Google I/O, the search company's annual developer conference had some surprises for us this year as it announced a wide range of changes to a number of its services and apps, but surprisingly enough, no version bump for Android. I am certainly not alone when I say that I didn’t see that coming. Enough about what didn’t happen, let’s look at what did. Firstly, it was announced that Android has more than 900-million global activations and I for one am blown ...

Gran Turismo 6, the Playstation’s most revered driving game is officially coming for Playstation 3 "Holiday 2013" says series creator Kazunori Yamauchi. There are a bunch of new changes to GT 6: the user interface has been revised, the new game engine will "improve operation and increase the flexibility to expand it with downloadable content,” and as it is with most new games, GT6 will now offer social media sharing options. Update: the official trailer is live. Watch below. It’s over 1200 There’s a ...

For US$139, Western Digital has given me 2TB of USB 3.0 goodness. The WD My Passport 2TB Portable External Hard Drive is good and chunky, it’s super-quick and it’s a Western Digital drive, so there’s a hardware heritage that practically ensures a longer-lasting drive. There’s almost nothing to complain about, outside of the lame first-party software companies still insist on bundling with its products. Here though, is why I recommend the 2TB My Passport drive. Random access USB 3.0 will go ...

To our knowledge, there are no commercially available Tegra 4 lappietablets (laptop/tablet hybrid computers, our term) and certainly none from HP, until now. HP’s just revealed the Split x2 and the SlateBook x2, two lappietablets running Windows 8 and Android respectively. Let’s begin with the Split x2. HP’s Windows 8-running Split x2 The Split x2 is a Windows 8 device with a 13.3-inch HD screen, an i3 or i5 CPU, Beats Audio, an optional 500GB SSD (for some reason, HP won’t reveal ...

It's all Sharp vs. Sony this month as competition in Japan seems to be heating up in the waterproof mobile category. Today at a NTT DoCoMo event in Japan, the new Aquas Phone Zeta SH-06E was announced. Apart from the fact that it's waterproof like the Xperia ZR, it also flaunts a 1080p IGZO screen of 4.8-inches. This is the first portable 4.8-inch device featuring Sharp's IGZO display technology. Inside, the new Android 4.2 Aquas carries a 1.6 GHz CPU which ...

Sleek, shiny and utterly sexy. This is the first impression you get of the Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook. It positions itself in the same sort of market as the Macbook Air, with its lack of any kind of optical drive, its light body, and its smooth aluminium exterior, but is this US$1 200 Windows 8 machine a serious competitor, or is it overpriced for the features it offers? To begin, let's get down to the basics of this machine. The Acer Aspire ...

With a surprising head start, NEC dropped the specs of its up and coming LaVie L laptop. This will be rolling out on top of Intel's new Fourth Generation Core Processor, codenamed "Haswell." Come 3 June, we will see a range of state-of-the-art laptop, ultrabook and tablet announcements like this one at Taiwan's massive Computex event. The LaVie L is one of the first laptops supported by the Haswell processor and is for now set at a little less than US$2000. The ...

Nokia’s Lumia 925 is official. While Nokia plans to launch the Lumia 928 today, it’s one-upped itself with the surprise release of the 925, a 4.5-inch Windows Phone with an all-new aluminum body and an 8.7-megapixel PureView camera. The Lumia 925 isn’t going to set the world on fire and for €469 (US$616), it also costs too much. Priced to move Here’s the full tech specs for the Lumia 925: Networks: GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900, WCDMA, 2100, 1900, 850, 900, LTE 2100, 1800, ...

Google Glass is exciting. It’s the first real step towards hands-free computing and one day, Star Trek-style interaction. Recently though, one user's gone and squeezed facial recognition into Google Glass, with fairly accurate results. His project is called MedRef for Google Glass and it adds extra cards (same as Google Now) to the Glass timeline. Or as Lance Nanek, the developer of MedRef, calls it “cool medical stuff and facial recognition.” Users would need to first install the Glassware. The MedRef cards pop ...

BlackBerry has officially the Q5, a Qwerty smartphone running BlackBerry 10 but designed for emerging market countries. We've known for some time now that BlackBerry would be launching such a device, but in the run-up to its unveiling we had it pegged that it would run under the R10 moniker. It's unclear how much the Q5 will cost, although we do know that it will come with a 3.1-inch touch-screen. If the leaks prior to the Q5's unveiling are to be believed ...