Latest News - Page 2388

Just like its competitors at Cupertino, Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL flagship duo carry a premium price tag.

Google's new Pixel phones carry some hefty specs, with 4GB of onboard LPDDR4 RAM, a snappy quad-core 2.15GHz Snapdragon 821 processor, and roomy storage. Google is clearly taking a jab at Apple with a powerful handset duo, but like the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, the new Pixel phones carry a hefty price tag: the Pixel XL with 128GB of storage costs a staggering $869, with the base 32GB option starting at $769.

Now if you're used to upgrading to flagships every year or two, you won't really be deterred by this cost, and Apple's probably conditioned your wallet. This is new territory for Google, however. As a quick price comparison, Google's previous premium handset, the Nexus 6P, cost $649 for the 128GB variant.

Following Sony's original extremely unpopular decision to cut Fallout 4's mod support on PS4, the company has had a change of heart: mods are now coming to Fallout 4 on PS4...but there's a catch.

Bethesda today announced that Fallout 4's PS4 mods are no longer cancelled, but the mods themselves will be significantly gimped on PS4. For example, Fallout 4's PS4 mods won't be able to use new assets that aren't available in the base game itself, so that means no new weapons, armor sets, and items (aka the most popular mods). Given the limited nature of console mods in general, this is a pretty big deal and cuts out a chunk of the already-limited capability of console mods.

If that wasn't enough, there's another catch: we'll have to wait until Skyrim: Special Edition's mods are up and running smoothly on PS4 before Fallout 4 gets mod support.

The Washington State Gambling Commission has formally told Valve to stop "allowing the transfer of virtual skins for gambling activities" on Steam.

The commission recently issued a press release prompting Valve to take "whatever actions necessary" to end the unregulated "black market" Counter-Strike: GO skin trade in its entirety. The agency says that a single site in the CS:GO skin trade, CS:GO Lounge, has earned an estimated $1 billion in unregulated revenue streams--revenue that's been earned "contrary to state gambling laws."

Valve has until October 14 to comply with this order, and if they fail, the commission will take criminal actions.

The latest iPhone looks almost identical to the previous two, and it is understandable that many users expected a bigger change in design.

One YouTuber decided to take the matter into his own hands. In the description of the video he posted on YouTube he wrote: "I couldn't bear another iPhone with the same, slippery design...I just couldn't. It was time to take matters into my own hands."

And that's exactly what he did. He had dismantled the iPhone 7 and then smoothed the edges with a circular saw. You can check out the process and the final result in the video posted below.

Skyrim: Special Edition will be playable in native 4K resolution on Sony's new PlayStation 4 Pro console, and it'll also launch with mod support on PS4.

Since Sony pretty much killed Fallout 4 mods on PS4, gamers were worried that the new Skyrim remaster wouldn't have mods either. As any PC gamer will tell you, Skyrim with mods is a complete game-changer, and is one of the many reasons the studio chose to remaster the game on current-gen systems. Bethesda today allayed those fears by confirming Skyrim: Special Edition will launch with mod support on PS4, but there's a few concessions.

First of all, Sony still hasn't greenlit the use of new assets for Fallout 4's or Skyrim: Special Edition's PS4 mods. That means all the mods can only use existing in-game assets, and we won't be seeing any new armors, weapons, or outfits. Skyrim: Special Edition will see PS4 mod support ahead of Fallout 4, so rest assured that Bethesda is more focused on getting Skyrim up and running first.

I wasn't going to write up anything on the purported GeForce GTX 20 series from NVIDIA expected to be unveiled sometime in 2017, but 3DCenter has posted up some speculation on what we could expect from NVIDIA's hopefully generation leaping GTX 20 series of cards.

The new GeForce GTX 20 series would the 14nm FinFET refresh of the Pascal architecture, led by the GeForce GTX 2080 Ti which would use the refreshed GP102 core with 3384 CUDA cores, and GDDR5X on a 384-bit memory bus. Under that, we'll find the GTX 2080 which would replace the current GTX 1080, and then the GTX 2070 that could be the new price/performance champion.

NVIDIA could use the faster GDDR5X standard on the GeForce GTX 2070, with the faster VRAM exclusive to the current-gen GTX 1080 and Titan X. The use of GDDR5X on the more mid-range GeForce GTX 2070 could be a big win for the price/performance market once again.

Apple has been slowly losing its lead of battery life champion with the iPhone, and it looks like this streak continues with the new iPhone 7, which gets smashed by flagship competitors from Samsung, HTC and LG.

Tests performed by Which? used custom battery tests on the Apple iPhone 7, Samsung Galaxy S7, HTC 10, and LG G5 smartphones. The battery test involved normal tasks that everyday users would do, like phone calls, browsing the web, and watching videos. All smartphones were using the latest version of their respective OS, so we have the iPhone 7 with iOS 10 and the three Android smartphones with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

In the tests, we have the following results:

ASUS is ramping up towards the launch of its ROG Swift PG258Q gaming monitor, as it's the world's first LCD with a native refresh rate of 240Hz. Up until now, the maximum refresh rate is also found on an ASUS gaming monitor with the PG248Q rocking a 180Hz refresh rate. On the ROG Swift PG258Q website, ASUS teases that the 240Hz gaming monster will be available in "early 2017".

The new ROG Swift PG258Q is a 24.5-inch display that rocks a native resolution of 1920x1080 alongside the 240Hz refresh rate, with a 1ms GTG response time meaning it is the next leap that eSports and enthusiast gamers have been after - myself included.

The physical look of the ROG Swift PG258Q resembles the mean-looking PG348Q monitor, so we have a twisted tri-spoke stand and ROG lighting alongside the new Armor Titanium and Plasma Copper color scheme.

Over the last few years, games have been getting bigger and bigger, but Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has created a new milestone: 130GB.

The full installation of both Infinite Warfare and the Modern Warfare Remastered copies of Call of Duty require 130GB, with the retail PS4 box for the Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare Legacy Edition saying it requires 130GB space. Now if you consider the PS4 has a 500GB HDD, that's over 25% of your HDD space for one game.

Right now, the MWR Campaign Early Access weighs 40GB on the PS4, so that means Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare weighs 90GB. How in the hell. This means that gamers wanting the digital version of the game will have to download 130GB, which could take up to a week in countries and connections that are up to scratch.

Intel has something truly monstrous with its upcoming Knights Landing LGA 3647 socket, with Serve the Home teasing us with some pictures of the gigantic LGA 3647 socket.

The upcoming Knights Landing platform will support 6-channel DDR4 support, as well as no dual-latch system that is used on the LGA 2011 platform. Serve the Home explains that the socket and thermal designs that they have seen "do not have latching mechanisms", and instead they're seeing "solutions that secure the CPU to the heat sink".

Here we have a comparison shot of Broadwell-EP, LGA 3657 (Knights Landing), and Broadwell-DE.

The problems continue for Samsung, with a replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphone catching fire on a Southwest Airlines flight, a smartphone that Samsung said was safe from these battery-related problems.

The Verge says it spoke with the owner of the Note 7, Brian Green, had picked his new phone up from an AT&T store on September 21. There's a sticker on the back of Green's new Galaxy Note 7 smartphone that he said had a green battery icon, indicating that it's a replacement that is meant to not have these issues.

Green said that he boarded his flight and turned his Note 7 off as requested by the flight crew, putting it into his pocket as smoke starting coming out of it. He dropped the smoking Note 7 to the floor, saying there was "thick grey-green angry smoke" coming out of the phone. The plane was evacuated, with Green's colleague getting back on the plane later to get some personal belongings, where he noticed the Note 7 has burned through the carpet and scorched the subfloor of the plane.

Oculus kicks off its annual Oculus Connect developer conference tomorrow, but Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has come out teasing that the VR company will have "something new" to show off.

Zuckerberg posted a picture of himself using the Oculus Rift and the still unreleased Oculus Touch controllers, where he said: "Getting ready to demo something new we've been building in virtual reality. Tune in tomorrow at 10am pacific time to hear about the future of VR at Oculus Connect".

I've personally heard that Oculus Connect 3 will be of interest to watch from industry sources of my own, so I'll be tuning into the event to see what Oculus has tucked up its sleeve.

The PC version of Mortal Kombat X was a fatality when it launched earlier this year, with both Warner Bros and developer NetherRealm taking a step back from the PC version of the game, but still putting their full efforts into the console versions with updates and DLC.

Now the PC version of Mortal Kombat X has been patched, with WB and NetherRealm talking with gamers again in August with a new beta version of Mortal Kombat XL for the PC. The massive patch weighs in at 28GB, making it bigger than some AAA titles, but acts as a patch that brings Mortal Kombat XL into a much better position on the PC than ever before.

Mortal Kombat XL includes all of the content from the original game, but includes content from Kombat Pack 2, which has playable characters like the Xenomorph from Alien, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror film franchise, Triborg and Bo'Rai Cho are also available.

Like the mooted feature film adaptation of 'Halo', the big screen version of 'Gears of War' was for a time cancelled - but unlike Master Chief, you're actually going to see this one happen in your lifetime.

Speaking to Variety, The Coalition studio head Rod Fergusson said that "As a way to support the franchise the next logical step was to make the movie. We'd done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect." While Universal were responsible for the disappointing 'Doom' feature film starring Dwayne Johnson back in 2005, Ferguson is jazzed to be working with them on the 'Gears' feature. "That's one of the great things about working with Universal. We're finding that line where we can say it has enough lore and canon that it feels genuine to the game while at the same time going beyond that and asking 'OK what makes a great movie?"

While there's no release date for the film yet, fans might need to keep playing 'Gears of War 4' until at least 2018.

Today's phone market is run by Samsung and Apple but before their time other phones were popular. Just a decade ago flip phones were everywhere, we had to use mechanical keyboards to write texts, and battery life was longer. For companies like HTC, Xiaomi and Huawei almost nobody heard of and Samsung phones weren't as nearly as popular as they are today.

Today we use our phones to pay the bills, read the news, listen to music, play games, etc. They have become much more than just a communication device. Still, some phones from the pre-smartphone era have earned the cult status.

The Nokia 3310 is still one of the best-selling phones of all time. It will be remembered as an indestructible phone and many users have spent countless hours playing popular game Snake (myself included).

While 'Suicide Squad' was mauled by critics (including us), it certainly exceeded the studio's financial expectations, pulling in a $740 million dollar haul off a $175 million dollar budget. Following in the footsteps of the better received extended cut of 'Batman v Superman', it's also about to get a little longer when it comes to home video.

The extended cut is set to add around 13 minutes of additional footage, bumping up the duration to 136 minutes. According to rumours, entire subplots where jettisoned for the final cut which hit cinemas in August, with some suggestions that actor Jared Leto who played Joker was none too impressed at his apparent shafting. While I don't think the extended cut will make it a better film, I'm moderately interested to see how this version looks.

The 'Suicide Squad: Extended Cut' hits Blu-ray in the U.S. on December 13 and December 7 in Australia.

The era of self-driving cars is right around the corner. Google is testing their autonomous vehicles for a while now, and Tesla Motors cars can drive around on their own, of course, under the surveillance of a driver. Other players like Uber have already launched their own self-driving car sharing service and GM is working with Lyft to enable the same.

The self-driving cars should bring better safety to our streets and many believe this is something that will happen within our lifetime. Mate Rimac, founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili, said our children won't have to learn to drive, meaning he believes the self-driving cars will be standard within next few decades.

However, before that happens and the self-driving cars become common, the experts have to solve some problems that are self -imposed.

A memo sent to Verizon employees in Pensnsylvania, USA late last month makes a new directive clear: barring extenuating circumstances, you must replace a customer's broken copper phone line with its VoiceLink wireless home phone service. Failure to do so "may result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal", it reads.

The downsides of VoiceLink are that customers aren't able to add DSL internet afterward or use certain devices such as security alarms, pacemakers, and fax machines, among others (in the latter case, the company says this falls under extenuating circumstances, however).

Verizon claims it's pushing VoiceLink because it allows them to restore service quicker to customers.

Many thought that the death of Steve Jobs five years ago would mark the end of Apple as we knew it. The man who has defined Apple has left an indelible mark on the company and the technology world.

Today Apple has great financial results, their products are still in high demand, but there is also a sense that something is missing...

Under Jobs' leadership, Apple was a revolutionary company that changed the world. Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer with a graphical user interface and mouse, and Apple II was also a great success.

Google announced its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones with a rebranding of their handsets from Nexus to Pixel, and with it the older Nexus Protect insurance program has been updated to Device Protection.

The new Device Protection initiative is available to Pixel smartphones for a small $99 flat fee, which you can tack onto your purchase at the checkout with your Pixel or Pixel XL smartphone. Device Protection covers your Pixel for accidental damage from a drop or spill, and it also covers you for general malfunctions over two years.

A one-year warranty covers pixel for defects, so the second year on top of the accidental damage cover are a big win for Pixel owners at $99. If you drop or break your Pixel, Google has your back with next-day shipping or your replacement smartphone, but you have to pay a fee for that. The smaller Pixel will cost $79, while the 5.5-inch Pixel XL costs $99. Still, you're getting a brand new phone with next-day delivery for a small cost. Not too bad at all, and you don't even have to leave the house.