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ODG launches its Snapdragon 835-based mixed-reality glasses
The name Osterhout Design Group (ODG) might not sound all that familiar, but it has unveiled two mixed-reality smartglasses at this year's CES. These new devices, called the R-8 and the R-9, are two of the first wearables powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835. They're both capable of augmented and virtual reality overlays, though the R-9 has more-sophisticated features to go with its higher price point. It has a 50-degree field of view and 1080p resolution, whereas the R-8 has a 40-degree FOV and a 720p resolution. Further, it functions as a development platform for mobile AR and VR, as well as smartglass applications.
Oppo R9 is a fancy mid-range phone for selfie addicts
How many megapixels does your pretty face deserve? 16 apparently, according to a couple of new Android smartphones from Oppo. The freshly announced R9 and R9 Plus are the latest addition to the Chinese company's mid-range line, featuring a powerful front-facing camera with Samsung's 16-megapixel ISOCELL sensor and a bright f/2.0 aperture, along with Oppo's new and improved beautification plus selfie panorama modes. These will no doubt be a big hit amongst ladies in Asia, but that's not to say men can't enjoy the occasional selfies, either (yes, I'm very much guilty here).
AMD's graphics card comeback: the new R7 series, R9 series and Mantle
It's been a tricky couple of years for AMD's graphics card division. Not because the last batch of Radeon HDs were bad, but because the competition's offerings were often better -- and because improvements in integrated graphics have hurt demand for discrete GPUs in general. However, as was revealed a couple of weeks back, AMD has a plan. The company's latest R7 and R9 cards don't only notch up the FLOPs, but also come with support for something called "Mantle" -- a programming tool which unifies game development across PCs and consoles, and which promises superior visual performance so long as developers make AMD-specific versions of their games to exploit it. We'll look at Mantle in greater detail in a moment, but for now what matters is that all of AMD's new cards support it -- from the lowliest R7 240 right up to the huge R9 290X -- and that's why they're each worthy of a detailed breakdown.
AMD unveils Radeon R9 and R7 series video cards, unifying graphics code for PCs and consoles
Graphics cards aren't normally our go-to choices for audio processing, but we may have to make exceptions for AMD's just-unveiled Radeon R9 and R7 lines. The R9 290X (shown above), R9 290 and R7 260X (after the break) will support TrueAudio, a new programmable pipeline that enables advanced audio effects without burdening a PC's main processor or a dedicated sound card. Not that the range will be lacking in visual prowess, of course. While the company isn't revealing full specifications, it claims that the R9 290X flagship will have five teraflops of total computing power versus the four teraflops of the previous generation. The boards will ship sometime in the "near future," with prices ranging from $89 for an entry R7 250 to $299 for the mid-tier R9 280X. AMD isn't divulging the R9 290X's price, but pre-orders for the card will start on October 3rd. The firm has also revealed a new programming interface, Mantle, that makes the most of the Graphics Core Next architecture found in many of its recent processors and video chipsets. Developers who build the low-level code into their games should get better performance from GCN-based devices without having to re-optimize for each platform -- a title meant for Radeon-equipped PCs should still behave well on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, for instance. Mantle will debut on Windows through a December update to Battlefield 4, and should spread to other platforms in the months ahead.
