Latest News - Page 2597

I'm a huge fan of UltraWide monitors, where I sit in front of an LG UltraWide 21:9 monitor every day of the week. Well, the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas next month, with LG flexing its display muscles ahead of the show.

LG has announced three new 21:9 UltraWide monitors, all rocking the 3440x1440 resolution and boasting Thunderbolt 2 connectivity. The new LG UC98 and UC88 models will feature curved panels, while the UC88 will be a flat, 21:9 UltraWide display. LG also took the time to unveil two new 4K displays, with the UD88 and UD68 series, both sporting USB Type-C connectivity. Also, LG will be rolling out Gram at CES, its 15.6-inch laptop that runs Windows 10 on a Skylake-based Intel processor. LG's Gram weighs just over 2 pounds, and compared to Apple's MacBook Air which weighs just under 2 pounds, LG has something to really show off.

Apple has opened a secret laboratory in Longtan, Taiwan, according to anonymous sources as well as building management and economics ministry records.

You may have immediately imagined an underground facility with the express goal of world domination, but the reality is said to be much more innocent (though still exciting): developing new display technologies for Apple devices. Specifically: liquid-crystal displays that are "thinner, lighter, brighter, and more energy-efficient" than before.

The building houses 50 or more engineers and other workers, as recruited from local display manufacturer AU Optronics Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. (the latter of which is the former building owner). Currently, the building shows no signs of being run by Apple except for an Apple logo and an iMac with Apple's standard visitor registration screen in the lobby and spotted Apple ID badges worn by workers.

Despite the assurances that Destiny's microtransactions wouldn't compromise the game, Bungie has introduced $30 add-ons that boost a player's level up to 25. So if you want to boost a Titan, Hunter and Warlock to level 25, that'll cost you an absolutely ridiculous $90.

As soon as Bungie announced microtransactions were coming to Destiny, the game's entire player base cringed. Gamers know that allowing microtransactions is like opening Pandora's box, and they can eventually crush the credibility and fun of any game. Bungie jumped in to defend the move, saying that microtransactions were limited to cosmetic dance emotes and that there'd be no pay-to-win hijinks. That promise disarmed gamers, especially when they were told that the microtransactions would fund all future updates, meaning all of Destiny's DLC packs will now be free. So what's the downside?

Now we're starting to see the downside to microtransactions, and gamers are not happy. The item in question automatically levels up any given character to level 25, making it quite similar to the Spark of Light consumable that's given out for free with The Taken King DLC. The big deal comes with the item's asking price, which is an absurd $30. It's not enough that you can spend anywhere from $10 to $50 on microtransaction currency, but gamers now get charged $30 just to unlock the required level for The Taken King content? Ouch.

Current-gen console emulation hasn't hit its stride just yet, but tweakers and coders are making significant progress on the world's first Nintendo Wii U emulator, which can now run Mario Kart 8.

As you can see in the footage above, the emulated Mario Kart 8 doesn't fully mirror its console counterpart. Despite the slower frame-rates and lower graphics, the game is still indeed playable. The current build of Cemu 1.1.2b is much more stable than the glitchy mess that was showcased back in October, showing how far the emulator has come in just two months. The Wii U emulator Cemu is far from finished and we won't see PC gamers whizzing around the Rainbow Road during the holidays, however the day might come sooner than later with proper community support.

It'll be interesting to see how Cemu takes shape in the coming months, and if Wii U games will actually join the roster of emulated systems on the PC. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have yet to be emulated, but a hacker claims to have jailbroken the PlayStation 4 to allow system function tweaks and open the doors for custom homebrew firmware.

Ever since the 'Harry Potter' film franchise wrapped up with 2011's 'The Deathly Hallows: Part 2', Warner Bros. have been looking at ways to keep the multi-billion series going , investigating different possibilities from author J.K. Rowling's extensive universe of writing. The studio settled on developing the 42 page spin-off novel 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' and today they've released the first teaser trailer.

Based on the work which Rowling wrote as a Comic Relief donation, the film follows writer Newt Scamander, the wizarding author on one of Harry's textbooks approximately 70 years before the events of the 'Harry Potter' series. With at least three parts in production, the film stars Eddie Redmayne and is Directed by David Yates.

'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' hits cinemas in 2D, 3D and IMAX on November 18, 2016.

Expecting to see an overall shipment number of 8 million units before the end of 2015, ABI Research has given Google the tick of approval, naming the Chromebook series as the best-selling laptops of 2015.

ABI Research's Research Director, Jeff Orr, says that "Industry professionals can expect the notebook PC market, including Chromebooks, laptops and ultraportable PCs, to remain roughly flat year-on-year in 2015, with flat to slightly positive growth projected through 2020." While this marks concern for manufacturers are overall PC sales aren't progressing all too smoothly as of late, Orr added, "Specifically, data suggests a 2016 sales surge in both Chromebooks and ultraportable PCs as consumers continue to adopt Chromebooks into classroom settings and 2-in-1 ultraportable PCs maintain their trend status as the future of portable computing."

While the total number of shipments in 2015 for notebooks is said to be around 163 million, this marks a 14 percent decline when compared with 2014, said to be partly due to losses posted by Acer, ASUS and Lenovo, in a report by ZDNet.

As announced recently, Microsoft has now pushed out a preview version of its new Office 365 Planner to members of the First Release program, designed as a simple project-management tool set for release in the mainstream Office 365 package in the future.

Previously codenamed 'Highlander', this addition to Office 365 has currently been added to the following users: Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E4, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 Education, Office 365 Education E3, Office 365 Education E4, Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business Premium, as explained by ZDNet. If you haven't received the Planner yet don't stress, Microsoft expects a the rollout of this program to be completed over several weeks.

Designed to meld with Office 365 groups, this Planner will enable companies to streamline some business processes, sitting alongside the additions of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, also set to be added firstly for Office 365 First Release program subscribers.

Following a recent Canadian release, Samsung has now announced the official launch of its third-generation Gear VR in the Land Down Under - Australia.

Designed to function with Samsung smartphones such as the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, S6 and S6 edge, the Gear VR utilizes these mobile AMOLED displays in order to offer consumers a virtual reality experience. Explained as much lighter than the prototypes and previous models, this new VR addition enables users to browse the web through an available Samsung official app, further being able to watch 360-degree videos on YouTube and enjoy other various HTML5 video content.

Available for a local price of $159 AU from Samsung directly, the press release explains that this product will be available for wider distribution early in 2016.

While we reported that Samsung is preparing four different Galaxy S7 models for 2016, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Gizmodo have let us in on a little more information about this new champion product release.

Set to include an pressure-sensitive screen like Apple's 3D Touch and fast charging capabilities, it's also claimed that the new Galaxy S7 will don the all-new USB Type-C port. This new port inclusion is set to be the vehicle for fast charging capabilities, with WSJ claiming that a quick 30-minute charging time of a brand-new S7 will see a full day's charge enjoyed. If Samsung's new Galaxy S7 does indeed ship with a pressure-sensitive screen, it'll likely utilize Synaptics' new ClearPad 3700 Display Controller which is designed to bring 3D Touch to the Android market.

Set to be released with Edge and 'normal' Samsung screens, the latter design is said to contain an expandable memory port, an improved camera for lowlight operations and a thinner lens design. This information has not been confirmed yet by Samsung themselves, but the inclusion of an external memory port, likely to be some form of an SD card, will be a welcome feature for many Android users.dly-preparing-four-different-galaxy-s7-models-2016/index.html

While Samsung had been ordered to pay Apple a large sum in damages due to multiple patent claims, this company has once again entered an appeal process, asking the US Supreme Court to address its rules based around design patents, said to be created 120 years prior.

The case was originally placed due to an alleged breach by Samsung of three design patents, involving the face and rounded bezel of an iPhone and the iPhone home screen's 16 icon design. Found guilty, Samsung was ordered to pay all profit earned by phones relating to this lawsuit, with this company stating in a release that they are "escalating this case because it believes that the way the laws were interpreted is not in line with modern times."

Believing these old laws to be out of touch, Samsung's appeal was expected to take place, as explained by the tech giant previously in 2015.

After being quoted as the most popular EA BETA in history, the player count for Star Wars Battlefront has continued a steady decline since its official launch.

While the PlayStation 4 edition seems to be travelling along well at a peak of 91.1k players over the last 24 hours, the PC player count has taken a massive hit. We reported three weeks ago that this title was sitting pretty at a PC player peak of 33,337, with today's reading on SWBstats telling us that this peak has slipped further down to 15,756 at the time of writing this article.

Paired with 12,061 current players at the time of writing this report, this concurrent number ranks EA's latest poster child release at lower than titles such as Counter Strike 1.6, DayZ and another new-release title, Call of Duty: Black Ops III. According to Steam's stats page, the lower Battlefront 24 hour peak now mean that it ranks under Euro Truck Simulator 2.

While Fable Legends is roaming around in the world of its closed beta, Lionhead Studios has announced that its free, multiplayer-focused fantasy game has been delayed from the holiday season, until spring 2016.

Lionhead is now inviting 100,000 additional players in the coming weeks to join in on the Fable Legends open beta, with Creative Director David Eckelberry saying: "To be honest with you, we rather underestimated just how big of a game Fable Legends is becoming. We've really created two games at once: We've got a multiplayer RPG on one side and a kind of RTS on the other. On top of that, we've built a new world and a whole new story to tell. This is the most ambitious game we've ever done at Lionhead and it's taking more time than we thought".

Microsoft announced Fable Legends back in 2013 with Lionhead, with Legends being a big shift in the usual Fable universe. The previous Fable games have included an in-depth single-player campaign, but Fable Legends will only include multiplayer, or AI-assisted missions. Fable Legends will include microtransactions, but Lionhead has promised that players can complete all of the quests and storylines without paying any additional money through microtransactions.

NASA and Sony have been working together on a PlayStation VR experience called Mighty Morphenaut, which is a PlayStation VR demo that allows operators to practice control over a humanoid in space.

Mighty Morphenaut recreates the robot's environment, which is a simulated space shuttle so that users on the ground can learn how to get the humanoid to complete a task, or move around obstacles from a safe distance. NASA has been trying to build a dexterous humanoid for space exploration for a while now, something that led to the rise of Robonauts. Robonauts are dexterous humanoids that are designed to help, or even replace humans in space. NASA explains Robonauts, "one advantage of a humanoid design is that [it] can take over simple, repetitive, or especially dangerous tasks on places such as the International Space Station".

When NASA use the Mighty Morphenaut demo, it allows the operators to use the PS4-powered PlayStation VR headset to look around and make quick decisions based on the environment the robot is in, all in real-time. The robot will then perform movements based on the operator's movement of the Move controllers, but there is lag between the movement of the Move controller, and the Robonaut, obviously. It might be a long time before NASA can control a humanoid from Earth while it hovers around in space, but VR and AR technologies are going to do huge things for NASA.

I've woken up to Christmas morning... System Shock 3 has been announced. OtherSide Entertainment and Night Dive Studios have officially announced System Shock 3, but other than the announcement that it's coming - that's all we have.

There's no teaser trailer, no screenshots, and I like it that way. Instead of some CGI creation that represents nothing in-game, or some super-polished screenshots, we're just hearing about it, and that's it. There is a website for System Shock 3, with an audio sample that teases "Did you think I'd forgotten you, insect?". After checking out the source code to the System Shock 3 teaser website, it reveals: "Join the original team behind Ultima Underworld on a quest to rekindle this legendary fantasy RPG series".

OtherSide Entertainment released a PR statement not too long after, saying: "OtherSide Entertainment, the development studio behind the upcoming fantasy RPG Underworld Ascendant, is excited to officially announce development on System Shock 3, the sequel to the landmark System Shock series. Last week, OtherSide posted a teaser website (www.othersidetease.com ) with cryptic lettering hinting at a new game. Internet hackers quickly cracked the site, prematurely revealing the game's title. As part of the fun, series' AI antagonist SHODAN appeared to mock the hackers with new taunts each day. On the updated teaser site today, fans can hear popular voice actress Terri Brosius (System Shock 1 & 2, Dishonored) reprise her role as the voice of SHODAN and see an early peek at the evolving 'next generation' look of the character by artist Robb Waters".

It looks like AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners are preparing new Radeon R9 390 video cards with 4GB of VRAM, compared to the 8GB of framebuffer on the current R9 390 models.

The new Radeon R9 390 4GB models will feature the Grenada Pro GPU, which is a revised version of the Hawaii Pro GPU on the 28nm process. This means we'll see 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a GPU clock speed of 1GHz. The 4GB of GDDR5 will be clocked at 1.5GHz (6GHz) with a 384-bit memory bus. The original R9 390 8GB models were aimed at 4K gaming, but the new 4GB models should hit the 1080p/2K gaming market, with more than enough horsepower to drive 60FPS at both resolutions.

The Radeon R9 390 8GB models still sell for around $329, while the new 4GB models will fall into the $299 price, or lower. This means that the R9 390 will be priced right against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970. As for the models, SAPPHIRE is preparing its Radeon R9 390 4GB Dual-X OC card, XFX has its Radeon R9 390 4GB Black Edition OC, PowerColor with its R9 390 4GB OC Edition and more. On average, the new R9 390 4GB model is around 10% faster than the Radeon R9 290, so if you're upgrading your old R9 290, now could be the time.

We all know the benefits of solar power, but it looks like the town council of Woodland, North Carolina doesn't. They rejected a rezoning proposal that would've seen the installation of a new solar farm. But the reason is going to kick you in the teeth.

The council has previously approved three other solar farms which are all currently under construction, but this proposal was rejected after down residents "expressed distruct and fear of the solar panels", reports The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. One of the residents, who just so happens to be a retired science teacher, Jane Mann, complained that many of the plants directly undernearth the panels were not receiving enough sunlight. Mann continued that the panels also cause cancer... adding that "I want to know what's going to happen. I want information. Enough is enough. I don't see the profit for the town. People come with hidden agendas. Until we can find if anything is going to damage this community, we shouldn't sign any paper".

But it gets better. Mann's husband, Bobby, warned the council that the solar farms "would suck up all the energy from the sun". A representative of the Strata Solar Company, which wants to build the farm just off Highway 258, said: "the panels don't draw additional sunlight. There are no toxic materials on site. This is a tried and true technology". But, even with mountains of evidence and countless other cities and countries adopting solar power, the town council stamped down a moratorium on solar panel installations. Officials want to wait until they "get a handle on how to do background checks" on the technology.

According to reports published by DigiTimes, 2015 has proven to be a disappointing year for motherboard sales, and the downward trajectory is expected to continue well into 2016.

Major hardware players like GIGABYTE and Asustek have shipped 17 million self-branded motherboards in 2015, down 10% from last year and lower than annual sales forecasts. Both companies originally planned to move 20 million motherboards in 2015, but that projection was scaled down to 18 million in light of early-year earnings reports. Despite the sales slump, ASUS saw impressive sales in November with an month-over-month revenue increase of 21%. GIGABYTE, on the other hand, saw a dip in revenue with an on year sales drop of 13.6% during the same period.

While the sales slump isn't expected to crush either tech titan, smaller-scale companies won't be so lucky. Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), MSI and Biostar are getting hit by the dip, and Chinese motherboard supplier Onda is expected to pull out of the market completely in 2016.

Although today's smartphones are so powerful they're achieving laptop-like performance, there's one great equalizer for all handsets: battery life. Some phones last longer than others, but the more powerful a phone is, the more voracious its appetite for battery power. Wouldn't it be nice not to have to recharge your phone for two weeks, but not be limited to the awful performance of a pay-as-you-go flip phone?

Chinese handset-maker Oukitel has just created a smartphone that meets both of those needs. The Oukitel K10000 handset sports a massive 10,000 mAh battery that can (according to the company) "last up to 15 days per charge", and also features decent specs including a 1GHz MediaTek processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB onboard storage that's expandable with an SD slot.

The battery isn't the only thing that's massive about Oukitel's phone. The device is described as a "brick" of a phone, weighing in at no less than 500 grams (~1.2LBS) or almost three Nexus 6's. The insane 10,000 mAh battery accounts for the bulk of the phone's weight, of course, making it into a rather lethal weapon.

A couple of days ago we wrote a story about GDDR6 being teased, and that it could've been a rebranded version of GDDR5X... well, that was wrong. Micron reached out to us clarifying it all, saying that "the new memory advancements coming from Micron in 2016 are going to be called GDDR5X, not GDDR6".

They continued, adding that "GDDR5X and GDDR6 are not the same product and Micron has not announced any plans involving GDDR6". This fully clears things up for not only us, but the world. We will see GDDR5X released onto video cards next year, allowing for much higher memory bandwidth - and while it won't be high as HBM1 or HBM2, it will be significantly higher than the normal GDDR5 we have today.

AMD's big Crimson Edition driver launched a few weeks ago with many major changes and feature additions. As is often the case with significant releases such as this, there have been problems. First there was the fan speed issue, and now reports have surfaced about an underclocking issue caused by the driver.

Asked about the issue on Twitter, AMD yesterday stated it's aware of it and investigating. The fan issue was resolved very quickly with a hotfix driver, so the same is likely here. In the meantime, if you find yourself experiencing it and/or stutter in games, AMD says you can get around it by reverting to Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta or 15.7.1 WHQL drivers.