AMD has just released its R9-series Radeon 290X graphics card with the clear intent to propel die-hard gamers on a budget to gaming Utopia.

How so? Well the R9 290X is a GPU has the potential to knock the already well established NVIDIA GeForce GTX780 out of its comfort zone while costing $100 less. Read more »

iFixit has published its Microsoft Surface Pro 2 teardown, revealing all internals of the slate as well as how easy each of them can be replaced.

As it turns out, not very easy with the Surface Pro 2. The tablet seems more or less the same as last year’s model – featuring the same exact battery, same screws (many, many screws) and the same flaws that brought the last Surface Pro a low repairability score. Read more »

Contrary to previous information coming from Joe Belfiore it turns out that the third live tile on Windows Phone 8.1 depends on the screen size only, and not the resolution.

The correction comes straight from Windows Phone guru himself over Twitter, saying that the third live tile column is set by the manufacturer depending on the screen size and not the resolution. Mr. Belfiore apologized for his mistweet and clarified the situation. Read more »

Google already offers handwriting input in its Mobile Search, Google Translate (on web, Android and iOS) and in Chrome but it’s now adding it to its Gmail and Google Drive services.

Currently handwriting input supports over 20 languages in Google Drive and over 50 in Gmail. In order to get handwriting input you need to enable it in input tools in either service. Read more »

Nokia finally took the wraps off its first phablet, the Lumia 1520 and now it’s time for the promo videos to pop up on YouTube.

The phablet got three of those, focusing on its smart side, artistic side and also on its hardware. Read more »

BlackBerry has revealed on its BBM Twitter page that the BlackBerry Messenger for iOS and Android has received extremely warm reception. The company has seen some 5 million activations in just 8 hours after the app was launched.

Those are not just downloads, mind you, but the number of people that have activated their accounts with the app. Read more »

Over at its Abu Dhabi Keynote Nokia released its first slate dubbed Lumia 2520. The tablet runs on the Windows RT, has a 10.1″ FullHD display a Snapdragon 800 chipset and comes with a variety of color options – black, blue, white and red. The price before subsidies will be $499.

You can get the Lumia 2520 slate with an add-on keyboard, dubbed Power Keyboard, with additional USB ports, battery and integrated kick-stand. Read more »

Case-maker Ringke has released a case for the upcoming Nexus 5 and listed it for sale on eBay.

The case straps onto the device and doesn’t seem particularly interesting, but the fact that the actual phone is present is rather more exciting. The Nexus 5 is expected to be announced in a week and go on sale soon (probably the beginning of November). Read more »

If you’re a fan of burning rubber on mobile and happen to be an iOS user then you’d be pleased to find that today Asphalt 8 Airborne, the latest title of the game, has gone free on iOS.

Android gamers don’t get to enjoy the same spoils, sadly, and this isn’t even the first time the game has gone free on iDevices. Read more »

New images of the alleged next iPad mini and iPad 5 have leaked just days before the Apple October 22 event.

The images show the iPad mini 2 next to the iPhone 5s and with another iPad lurking in the background. Notice how the home button isn’t TouchID but a vanilla one? Previous leaks suggested the iPad mini 2 will have TouchID, but this seems to put those speculations to rest. Read more »

Nokia would like to name October 20 (cleverly spelled by Nokia 10.20) the International Mobile Photography day and has teamed up with some Associated Press photojournalists to bring a “mobile photo documentary” and a “Life Unexpected” video.

The mobile photo documentary will bring together series of photos from people around the world, while the best will make it to the video, which is said to air on Monday, October 21. Read more »

Motorola’s MotoMaker, the online software that let’s you customize the Moto X (currently only in the US and so far only on AT&T) has a fresh new feature that will appeal to Moto X converts coming from iOS.

After purchasing a Moto X through MotoMaker customers will be given a choice, if coming from an iPhone, to add their iCloud and Google credentials and have their iOS contacts and calendars synced with Google. Read more »

The freshly unveiled HTC One Max is here at HQ and we’ve got a bunch of images to share with you guys.

Built around a whopping 5.9″ display of 1080p resolution, the One Max is HTC’s first real attempt at a phablet device and will be taking on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z Ultra and LG Optimus G Pro. Read more »

The Acer Liquid E2 also known by its V370 alias has come to our office sporting a very respectable spec sheet for a very reasonable price. It has an 8 MP camera on the back, quad-core CPU with four Cortex-A7 cores, 1 GB of RAM and a 4.5″ display of qHD (960 x 540) resolution.

All of that is powered by a 2000 mAh battery and we decided to check out just how much juice the Acer Liquid E2 has before it goes under and to do that we put it through our rigorous mix of calling, browsing and watching video, coupled with an overnight stand-by to determine what sort of endurance rating the Liquid E2 has. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Gear has turned out to be quite the entertaining hacking device. Using Android’s SDK and Android Debug Bridge (ADB) ArsTechnica was able to sideload some proper Android apps on the little smartwatch and it had no trouble running them.

You only need to enable USB debugging on the Galaxy Gear settings in order for this to work – no root required. The Samsung smartwatch runs Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with an 800 MHz single-core chip and 512 MB of RAM so it’s able to run apps like most droids would – the only limitation is the small on-board storage and tiny screen. Read more »