KB-Technologies

Sony has announced two new controllers for the PlayStation 4 consoles built for professional gaming. Built by Razer and Nacon, these are the first two controllers being made by third-party manufacturers and officially licensed by Sony. Razer Raiju The first is the Razer Raiju. Named after a mythical Japanese creature, the Raiju has two additional bumpers at the top and two extra detachable triggers on the back and a built-in control panel on the front. The controller uses trigger-stop switches and has hair trigger mode for quick response during competitive games. The controller also has two custom profiles that you can switch between using the buttons on the front. The analog sticks have detachable rubber caps for additional grip. Like the DualShock 4, the Raiju includes a 3.5mm headphone jack with dedicated buttons for volume and mute. It connects to the PS4 via a 3m long braided cable, which can be detached. Nacon Revolution The Nacon Revolution has Xbo...

With VR heating up, companies have been looking for ways to provide an affordable entry, but VR requires a very different GPU than gaming on a screen. Meet ARM’s new GPU - the Mali-G51 - built specifically for VR. A smaller brother of the G71, this is the second GPU to use the new Bifrost architecture built with Vulkan in mind. This one is more than just a G71 with fewer cores, in fact it’s the first to use a dual shader architecture. Basically, traditional shaders process one pixel per clock cycle. Mali-G51’s shaders can do two pixels per clock while using fewer resources (both in terms of energy and space on the chip) than two traditional shaders. Note that a Mali-G51 MP6 denotes three dual shader cores, not six cores. To put this in simpler terms, a Mali-G51 will be 60% more energy efficient than a Mali-T830 while doing the same amount of work. It will have a 60% higher “performance density,” i.e. it needs fewer transistors, making chipsets smaller and cheape...

If you are in the United States and are in the market for an Xbox One S gaming console, here's a deal for you: the Xbox One S 500 GB (Minecraft Bundle) is currently going for $280, down from its regular price of $299. eBay seller antonline is currently selling the console at that price. The listing says that quantities are limited, and - as of writing - a total of around 30 units have been sold. Shipping is free. To know more about the discount, head to the Source link below. Source

The Huawei Mate 9 is some 3 days away from official status, and sure enough, the leaks keep coming in. This latest one comes in the form of a couple of live images. The pictured Mate 9 is the flat-screened Manhattan (a dual-curved Long Island Mate 9 Pro version is rumored as well) in a gold body color. We're not entirely sure if it's the real deal or an early mockup, maybe. For one, the Leica branding is nowhere to be found, and we'd be more than surprised if Huawei's partnership with the German optics specialists was this short-lived - just the P9. Not to mention every Mate 9 render until now had Leica prominently stamped in one place or another. Additionally, the dual-camera setup is missing a black inlay around the lenses, which the latest renders would have us believe is the final design. On grounds of these two, we'd place this leak in the 'fake' bin. Via

Meizu counted up twice and announced the Meizu M5. It features a bigger screen than the m3s - now 5.2” big and covered with 2.5D beveled glass. The mTouch 2.1 fingerprint reader below the screen has been optimized and now triggers in just 0.2 seconds. Not bad for a phone that costs CNY 700 ($105/€95). The M5 continues to be powered by the MediaTek MT6750 chipset found in the m3s. The similarities continue with a choice of 2GB RAM and 16GB storage or 3GB RAM, 32GB storage (both versions have a microSD slot so don’t sweat it so much). The second version goes up to CNY 900 in price. The 13MP camera on the back of the phone is as fast as the fingerprint reader - its Phase Detection autofocus can get a log in 0.2 seconds. There’s a dual-LED flash to help it at night and a 5MP camera for selfies. The Meizu M5 will come in five different colors - Matte Black, Mint Green, Blue, Champagne Gold and White. The first two are special. The matte option is desi...

Sony is already looking forward to next year and has already registered two phones with a Russian regulatory body. The Sony Xperia G3121 and G3112 are their internal model numbers, which doesn’t tell us much except to suggest they may be mid-range or even low-end devices. The Xperia E4 a while back had a number of G2104. Sony’s internal numbers are not terribly consistent though, the two new phones may be closer to the Xperia XA instead, aka “F311x”. The rumor mill is lacking Xperias currently, but we should see some breaks in secrecy as big tech events approach (CES, MWC). Certainly as more regulators get involved - some of them are nice enough to list the specifications and post photos of the phones they certify. Source (in Russian) | Via

Introduction Google was always a service - the best search engine on Earth. Now under the Alphabet umbrella, Google is becoming a brand - for online services yes, but also for hardware. Leading the charge are the Pixels, Google's equivalent to Samsung's Galaxy or Apple's i-gadgets... and every bit as premium. True, the Pixel name debuted with a Chromebook, later adopted for an Android tablet, but it will definitely be remembered for the phones. This must be the company's biggest marketing push for a Google-branded hardware product. It's not just that, Google even put a promo for Allo on the most valuable real estate on the web - Google.com. Allo, if you haven't heard, is the new messaging client (paired with video chat app Duo) and is at the heart of the Pixel phones. The AI assistant available in Allo is more prominently featured in the Pixels and you can talk with it, not just text. Then there's Google Photos, Google Drive and ...

A few months back OnePlus decided to implement its "never settle" slogan quite literally and took to the road on a grand Euro tour. The growing start-up has always had a closer relationship and involvement with its fans than most, which really made the effort special. While meet-ups are typically a regular thing for the OnePlus team, this time a fully-loaded promotional bus and a schedule spanning over two months really took it to the next level. If you are a fan of OnePlus and its signature blend of viral marketing and high product value appeal, then chances are you already followed the trip at least to some extent. If not, in typical social-savvy fashion, the Chinese manufacturer has put together this relatively short, but surprisingly nice and upbeat travel log, retelling the experience. You should definitely check it out if you have 20 or so spare minutes. Frankly, we can't deny there is something quite appealing in such an extreme hands-o...

As we are sure most of you already heard, Apple finally brought an arguably overdue refresh to its Mac Pro laptop lineup on Thursday. It consists of a trio of new laptops, two in the 13-inch and on in the 15-inch form factor. All of them are more powerful and significantly thinner than their predecessors, have better screens, improved touchpads and lets call it a "different" approach to the keyboard and I/O, now entirely made of Type-C ports. However, all that was totally overshadowed by the introduction of the Touch Bar - Apple's new touch-screen strip, that courageously sits above the keyboard (yes, we do think it fits, since the Escape and Function keys are now completely tactile-free) and promises to revolutionize and totally change more than a few familiar workflows. Regardless of your or our personal opinion on the new tech and the respective willingness to look at the keyboard, rather than the screen in order to take advantage of some of th...

Samsung has started accepting pre-orders for its Tizen-powered Gear S3 smartwatch in the UK. A quick look at the company's UK website reveals that the Classic as well as Frontier models are up for pre-order, carrying a £349 price tag each. The South Korean firm is also running a promo where-in the first 1,000 people who pre-order the smartwatch will also get a pair of Level Active headphones for free. The deal runs through November 10 (7pm). Shipments begin November 11 onwards. In case you missed, third-party retailer Mobile Fun has been accepting Gear S3 pre-orders for several weeks now, but is asking $425 for the watch. Source

Research firm IDC surveyed 1,082 U.S. customers of the Note7 through on online survey on October 17 and 18, just a few days after the phone maker decided to permanently discontinue the productivity-focused phablet. Of the 1,082 U.S. consumers, 507 were current Samsung owners, 347 were past Samsung users, 228 of which have never owned a Samsung device. Only 24 of the customers surveyed were owners, both past and present, of the Note7. Key findings from the surveys show that half of the Note7 customers (12 out of 24) said they have or “will choose” an iPhone to replace their Samsung purchase. 17% of the surveyed customers said they would choose another Samsung. And most of them said they will return their phones physically to a carrier store. The recall doesn’t appear to negatively affect Samsung’s brand, as most of the surveyed consumers said the recall wouldn’t affect future buying decisions for other non-smartphone appliances and products from Samsung. “A...

LG has two new ultra high definition displays, designed specifically to work well with Macs. There is the UltraFine 5K Display and then the UltraFine 4K Display. The UltraFine 5K Display is a Thunderbolt display. It has a 27-inch IPS panel with 5120 x 2880 resolution. It has 500 nits maximum brightness and supports the DCI-P3 color space. On the back of the display are four USB Type-C connectors, one of which is a Thunderbolt 3 input and the remaining three are USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports with 5Gbps bandwidth each. You can hook up your new MacBook Pro to the display over the Thunderbolt connector and get three additional USB ports, and also power the integrated webcam and speakers on the display. The display can also provide 85W of power to charge your MacBook Pro over the same Thunderbolt connection. The integration with macOS means you can control the brightness and volume of the display through your Mac. The monitor supports tilt and height adjustment and the power s...

Microsoft has pushed out a new update to Skype for iOS. The update bumps the version to 6.27.1, and brings along the ability to send messages using Apple's smart assistant, Siri. "Send Skype messages to your Skype contacts using Siri," the change-log for the update says. In addition to this, with the updated app, you can now view your Skype recent messages and Favourites on the Apple Watch again. Source

Yesterday, Apple announced the brand new MacBook Pro with the cool new Touch Bar, a strip of display above the keyboard that replaces the function key row with context specific functions that can be customized by users and developers. However, the company also announced a variant of the smaller 13-inch model without the Touch Bar. Now on surface it seems the lack of Touch Bar is the only real difference, but turns out there's more. Apart from the obviously missing Touch Bar, the standard model also does not get Touch ID, which means no fast authentication, no quick user switching, and no ability to pay using Apple Pay online. Then there are the hardware differences that were mentioned on stage. While the Touch Bar model starts gets a 2.9GHz dual-core Core i5, the standard model gets a 2.0GHz dual-core Core i5. Their boost clock speeds are 3.3GHz and 3.1 GHz, so they do close the gap a fair bit under stress but under nominal load the Touch Bar model will f...

Sony has announced that its streaming TV service PlayStation Vue is now available on the Android TV platform. "We’re pleased to announce that you can watch your favorite TV shows, movies, and sports through PlayStation Vue on Android TVs starting today," the company said in a blog post. To get started, all you need is a PS Vue account and an Android TV running Android OS 4.4 or higher. Once that in place, just download the PS Vue app and enjoy the service. Sony also announced that web support for both PC and Mac is coming soon. "This will include some unique features, such as a 'mini-player,' which allow you to shrink the player to the corner of the browser window and continue browsing PS Vue for a convenient experience," the Japanese firm said. Source

Vine was the perfect platform to compliment Twitter. Users could film micro clips within 6 seconds that would loop over and over. And the resulting content is nothing short of Amazing. Many “internet personalities” gained popularity on the platform, and the six-second limit resulted in some really creative videos. Twitter re-strategized Vine by increasing its 6 second time limit to the same number of characters that are in a Tweet: so 140 seconds. This changed the platform and perhaps chased some die-hard users of the platform away. Following the announcement that Twitter was going to cut 8% of its workforce, the company announced its discontinuation of the micro-vlogging platform. In recent months, Twitter has been focusing its resources into Periscope, the blogging platform’s live-stream sub-platform. However, Twitter says it isn’t making any changes to Vine just yet. The site and app will remain in commission for the time being. But given Twitter’s new plans...

As expected, Apple finally announced some new MacBooks at its special event today. The MacBook Pro line has received a much needed refresh. The new MacBook Pro laptops still come in 13" and 15" sizes, though this time you can choose between silver and gray as colors. They're made from aluminum, even more this time around than in the previous design. There are two 13-inch models. The entry level option is aimed at fans of the MacBook Air. It's 14.9mm thin, comes with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and weighs 3 pounds. It's powered by a sixth-gen 2 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, with Iris Graphics 540, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It is priced from $1,499 and is available today. The high-end 13-inch model is also 14.9mm thin, and weighs 3 pounds too. The sole 15-inch iteration is 15.5mm thin, and it weighs 4 pounds. Both are thinner and lighter than their predecessors, unsurprisingly. And they both have touchpads that are two times bigger than what the...

If you are interested in picking up one of Google's new Pixel phones in the US, you can either go on the Google store directly or Project Fi or hit up Verizon for a unit. The latter is currently the only major carrier that offers the handsets and thankfully with no carrier lock and with updates coming straight from Google. In the absence of a Pixel offer of its own, a few days ago T-Mobile launched a rather sneaky deal to draw more Pixel users to its unlimited data plans by offering them a total of $325 off monthly bills. Now in a rather anticipated response, Verizon has launched a purchase incentive of its won. It comes in the form of a rebate program. If you get the Pixel or Pixel XL on a monthly device plan and trade in your old device, you can get as much as $300 of trade-in value. Verizon will likely except any phone in working order and good cosmetic condition, but only a few models will qualify for the maximum amount of $300. These are as follows: Sams...

We already know the budget-friendly Motorola Moto M is in the works. A few helpful leaks in, we are also fairly well acquainted with what to expect in terms of specs and appearance. Now, in a new turn of events, it appears Lenovo might not even make us wait until December for the full-metal handset, as a new promotional material suggests a November 8 launch date instead. To sweeten the deal even further, the Moto M might not come along, but instead be accompanied by the Lenovo P2 that was showcased at this year's IFA conference . Now, we can't really judge on the authenticity of the leak, so if you are anxiously waiting for either of the devices, you should still be prepared to wait another month or so. And if that is the case, we definitely understand where that excitement is coming from. Both handsets are shaping up to be pretty compelling mid-range offers. Motorola Moto M renders One thing in particular seems to stand out in both their specs she...