Month: September 2016

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A new Wall Street Journal report adds credence to previous rumors that Nintendo is planning to use cartridges, rather than optical discs, for its still-shadowy NX console.

The report, which cites unnamed "people familiar with the matter," suggests that advances in flash memory production have made cartridge media closer to cost-competitive with the standard optical discs. The report also suggests that cartridges "load faster, are harder to copy, and can be mass-produced faster than discs," statements that we'd rate as true, plausible, and confusing, respectively.

More importantly, though, using cartridges would be key for a system that can be used as both a TV-based console and a portable game system, as has been rumored numerous times in the past year. Housing an optical drive in a portable system adds significantly to its size and bulk, and the motor to spin the disc can be a significant power drain. Sony's did manage to squeeze a proprietary disc drive into its PlayStation Portable, but decided to shift back to flash-based cards for the PlayStation Vita.

Enlarge / This Galaxy Note 7 is too hot, send it back. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Looks like Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 can give you some bang for your buck after all—Samsung will be issuing a global recall for all 2.5 million of the phones it has shipped so far, says Reuters. Some of the phones shipped with faulty batteries that could catch on fire. Details of the recall program will be available as soon as Samsung works out the details with different carriers in different countries, and customers will be able to exchange their phones for models with non-faulty batteries or get their money back entirely.

Samsung provided the following statement to Ars and other publications:

"In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue. To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7. For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks."

The percentage of affected phones is small—estimated at 24 out of every 1,000,000 phones—but Samsung only has one battery supplier in each of the countries in which the phone has shipped. All units could potentially be affected, though the models sold in China apparently include batteries that are unaffected by the flaw.

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Qualcomm has unveiled a new reference platform for standalone virtual reality headsets, which it hopes will dramatically reduce their cost.

Dubbed the VR820, the reference device pairs the mobile chip maker's now ubiquitous Snapdragon 820 SoC with an eye-tracker, six-axis motion tracker, and a pair of AMOLED displays at resolutions up to 1440x1440 pixels each—a big jump over the 1080x1200 resolution displays of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, albeit running at 70Hz rather than 90Hz.

While that might sound expensive—particularly as the VR820 essentially integrates a high-end smartphone into its Galaxy Gear-like shell—Qualcomm hopes that third-party manufacturers will be able to save on R&D costs by using the platform, thus bringing down the overall cost. Qualcomm performed a similar trick with smartphones, putting out a series of reference designs that several manufacturers (particularly those in China) used to produce smartphones at cheaper prices.