Just like with my testing for the Xperia Z3 I decided to only charge the Xperia Z3 Compact once every two days. With my standard usage patterns including social media, messaging, phone calls, web browsing and camera use, the Compact passed my general battery life test with flying colors. I just wish more smarphone OEMs placed an emphasis on battery life, because it’s so critical. Aside from outstanding performance in our battery benchmarks, the Compact comes with a range of battery saving modes such as Stamina Mode and Ultra Stamina Mode....

Sifu developer Sloclap announced on Tuesday that it would add difficulty modes to the Souls-like game in a content update coming May 3. There will be three levels — Student, Desciple, and Master. The game is already very challenging, so presumably, Student and Disciple are degrees easier than the game’s current default difficulty. In addition to making the game more approachable to those not patient enough to try and die a gazillion times, Sloclap is also adding “Advanced Training” and the ability to change outfits....

Other graphics cards that we consider to be slow for gaming, such as the Radeon HD 5670 and GeForce GT 240, were more than capable of delivering playable performance at this resolution. Essentially anything equal to or greater than the Radeon HD 4870 is overkill at 1680x1050 when using the high quality visual settings.

Valve writes that the new Steam Charts section provides a better overview of what is hot on the service right now. The top-selling games chart is based on total revenue, so not only does it include the price you pay for a game, where applicable, but it also covers sources such as DLC and in-game transactions. Valve notes that this new method of calculating revenue is also being deployed across various top lists throughout the Steam store, including the Top Sellers tab on Steam’s homepage, genre, and tag pages....

Chrome From the dropdown menu, select Settings > Advanced (scroll down) > Content settings. From Chrome’s content settings you can click into ‘Location’ and ‘Notifications’ separately to disable each. This will block the pop-ups forever while also preventing websites from knowing your location and sending you notifications. Download shortcut: Google Chrome Chrome (Android) The exact same settings exist on the mobile version of Chrome found in Android devices. Although we wouldn’t outright disable location settings on the browser like we’d do on the desktop (for obvious useful reasons), if one of your favorite websites annoys you with these kind of prompts, you can always disable them on a per-site basis....

Telegram, which is popular with far-right groups in multiple countries, is the favored platform of President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters. Alternatives, like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter, have cooperated closely with Brazilian courts that have tried to limit the spread of misinformation by de-platforming radical right-wing political commentators, but Telegram hasn’t. Bolsonaro has more than one million followers on the messaging platform, and his allies are saying that its ban is politically motivated....

In previous years we’ve looked at manually tuning memory timings for Ryzen and found solid performance gains, so this was something we wanted to revisit. Now that things have settled post-launch and have had more time for other tests, we were put in a mission to benchmark memory performance on 3rd-gen Ryzen. We’ve done our best to leave no stone unturned, forcing hundreds of benchmark runs to gather our data....

This article is going to be a comprehensive overview of FSR. We’ve got a stack of quality comparisons at different resolutions, performance benchmarks across several GPUs, and comparisons to other upscaling technologies. There is a lot of ground to cover. What is FSR? FSR is an upscaling technology that’s designed to improve the performance of games at minimal loss to visual quality. Like DLSS and checkerboard rendering, the concept is that you can reduce the game’s rendering resolution, and use an algorithm to upscale the image to your target resolution, typically the native resolution of your monitor....

It wasn’t all bad, of course. Kingdom Come: Deliverance launched in February to great success, and Far Cry 5 – despite being the fifth entry in a somewhat formulaic franchise – managed to capture the attention of many players due to its unique setting and charismatic villains. Other non-exclusive games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 4 and Vermintide 2 were received to excellent user impressions and let’s also not forget of games that received content updates and remained relevant and at the top of our minds, including GTA V and League of Legends....

We’ve gathered some of the best discounts we could find on tech you’ll love, going through dozens of listings so you don’t have to. We are filtering for high-rated products that we would otherwise recommend, but right now you can get them for less… 93 LG C1 OLED 48" 4K Smart TV for $797 (list $1,500) 89 Google Pixel 6 256GB Unlocked for $599 (list $700) 86 Corsair K70 RGB Pro Wired Mechanical Keyboard for $119 (list $170) 72 Logitech G435 LightSpeed Bluetooth Wireless Gaming Headset for $48 (usually $80) 92 Intel Core i5-12600KF Unlocked Processor for $217 (list $310) 92 AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Unlocked Processor for $332 (list $570) 82 Samsung M8 32" UHD Smart Monitor for $550 (normally $730) 80 SteelSeries Arctis 9X Wireless Gaming Headset for $159 (usually $200) SteelSeries Aerox 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse for $90 (normally $150) 89 GoPro Hero 8 Black Bundle with 2 Batteries and Carrying Case for $250 (normally $370) 89 Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 SSD for $195 (normally $380) 88 Apple Watch Series 7 Smartwatch for $279 (normally $400) 80 Garmin Instinct Solar Smartwatch for $200 (list $350) 79 Samsung T7 Shield 2TB Portable SSD for $200 (list $290) 75 SteelSeries Apex 7 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard for $100 (normally $160) 94 Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Headset for $228 (usually $350) Dell S3422DWG 34" Curved Gaming Monitor for $390 (list $510) 91 Samsung Odyssey G9 49" Curved Gaming Monitor for $1,100 (list $1,500) 89 WD Black SN850 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD for $180 (list $350) 81 Logitech G915 TKL RGB Wireless Gaming Keyboard for $142 (normally $230) 84 Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Unlocked Smartphone for $840 (list $1,200) 89 AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Unlocked Desktop Processor for $275 (list $450) 77 Asus TUF Dash 15 (RTX 3060) Gaming Laptop for $1,100 (normally $1,300) 83 Corsair K65 RGB Mini Gaming Keyboard for $80 (normally $110) Dell S3222DGM 32" Curved Gaming Monitor for $280 (usually $409) 86 Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 Wireless Headphones for $269 (list $379) 92 Sony WF-1000XM4 True Wireless Earbuds for $198 (usually $278) 88 Apple AirPods Pro for $170 (usually $255) 82 Samsung Galaxy S22 with 256GB, Unlocked Smartphone for $650 (list $850) Razer Kaira X Wired Gaming Headset for $40 (normally $60) 86 Microsoft Surface Pro 8 with 128GB Windows Tablet for $850 (normally $1,100) 90 Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse for $85 (list $150) 88 Razer DeathAdder V2 Gaming Mouse for $30 (list $70) 87 Apple iPad Pro 11" Wi-Fi 128 GB for $750 (usually $799) 86 Bose QuietComfort 45 Wireless Headset for $229 (usually $329) 80 Sony LinkBuds S True Wireless Earbuds for $158 (usually $200) 89 AOC 24G2 24" IPS Gaming Monitor for $157 (normally $230) 84 Corsair 5000D Airflow PC Case for $150 (normally $175) 90 EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 12GB Graphics Card for $965 (normally $1,300) ViewSonic OMNI VX2768 27" Curved Gaming Monitor for $180 (list $230) 80 Gigabyte RTX 3060 OC 12 GB Graphics Card for $430 (list $480) 84 Sony ZV-1 Digital Camera for $648 (normally $748) 79 Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 11" Android Tablet $574 (list $700) eero 6 Plus Mesh Wi-Fi 6 System 3-Pack for $194 (normally $300) 89 Microsoft Pro Intellimouse Dark Shadow for $31 (list $60) Bonus Track 84 Logitech G915 RGB Wireless Gaming Keyboard for $142 (normally $250) 85 Garmin Venu 2 GPS Smartwatch for $270 (normally $400) MSI Optix MAG301RF 30" Curved Gaming Monitor for $230 (list $330) Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15....

In our single large file copy test the Crucial MX100 series didn’t suffer once it was full – worst case was a loss of just 3 to 4MB/s. The program test saw a performance drop of exactly 7MB/s on both the 256GB and 512GB models. On the other hand, our game test saw virtually no difference in performance between an empty MX100 and a full MX100. CrystalDiskMark shows that sequential write performance goes almost unchanged and these figures are certainly well within our error testing margin....

On Saturday, Asus used the Republic of Gamers-brand Facebook page to tease its first SSD: the ROG Strix SQ7. There was little to see in terms of specs beyond it being a 1TB-capacity M.2-2280 drive with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. We don’t know whether that 1TB is the maximum storage from a range of several drives on offer or if the Strix SQ7 will only have this single option....

The legal case over the Internet Archive’s digital lending program enters a new stage as both parties request a summary judgment in a Manhattan court. The Internet Archive maintains that buying and scanning books gives it the right to lend them out within limits like many libraries do. The plaintiffs argue the tactic is just a front for piracy. The Internet Archive and cooperating libraries use Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) to let users check out digital versions of books the Archive purchased and scanned, evoking the First-Sale doctrine....

According to AST SpaceMobile, BW3 is the largest-ever commercial communications array deployed in low Earth orbit. Fully unfurled, it spans 693 square feet and is expected to have a field of view of more than 300,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface. The satellite circles our planet roughly every 90 minutes. Solar cells on the backside of the panel will collect energy and on the opposite side, small antennas form a phased array to create tight communications beams....

Like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, Honor’s foldable phone has an external screen and the larger inner screen. The outer screen uses a 6.45-inch curved OLED panel with a 2560x1080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The internal display measures 7.9 inches diagonally and has a 2272x1984 resolution and a refresh rate of 90Hz. Both panels cover 100% of the DCI-P3 color spectrum and have a 10-bit color depth (1....

But not everyone may have the same kind of feeling towards it. If you were building a gaming PC around four years ago, it was a bit of a slap in the face for some Core i7 owners. That’s because less than a year after the release of the 7700K, Intel pushed out the 8700K on an incompatible platform for roughly the same price. Basically if you bought a 7700K upon release or anytime before October 2017, you were in for a shafting once the 8700K dropped....

Moving on from the rather spectacular Dirt 4 numbers we find some underwhelming performance in Dishonored 2. This title has never been kind to AMD so I’m sure no one was expecting anything overly impressive here. Still, seeing the air-cooled Vega 64 only match the GTX 1070 Founders Edition was disappointing to say the least. The liquid-cooled version trailed the GTX 1080 FE card as well. Doom is a title where we always anticipate AMD to do well – just check out the RX 580 beating the GTX 1060 by an 18% margin....

The list is not as extensive as you might imagine (shorter than last year’s), and in most cases we were able to warn you when the products launched and we reviewed them, so that’s the good news. As for the bad… Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 DDR4 No messing around, this was the worst graphics product released this year. Around July we got our hands on a DDR4 version of the GeForce GT 1030, and boy what a heap of garbage that thing was....

Having pre-ordered a copy, we got busy benchmarking the second it was released. However, before we get to The Division’s benchmark results and many graphical features, let’s talk about the game itself. The Division is set in an open world with immersive and destructive environments based on a mid-crisis Manhattan. As an agent, the player’s mission is to restore order by investigating the source of a virus. Played from a third-person perspective, this shooter has varied weaponry from high caliber machine guns to sticky bombs....

A lot has happened at Twitter since Musk arrived, including the billionaire laying off half of its employees and suspending accounts for impersonating others (often Musk himself). Talking to employees for the first time, Musk warned that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question,” according to several reports. Musk has other problems to deal with: three of Twitter’s top security officials—chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty—along with Twitter’s head of client solutions, Robin Wheeler, and Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity, all left the company on the same day Musk warned of the bankruptcy....