Hasta La Gadget!

You might wonder why, given all the hype, there isn’t graphene in every product you own yet. Well, a new study has found that 60 companies that sell the Nobel prize-winning ultra-thin carbon sheets produce utter trash.

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At a special event in New York City, Google announced some of its latest, flagship hardware devices. During the hour-long press conference Google executives and product managers took the wraps off the company’s latest products and explained their features. Chief among the lot is the Pixel 3, Google’s latest flagship Android device. Like the Pixel 2 before it, the Pixel 3’s main feature is its stellar camera but there’s a lot more magic packed inside the svelte frame.

Pixel 3

Contrary to some earlier renders, the third version of Google’s Android flagship (spotted by 9 to 5 Google) does boast a sizable notch up top, in keeping with earlier images of the larger XL. Makes sense, after all, Google went out of its way to boast about notch functionality when it introduced Pie, the latest version of its mobile OS.

The device is available for preorder today and will start shipping October 18, starting at $799. The larger XL starts at $899, still putting the product at less than the latest flagships from Apple and Samsung.

Pixel Slate

The device looks pretty much exactly like the leaks lead us to believe — it’s a premium slate with a keyboard cover that doubles as a stand. It also features a touch pad, which gives it the edge over products like Samsung’s most recent Galaxy Tab. There’s also a matching Google Pen, which appears to more or less be the same product announced around the Pixel Book, albeit with a darker paint job to match the new product.

The product starts at $599, plus $199 for the keyboard and $99 for the new dark Pen. All three are shipping at some point later this year.

Home Hub

The device looks like an Android tablet mounted on top of a speaker — which ought to address the backward firing sound, which is one of the largest design flaws of the recently introduced Echo Show 2. The speaker fabric comes in a number of different colors, in keeping with the rest of the Pixel/Home products, including the new Aqua.

When not in use, the product doubles as a smart picture frame, using albums from Google Photos. A new Live Albums, which auto updates, based on the people you choose. So you can, say, select your significant others and it will create a gallery based on that person. Sweet and also potentially creepy. Machine learning, meanwhile, will automatically filter out all of the lousy shots.

The Home Hub is up for pre-order today for a very reasonable $149. In fact, the device actually seems like a bit of a loss leader for the company in an attempt to hook people into the Google Assistant ecosystem. It will start shipping October 22.

Pixel Stand

The Pixel Stand is basically a sleek little round dock for your phone. While it can obviously charge your phone, what’s maybe more interesting is that when you put your phone into the cradle, it looks like it’ll start a new notifications view that’s not unlike what you’d see on a smart display. It costs $79.

For many years now, it has become more or less expected that every few years, console makers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will release new hardware. There are some who believe that maybe game streaming could be the future and would be less reliant on hardware, and while that might be true, it seems that Sony could be putting out new hardware anyway.

During an interview with the Financial Times (paywall; via GamesIndustry.biz), Sony’s CEO Kenichiro Yoshida confirmed that the company has plans to release new hardware, which more or less confirms the PlayStation 5 even if Yoshida did not explicitly call it by name. The CEO was quoted as saying, “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware.”

Sony has sort of confirmed the PS5 in the past, where a report from earlier this year saw Sony suggest that the next-gen hardware is about 3 years away. This basically refutes some earlier reports from analysts who believe that the PS5 could be launched in 2019 or 2020. That being said, Sony and Microsoft have done things a little different with the current-gen consoles compared to the past.

For example Sony has released PlayStation Pro while Microsoft released the Xbox One X which allowed gamer to play games in 4K resolution, all the while keeping games compatible with the PS4 and Xbox One. Some have expressed their belief that consoles could go the way of the dinosaur, but we suppose as long as people are buying, companies will keep producing.

Sony Effectively Confirms That There Will Be A PS5 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

The Nintendo Wii has been modded countless times, but this particular build is an especially wee Wii. This isn’t some kind of Raspberry Pi emulator. What you’re looking at is a fully functional Wii gaming system crammed into an Altoids tin, dubbed the “Kill Mii.” I doubt if anyone can go much smaller than this.

So how exactly did Shank Mods manage this? Well, much like the Atari 2600, you can cut off the majority of the Wii’s motherboard and still have a functioning system. Sure you are ditching things like the GameCube controller ports and SD card slot, but who needs those anyway? After that, you just need to install a new firmware that tells it to ignore things like a lack of disc drive and load games as ISOs from an attached USB flash drive.

The system has a battery that can run the device for about 10 minutes per charge, which is longer than you would want to play on this thing given its wonky controller setup. Still, it’s an impressive build and wasn’t designed to provide a great user experience. Like many other mods, it was simply done because it could be done. So what’s next? Who wants to build an even wee-er Wii? No doubt someone will eventually take up the challenge.

[via reddit via HackADay]

Google’s hardware keynote just ended, and as usual, the horde of media professionals are raring to go get their hands on all the new devices. Despite all the Pixel 3 leaks before today, I’m still desperate to get my hands on this thing. I’ll admit, I…