they will hold a news conference at 1 PM Wednesday, February 22nd, to "present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets." NASA's announcement didn't reveal any further details.

There are thousands of known exoplanets that scientists discovered in the past two decades. Scientists believe that exoplanets are our best chance to find an extraterrestrial life.

There is special interest in planets that orbit in a star's habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface.

Samsung's flagships last year, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, were powered by either Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, or Samsung's Exynos 8 Octa processor, depending on the market.

Ever since the rumors about the Galaxy S8 and S8+ started floating around, we have been hearing about the Snapdragon 835, which the devices will feature. However, it is highly possible that some markets will receive phones powered by an Exynos 9 processor, which is yet to be announced.

Read also: Samsung Galaxy S8 color options and pricing leak

Snap's Spectacles were announced back in September, but the only way to buy them was finding a vending machine that would randomly show up across the States.

However, as of February 20th, you can buy Spectacles online. Snap finally made them available for purchase on their website.

Read also: Snapchat announces sunglasses with a built-in camera

Lenovo and Motorola are expected to announce the Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus at MWC 2017, and we've already heard numerous rumors.

Now, little less than a week before the official announcement, the specs of the phones have leaked from a Colombian retailer.

Lenovo decided to go far smaller displays than last year's series, so the G5 will have a 5-inch screen, while the G5 Plus will rock a 5.2-inch display. Moto G4 and G4 Plus had 5.5-inch screens. The resolution will remain Full HD.

The Nintendo Switch has already been torn down, revealing some interesting things: a custom NVIDIA Tegra X1 chip that perfectly matches the second-gen Shield TV's 20nm Tegra X1 transistor count, and the possible confirmation that the handheld-console hybrid will use efficient DDR4 mobile RAM.

We already know the Nintendo Switch should use 4GB of unified shared RAM system memory, but until now we weren't exactly sure how fast or what grade of memory would be in the Switch. Now we might know. According to recent Switch teardowns spotted on Chinese site Tabao, two Samsung-made SDRAM modules were spotted on the system's PCB.

The pictures are very fuzzy, but the consensus is that the SDRAM modules are K4F2E304HBMGCH modules, which are described as "LPDDR4 DRAM Chip Mobile LPDDR4 DRAM 16G-Bit 512Mx32 1.8V 200-Pin FBGA." These particular Samsung LPDDR4 modules have a 16gigabit density, which is 2GB, and there are two of them totaling for 4GB of unified LPDDR4 memory.