The new iPhone comes in sizes of 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, each to suit a different type of audience whilst keeping the same experience. Apple’s new iPhone makes use of a noted new material and design language, anodised aluminium, stainless steel and curved glass is used to make the culmination that is the iPhone 6. Apple have made a strong effort to make everything in the iPhone smaller which resulted in the phone having a final size of 6.9mm & 7.1mm respectively. The iPhone doesn’t particularly beat its rivals when it comes to resolution such as the Samsung Galaxy 4 or the HTC One M8 but the Plus makes up for this with an 1920 x 1080 sRGB Retina HD display screen.
The iPhone’s new screen makes use of higher contrast, dual domain pixels to allow for more accurate colour reproduction at wider viewing angles. They even developed a new “advanced” process of photo alignment which creates a situation in where you have UV light being used to precisely position the display’s liquid crystals so they lie exactly where they should. Better-aligned crystals deliver a superior viewing experience, with deeper blacks and sharper text. They even put in an improved polariser that achieves a clearer view when faced with direct sunlight
The iPhone itself hasn’t changed much, but it finally seems that Apple have decided to join the rest of the world when it comes to screen size. Obviously the amount sold during the first week will determine how much the phone is a success but its clear to see that some of more fundamental changes we have waited to see still hasn’t arrived yet, apart from widgets and notifications of course.
Microsoft has cut the Xbox One by £20 for a retail price of £329.
“We are always looking at ways to offer the best value for our customers,” a Microsoft spokesperson explained. “This is a UK only retail promotion which coincides with our upcoming releases including Forza Horizon 2, Sunset Overdrive and Halo: The Master Chief Collection.”
However the PS4 continues to outsell the Xbox One by a significant margin. According to VGChartz, Sony sold 178,000 PlayStation 4s globally during the week of September 14th while Microsoft only moved 94,000 Xbox One consoles in that time. It’s clear Microsoft have stopped touting the original selling points of the Xbox One and are now relying on triple AAA titles to shift consoles. Whether it works remain to be seen.
Intel released its newest edition to the enthusiast line up in the form of Haswell-E, naturally the X99 platform followed to support the new processors along with the DDR4 RAM modules. This is also the first time Intel has introduced an 8-core processor into the domestic consumer market, as a result the i7-5960x is the highest performing processor that money can buy, notwithstanding the Xeon processors that is currently geared towards the professional market as server chips.
The i7 5960x supports 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes, the same as its predecessor and its turbo boost can allow it reach 3.5Ghz and will be priced at $1000. Intel has also released two other processors with six cores to support the i7 5960x in the form of the i7 5930k and the i7 5820k costing consumers $594 and $396.
One thing to note is that the i7 5930k only has 24 lanes of PCIe 3.0 lanes compared to the i7 5930k and i7 5960x. After Haswell, Broadwell is expected to replace it in 2015 although it remains to be seen if it won’t be delayed again as it was earlier in the year.
NVIDIA recently unveiled the GeForce GTX Titan Z at their annual GPU Technology Conference, the most powerful GPU that NVIDIA has ever created for Professionals and Gamers alike. Costing an eye-watering $3000, this card is for those with deep pockets that will be able to afford such luxuries. Fitted with two GK110’s which consists of 5,760 cores or 2,880 individually, what’s even better is that the Titan Z has twin GPU’s that are tuned to run at the same clock speeds and with dynamic power balancing.
This allows neither GPU to bottleneck each other which will in turn allow greater performance; the card design is supposed to be cool and quiet just like the Titan’s that have come before it. AMD have already released their competitor with the AMD R9295x2 which is also a dual GPU with inbuilt water-cooling facilities at almost half the price. A dual GPU has been a long time coming, considering the fact that NVIDIA’s Titan Black GPU’s may have been eating into the sales of the Tesla line. By introducing a Dual-GPU solution, NVIDIA have allowed professionals a greater source of processing power at a higher price and for gamers who want to go the extra mile for performance.
Nikon has decided the to embark on an adventure that Sony inevitable started in recent memory with the introduction of the Xperia Z1, an electronic device capable of being used underwater to a certain degree. Although there will be inevitable be manufacturers that offer similar capabilities with their cameras, Nikon has gone an extra step further by providing a mirror-less, interchangeable camera that is waterproof of up to 49 feet, the camera is also shockproof and freeze-proof.
Nikon has also introduced various features such as built-in GPS, an altimeter, depth gauge, electronic compass, and horizon indicator. The photographic capabilities are under-par when it comes to different mirror-less cameras due to the CX camera format. It’s photography may prove to be better than traditional point and shoot waterproof cameras due to the fact that it still has a larger sensor then most waterproof cameras. The Nikon AW1 with 11 – 27.5mm lens will be available in October for $799.99. Even the lens are waterproof etc, clearly if you like to go through rough conditions to take a decent picture then this may be the camera for you.
The Mantle API is AMD’s way of allowing developers to code to the metal instead of using other traditional methods of programming such as DirectX and OpenGL. AMD claims that Mantle includes the same concepts as DirextX and OpenGL, it was designed for modern and highly programmable devices. Overtime, AMD seeks to make Mantle an alternative to DirectX and OpenGL with promises of higher performance in CPU and GPU bound operations. This can be attractive when looking at AMD’s lower range APU’s that have been proven to benefit from this API.
The devices that stand to benefit from this development is hardware that have been derived from GCN architecture, this automatically includes the HD 7000, HD 8000, R7 and R9 GPU’s currently on sale. One of the more direct advantages of Mantle is reducing the overhead of compiling shader programs, the result is that Mantle cuts the CPU time needed to get graphics onto the screen and gives the GPU more batches to process.
With operations that are CPU bound, the results can be very impressive, which certainly will benefit lower range AMD CPU’s in a variety of games. However until independent testing can take place with public drivers, we are forced to rely on the numbers that AMD provide of what Mantle is capable of performing. Mantle is already available for Battlefield 4 and a public driver by AMD will be released soon.
Fujifilm plan to satisfy camera enthusiasts on it’s 80th anniversary by releasing a camera with a special emphasis on physical control. The camera has dedicated dials for exposure, shutter speed, and ISO with even more dials said to be lurking around according to the teaser image.
Fujifilm have gained an reputation for recreating aesthetics of classic film cameras and continued to do so in the present day if reports are to be believed. The new X-T1 flagship is said to feature an articulating screen, a weather-sealed body coupled with a 16-megapixel APS-C sensor and an large electronic viewfinder.
As many of the public who is up to date with smartphone technology may already know, Samsung has been known to release a new smartphone every year. This time, Samsung plans to release S5 as a direct competitor to the Apple’s iPhone. In an interview with Bloomberg, it’s been stated that the S5 will be paired with a new wearable device that will be an evolution of the Galaxy Gear smart-watch by Lee Young Hee the executive vice president of the company’s mobile business. Samsung said they will also solve the bulky design of its flagship phones that have been prevalent over the previous years.
On the hardware side of things, Samsung has made it no secret that it intends to introduce Iris technology to compete with Apple’s new fingerprint technology on the iPhone 5S. There are indications that Samsung will not stick with plastic this time and instead go for something more premium in a effort to compete with competitors such as HTC. There is even talk of three sided displays, the type of displays you see on 3D renders floating around the internet.
Samsung is even venturing with revamping the prior software land and reportedly experimenting with new ideas. In order to compete with other smartphone companies, it’s important to feature technologies that normal people would like to use. It’s actually quite a good idea Samsung pioneered multiple services on their platforms, the majority of the services may not have been perfect, but it gives them somewhere to improve on in order to enhance the experience.
In a effort to reclaim lost momentum from the launch of the S3, Samsung has it’s work cut out for them and must continue to innovate to thrive in this business.
The usual question regarding streaming 4K content is usually how it would be possible to stream such content when the bandwidth requirement is so high. The processing power required to push the content out will be obviously extraordinarily high, but this is where the codec h.265 will come into play when compressing the data to a sufficient rate. If you are looking for exact details then 15.6 Mbps will be required to run 4K in all it’s form and glory. However, the ultimate question will be is how the service providers will cope with the increasing demands of speeds required by different content and what action will they take to cope for the oncoming mass following of 4K video.
Orion 