Next week’s CES 2018 tech extravaganza promises to be quite a show, and the latest in a long line of new products to be previewed is a rollable OLED TV screen from LG Display, measuring an impressive 65 inches from corner to corner. The new screen is in fact a bigger version of a flexible 18-inch display the company showed off back in 2014. As an added bonus, the TV display boasts a 4K resolution for all your Netflix binge watching. Tech firms will often tease new gear ahead of CES itself just t

With streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Rhapsody, YouTube and Tidal all the rage, are we now in the death throes of the download? CD-ripping will soon become a thing of the pastHow significant is the downloaded music market? “Artists will get cryptocurrency tokens for each listen of their track, and earn a hundred times more than on streaming services,” he says. Although Apple may be considering the move as a publicity stunt to give a boost to Apple Music, it’s unlikely that d

Over at CES 2018, Acer has revealed an even thinner Swift 7 Ultrabook, as well as announcing the availability of a new spin on the Switch 7. The Swift 7 was already incredibly thin and light, but Acer has slimmed it down from just over 10mm to an exceptionally trim 8.98mm. The new Swift 7 delivers a claimed battery life of up to 10 hours, slightly more than its predecessor which ran for an estimated nine hours. Expect the new Acer Swift 7 to emerge in April, with the price starting at $1,699 (ar

Acer has unleashed a refresh of its affordable gaming laptop, the Nitro 5, over at CES, giving the machine one of AMD’s new Ryzen mobile CPUs. Altogether this should be a more tempting solution for the casual gamers who don’t want to spend a fortune on portable PC gaming. Users will also find Nitro Sense software pre-installed to monitor both CPU and GPU performance. The Acer Nitro 5 with Ryzen CPU will hit the shelves in May with the price starting at $799 (around £590, AU$1,020), just the same

The latest bit of hardware to grab our attention: AR glasses from Vuzix, with Alexa on board. Other details are pretty scarce at the moment but we’ll hear all about the glasses next week. Alexa everywhereVuzix is an old hand at AR and VR glasses, though these look to be more advanced and capable than anything that’s gone before. Of course the real test will be how well these Vuzix glasses overlay digital elements on top of the real world, so we’ll try and get some hands-on time with them if they

However, there are other portable devices coming that will bring massive challenges to battery technology; the electric car – and the electric everything. It’s a huge challenge, with an expected 20 million electric vehicles to be selling each year by 2030, each using a massive lithium-ion battery. The world produces about 90GWh (gigawatt hours) worth of electric vehicle lithium-ion battery now, and BNEF sees this rising to 270GWh by 2021. However, the main supplier of electric car batteries to T

Could we be about to get a 4K-resolution HTC Vive for 2018? That’s certainly what this tweet from the official HTC Vive account would suggest, which was posted over the weekend and promises a “New Year’s Resolution” on Monday. The current HTC Vive offers a 2,160 x 1,200 pixel display, stretched across both eye, so to get up to 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) would mean a doubling of that. Perhaps HTC will settle for something less than 4K, but it would certainly help the marketing if it could stretch

It’s an ultra-configurable open source VPN client which works with just about any VPN provider that supports the OpenVPN protocol. You get full control of the server listMost VPN clients display locations in fixed lists which you can’t alter or reorganize in any way. The end result could save you a lot of time, and free up resources by reducing the need to have other VPN clients installed. Run useful scriptsOne of OpenVPN’s most valuable features is the ability to run custom scripts when your VP

In the process, it will help give Fitbit an edge in the face of increasing competition from the likes of Apple. Fitbit actually already has some glucose-monitoring technology in its Ionic smartwatch , but Sano’s small “patch” might be more efficient. Fit and a hitThe affordability of Fitbit devices and their ability to go comparatively long periods without charges continue to make them an appealing option for health professionals conducting studies. The Apple Watch is no longer the novelty devic

Amazon is determined to get its Alexa voice assistant onto as many devices as possible. As such (or so we should hope), the service should be more stable than what we’d see from a third-party developer. You lose some convenience in the process, but it gets rid of a ton of technical hurdles and so frees developers to bring Alexa to comparatively inexpensive and lightweight devices. In essence, all the watch, headphone set or fitness tracker would need to do is connect to the Alexa app on iOS or A

Wireless charging is slowly but surely becoming the norm for smartphones, which means it’s a great time to be a company that’s focused on producing reputable wireless chargers. For starters, there’s the new Belkin Boost Up Bold Wireless Charging Pad, which comes in a “variety” of colors for device matching and delivers a 10-watt charge. Belkin Boost Up Dual Wireless Charging Pad (Image: © Belkin)And if you’re a business owner who wants to allow customers to charge their devices at various spots?

Update: TechRadar has learned from Google that there were no new burn-in updates in the January update. What Telus picked up on is that there has been a small tweak to an existing one. Now, the company has quietly released an update that implements measures to prevent screen aging. It’s buried in long update list from Canadian telecommunications company Telus, scooped by The Android Soul . It shows that the anti-aging remedy has released for some on each of the Pixel devices, including last year

As the Meltdown and Spectre controversy rumbles on, Intel is now taking more flak in the form of three class-action lawsuits filed in California, Indiana and Oregon, over in the US. Intel in the crosshairsIt’s interesting that Intel has been singled out to be put in the legal firing line when Spectre doesn’t only affect Intel processors (as is the case with Meltdown). As we saw this morning, Apple admitted that not just its Mac computers were affected, but also iOS devices. Still, this is certai

Android Oreo is coming soon for the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. That alone is enough reason to get excited, but coming along in tow with the anticipated update could be a surprise feature: Dolby Atmos support. A non-final version of the Oreo update has leaked that apparently plants the immersive audio feature into the sound settings on Samsung’s latest smartphones. Or at least, that’s how it is supposed to work, but this Oreo build reportedly doesn’t function correctly. The Dolby Atmos settin

Mark Zuckerberg has made a modest new year’s resolution: to fix Facebook and make the world a better place. “The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot to do,” the CEO said in a post on his personal account. Speaking at the annual Techonomy conference near San Francisco, the CEO called the notion a “pretty crazy idea” . Zuckerberg retracted the statement in 2017 following a tweet in which President Trump claimed Facebook had a specific agenda against him. Only after the election

Samsung has not two, but three laptops to show off at CES 2018, with news of its Notebook 7 Spin for 2018 now out of the bag. The most tangible change with this years model is it’s now a 13-inch hyrbid, whereas in years past, the Samsung Notebook 7 was a 15-inch convertible. Another major addition is support for a Samsung stylus called the Active Pen, which is sold separately and we’ll likely learn more about during the show. Image 1 of 5 Image 2 of 5 Image 3 of 5 Image 4 of 5 Image 5 of 5What’s

Could you be watching your club lift the Premier League trophy on an Amazon Prime Video stream from 2019? It’s a real possibility according to sources close to the matter, which claim Amazon is looking to wade into the pricey UK football rights war. So what does an online giant like Amazon want with football streams? Well, if they can be packaged up alongside its Amazon Prime subscription service, it’s another lure for those sitting on the fence as to whether sign up or not. And for the hardcore

HP has issued a battery recall notice for a number of its laptops and mobile workstations sold over the last two years due to concerns that the battery inside these machines could be dangerous and a fire hazard. Affected models include HP ProBook, HP ZBook, HP x360, HP Envy m6, HP Pavilion x360 laptops and more – for the full list as spotted by Engadget, check HP’s site here. Safety mode engagedIf so, there are also instructions on how to put your notebook into ‘battery safety mode’ for the time

If you don’t have a Microsoft Office subscription, don’t worry – you can use PowerPoint Online to create a calendar in your web browser for free. Pick a templateVisit the Microsoft Office template gallery and select ‘Calendars’ to see designs for Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word. If you’ve downloaded a calendar template, double-click the file to open it in the PowerPoint desktop app. Don’t worry about the placeholder ‘Click to add’ text – this won’t appear when you print your calendar. Print

The original Nokia 6 has a premium design for the money, and it looks like the newly announced Nokia 6 (2018) will retain that, while upgrading the specs. That makes it smaller but slightly thicker than the 154 x 75.8 x 7.9mm original Nokia 6. The only other minor changes to the Nokia 6 (2018) are its use of USB Type-C for charging and an upgrade to Bluetooth 5 from Bluetooth 4.1. However, there’s a good chance that the Nokia 6 (2018) will get a wider launch later in the year. The Nokia 9 could