Samsung’s gone official with the Galaxy S 4 Active — once again, before the company’s incoming UK launch event. With IP67 water and dust protection — it’ll survive three feet of water for up to 30 minutes — as well as a 5-inch (TFT LCD) 1080p display (443 ppi), there’s an unspecified 1.9GHz quad-core processor to do the heavy lifting. Alongside LTE radios and Android 4.2.2, the GS4 Active packs an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, while the front-facer will take up to two-megapixel stillw. Now, to match those outdoor protective credentials, there’s [...]

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Can’t wait to get your hands on a Galaxy S 4 mini? Samsung has yet to announce its price and availability, but until then you can imagine you’re Three UK’s Brendan Arndt in the video below. Arndt shows off the much-rumored baby S 4 for us, as the phone poses for close-up shots in various angles. While the clip merely reiterates all the specs Samsung confirmed, it also shows how relatively tiny the S 4 mini is compared to its full-sized sibling and the gargantuan Galaxy Mega. That, despite the device boasting a 4.3-inch screen, which is even bigger than the iPhone 5′s. Check [...]

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Slot-loading Blu-ray drive? Check. HDMI in and out? Absolutely, considering the Xbox One is meant to play a central role in the living room. There’s an octa-core processor based on AMD’s Jaguar design and 8GB of RAM to go up against the Sony PlayStation 4, plus USB 3.0 ports, 500GB of hard drive storage, WiFi Direct for communicating with the new controller and other devices, and a humungous amount of silicon to drive it all: no fewer than five billion transistors, which compares to 1.4 billion in your average Intel or AMD chip (although Microsoft may be included other processors and [...]

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Microsoft debuted the Xbox One this afternoon live from a tent on its Redmond, Wash., campus, putting to end months of speculation about the company’s next-generation video game console. The console will be available “later this year.” Microsoft exec Don Mattrick called it out as an “all-in-one” box. The core strategy is “simple, instant and complete.” It was debuted alongside a new gamepad as well as a new Kinect motion camera. The system itself is all black and features a two-tone finish with both matte and gloss in equal measure; a slot-loading Blu-ray [...]

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  So, here we are. The big phones of 2013 (well, the first half of it at least – we’ve still got the iPhone 5S / iPhone 6 to land at some point) have all landed and you’re probably wondering which is best. Well, it’s not as easy as usual, as we have three stand-out contenders for the throne of best smartphone. Luckily for you fancy people we’ve spent weeks with all three and have put together this in-depth test to show where the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia Z have strength and weakness. So, onto the battle… it’s not going to be pretty, but at the [...]

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Picking some of our benchmarks is easy enough. The x264 HD test is a great guide to video encode performance. It’s straight in. Cinebench gives a glimpse of how CPUs perform in professional applications which major on threading. Stick that on the list. Memory bandwidth is interesting in terms of the insight it gives to platform scalability and, therefore, makes the grade. Then there’s power consumption, which will split opinion in terms of its relevance on the desktop. At the very least, it reveals the underlying efficiency of a CPU architecture. Of course, we’re big fans of overclocking [...]

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  AMD came roaring into GDC 2013 with a vengeance. Not only did the chipmaker introduce its first branded line of dedicated cloud gaming graphics cards – the Radeon Sky Series – we got a taste of what it claims is the world’s fastest GPU. Attendees of a Tuesday night press conference saw the GPU, the Radeon HD 7990, make its first public appearance. Later, a set of 7990s powered EA’s 17-minute introductory Battlefield 4 demo on the big screen. And though Sony spent more time talking about the PS4′s DualShock controller than AMD’s chippy contributions at the [...]

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AMD did not went into specifics of the GPU but it has been known for a while that the Radeon HD 7990 from AMD would be codenamed Malta and feature Dual Tahiti GPU cores clocked around 1000 – 1100 MHz and would feature a 6 GB (3 GB per GPU) VRAM running across a 384 bit x2 interface. You may notice how AMD has labeled the slide as a preview of the upcoming product which means that its launch (previously reported around Q2 2013) might not be far away. AMD is also said to be preparing a new tech demo based on CryEngine 3 which would be showcased on the Radeon HD 7990 launch. The card is powered [...]

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AMD announced this morning that last nights demonstration of Battlefield 4 was powered by the AMD Radeon HD 7990 ‘Malta’ video card! AMD also goes on to say that the AMD Radeon HD 7990 is the worlds fastest video card, which might get some people over at NVIDIA upset as the card isn’t for sale just yet! Based on this news we can assume safely that Battlefield 4 will be an AMD game title! This is bad news for NVIDIA GeForce fans, but good news for AMD Radeon fans. Will this mean that Battlefield will soon be part of an AMD gaming bundle later this year? Only time will tell, [...]

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 brings a huge Full HD screen, an improved camera and faster innards, and fits it all in a chassis the same size as the Galaxy S3. However, many will struggle to tell the difference between the S4 and its predecessor, as the polycarbonate chassis is still in use; although the metallic banding around the side, while still plastic, is much sturdier and feels more premium. We’ve already seen a lot of the Samsung Galaxy S4 features, as it’s been snapped multiple times in leaks – some more accurate than others, it has to be said – and the specs mooted have turned [...]

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