Dog days for the console market
The most memorable image from Microsoft’s reveal of the Xbox One was an animated German Shepherd with Kevlar armour and a high polygon count. Motion-captured from a retired Navy Seal dog to serve as a player companion in this year’s iteration of Call of Duty, the pooch is an apt mascot for the console. The dog
Microsoft goes all-in with Xbox One
Microsoft on Tuesday night joined the next generation console battle with the announcement of its Xbox One that critics are billing as an all-in-one entertainment device rather than simply a gaming console. While Microsoft gave the world a fairly detailed look at the features and capabilities
Review: Sony’s Xperia Z raises the bar
With Samsung and Apple dominant in the smartphone wars, Japan’s Sony has had to battle for the Android scraps with companies like HTC. With the Xperia Z, however, the company has done a superb job of catching up with the frontrunners and, in certain respects, even overtaking them. Unveiled
Mobile World Congress in review
Each year around this time, Barcelona plays host to the Mobile World Congress, the biggest annual event for the world’s mobile communications industry. In addition to usual product announcement from many of the big-name manufacturers, the buzz this year was around mobile
Next up: the mother of all tech wars
Signs of the traditional gaming industry’s decline are everywhere. They’re in the financial results of the giants of games publishing such as Electronic Arts, which saw revenues drop nearly 8% year-on-year in its latest quarter, and of THQ, which was this forced into bankruptcy early this year. They’re in the
With smartphones, size matters
Bigger is better. That was the message from smartphone manufacturers at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January. It is a trend that will no doubt be on display again in late February at Mobile World Congress, the industry’s biggest annual trade event, held each year in Barcelona. Growing
It’s the wristwatch, just reinvented
A hundred years after being popularised, the humble wristwatch is being reinvented for the smartphone era. Several exciting initiatives, including Pebble, a crowd-funded project that has raised more than US$10m, are set to emerge this year. Imagine lounging on
Sony has its groove back
Since it bought out Ericsson’s stake in its mobile phone joint venture, Sony has been confined largely to playing catch-up in the smartphone market. Its devices have been good, but they’ve lacked the sort of cutting-edge innovation and aggressive marketing that have made Samsung Electronics the
The trouble with 4K TV
There’s no other way of describing the technology: the latest ultra-high-definition (UHD) television sets look absolutely amazing. From television to cinema, the “4K” resolutions on offer represent a new frontier in entertainment. But the industry faces a big and perhaps even insurmountable
The future of television, now
The new year in technology starts off with a bang with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. As in 2012, a lot of focus at CES this year is on innovation in television as manufacturers push to enormous screens with much higher resolutions. There’s almost a sense of urgency
Greg Mahlknecht: 
clerkenwellman: 
Chloe Leung: 
Lance Harris: