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Google-owned Fitbit has announced it is recalling its Ionic smartwatches after it confirmed the potential for overheating and burn injuries. The public service announcement was made via the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), who noted that around 1 million Ionic smartwatches have been sold in the US, while an additional 700,000 have been sold in other countries. The battery found in models sold between 2017 and 2020 can overheat and pose a burn hazard to users....

During their in-depth testing of the Galaxy Tab S8 series, Android Police found both the S8 Ultra and S8+ variant to be throttling performance when they ran a modified version of Geekbench, renaming it to the popular game Genshin Impact. The publication observed the tablets’ performance declining by 18-24 percent for single-threaded CPU scores and 6-11 percent for multi-threaded scores. Moreover, older Galaxy Tab models, such as the S7, S7 FE and S5e didn’t demonstrate this behavior during testing....

The R9 285 and GTX 960 delivered virtually the same performance when testing with Sleeping Dogs with Nvidia’s solution being just 2% faster at 1920x1200. The GTX 960 was also just 5% quicker than the GTX 760 but 36% slower than the GTX 970. The GTX 960 was slightly slower than the R9 285 when testing with Battlefield and although it was 3% slower than the R9 285, it was 9% faster than the GTX 760....

General Motors is finally throwing in the towel with its in-car Marketplace app. The infotainment system function allowed drivers (or passengers) to make dinner reservations, order food, or even pay for gas from the comfort of their car. The automaker announced on Friday that it was discontinuing service for the Marketplace app. We were skeptical of the feature when initially reporting on it in 2017. It seemed like an unnecessary and potentially unsafe feature for the car dash, especially in an age when everyone carries a phone around capable of doing the same thing....

Just over a year ago, indy developer Haenir Studio quietly announced on Reddit that it was developing its first game called Blight: Survival. The two-person team has since worked on the project in their spare time. The developers have not revealed much about the title besides a few progress updates. On Wednesday, the Blight: Survival game page went live on Steam. Haenir put together an unremarkable teaser and a much more remarkable five-minute gameplay trailer that looks impressive for only having been in development for a year (above)....

First up, we have Excel 2013, in which Brix does rather well as this application takes advantage of the i5-3337U’s ability to handle four threads, whereas the Pentium G2020 is limited to half that. The WinRAR compression test should also take advantage of the i5-3337U’s extra threads, and it very well may, but if the chip is being heavily utilized its Turbo Boost feature won’t overclock the processor much and that gives the Pentium G2020 a clear clock speed advantage....

The GeForce GTX 580 remains for now the fastest single-GPU graphics card available today. In the 13 games we tested, the GeForce GTX 580 was on average a match to the Radeon HD 5970, 25% faster than the GeForce GTX 480 and 46% faster than the Radeon HD 5870. So where does the new GeForce GTX 570 fit into the picture? With an estimated retail price of $350, the GTX 570 is 30% cheaper than the GTX 580 and roughly 10% more expensive than the Radeon HD 5870, though it will most likely end up competing with the Radeon HD 6950 which is set to be released later this month....

The R9 290X OC rendered 56.9fps in Medal of Honor: Warfigher and yet it was still 14% slower than the GTX 780 Ti JetStream, though the R9 290 OC maintained a 3% lead over the standard GTX 780. Albeit by a slim margin, the R9 290X OC outperformed the GTX 780 Ti JetStream by 2% with 39.5fps. The R9 290 OC also enjoyed a 13% win over the GTX 780....

Hardware Coming in July: Pixel 6a and Pixel Buds Pro The $449 Pixel 6a is this year’s affordable, yet similarly capable version of Google’s most recent Pixel flagship. Powered by the same Tensor chip as the Pixel 6/6 Pro, the 6a makes a few compromises in other areas with a smaller 60Hz display, less RAM and inferior camera setup. It does, however, appear to be another solid option in the extremely competitive mid-range Android segment....

First up, there are several system-wide visual changes that have been made. The status bar at the top and the navigation bar at the bottom are now translucent in the launcher, which now makes the OS feel like it’s taking up the entire display, rather than letterboxing the actual usable homescreen space like with Android 4.3. This translucent effect isn’t just restricted to the launcher, with refreshed APIs allowing any app to put content behind a translucent status/navigation bars....

In spite of the fact that the Android 4.1 OS on the Nexus 7 looks smartphone-like, the apps that run on it look very much tablet-focused. The email and Gmail apps are a good example of this, since they offer nice multi-paned views that provide access to the user’s inbox as well as a message at the same time. Instant messaging on the Nexus 7 is limited to Google Talk right out of the box, but the Google+ social networking app is also pre-installed, and it offers video-based “Hangouts” that make use of the forward facing camera and built-in microphones....

With the display blunder evolving at rapid pace and some kind of response expected at any moment, I decided to hold off on publishing my review of the Pixel 2 XL until the situation had settled. This also gave me more time to analyse the phone, in particular its display, and present my opinion based on facts. So if you want the full verdict on why the Pixel 2 XL’s display is not up to scratch, and what (if anything) can be improved with software, check out the display section further down this page....

All versions of Android prior to 8.0 Oreo did not support color management whatsoever. The operating system was built for sRGB, and assumed that every smartphone display was sRGB compliant. This meant that when you viewed an image, Android assumed it was sRGB, ignored any color profile, and sent the raw color information to the display. Several generations ago, display technology - particularly Samsung AMOLED, but LCDs as well - progressed to the point where gamuts wider than sRGB could be produced....

After poking fun at August’s rumors that Stadia was about to shutter, Google one month later confirmed that the service would be closing down for good on January 18, 2023. The company has now started the process of issuing refunds for bought games, add-on content, and subscriptions (other than Stadia Pro) made through the Stadia Store. Those who bought 20 or fewer Stadia games will receive an individual email for each of those transactions....

The Guardian reports that the case revolves around George Defteros, a Victoria defense lawyer who previously represented Melbourne gangland figures. He sued Google over claims that its publication of search results showing a 2004 article defamed him. The article from The Age implied that Defteros had become more than just a lawyer for criminal elements but was also a friend and confidant, crossing professional boundaries. The piece also reported on the murder charges Defteros faced in relation to the killing of three men....

Follow up: Stock Update October 2021, November 2021, December 2021, January 2022, February 2022, March 2022, April 2022, May 2022, June 2022 It was just over a year ago that Nvidia launched the first GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards, the RTX 3080 on September 17 and the RTX 3090 shortly after. Lots of excitement back then with Nvidia promising to sell these GPUs for $700 and $1,500, respectively. Supply at launch was low, and from there it only got worse with ever increasing demand and other market factors at play....

Playing Battlefield 3 at 1920x1200 the Radeon HD 6750 rendered just 17.1fps. Overclocking provided a frame rate increase of 13% which is just 2fps. While a 13% performance gain sounds substantial, at 19.3fps Radeon HD 6750 owners will still need to turn the visual quality down in this game. Again we find that the Radeon HD 6750 is too slow to enjoy the latest games in all of their visual glory as it produced just 14....

The 3DMark 06 results are much the same regardless of the Z97 board being used. Moreover, the Core i7-4790 wasn’t really any faster than the 4770K. Again, we see virtually no difference in performance between the Z97 motherboards in PCMark 7 with a 1% gap between the slowest and fastest Z97 board. Also, the Core i7-4790 was less than 1% faster than the 4770. When testing with Excel, the Asrock Z97X Killer was just 0....

As we’ve seen time and again, Fallout 3 seems to favor ATI hardware in general. As a result we see the Radeon HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 285 delivering similar performance at 2560x1600. Meanwhile, the Radeon HD 5850 was 16% faster than the HD 4890 and as much as 28% faster than the GeForce GTX 285. Our HIS-branded graphics card was about 15% slower than the Radeon HD 5870, which worked out to be just 9fps less....