We already knew that Huawei Mate 20 Lite existed long before it was officially revealed thanks an embarrassing leak from Vodafone. But what would a “Lite” version of a handset be without more powerful siblings? In fact, Huawei has confirmed the existence of other Mate 20 phones to come.

At the end of a presentation that included a smart speaker, a tracking tool, new P20 colors and a brand new processor, Huawei CEO Richard Yu announced that the first beneficiary of the aforementioned chip would be the Mate 20 series.

#ExperienceSmarter with the #Kirin980. To achieve something #Higher Intelligence with the #HuaweiMate20 Series. Mark your calendars NOW…16.10.18. pic.twitter.com/9KhTMj0BXH

— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) August 31, 2018

Related: The best Android phones

Yes, not only will the Mate 20 feature the newly announced 7nm Kirin 980 chipset, but it will also come in at least two different flavors as a ‘series’ – three if you include the already revealed Mate 20 Lite. Both new phones will be unveiled at a special Huawei event in London on Tuesday 16 October.

That’s all we officially know for now, but we’ve already heard some Mate 20 rumors so you have a reasonable idea of ​​what to expect in October. The Pro version is said to be a 6.9-inch AMOLED beast with 6GB of RAM, an in-screen fingerprint reader and a 42-megapixel triple camera setup.

Related: Best smartphones

The regular Mate 20 is rumored to have similar core specs but comes in a smaller 6.3-inch bezel with two snaps on the back – one of which will be 20-megapixels. Here’s prolific leaker Evan Blass giving us a first look at what the handset will look like:

Huawei Mate 20 Lite in black, blue and gold. pic.twitter.com/c5DVT2VVsY

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 14, 2018

Of course, this all remains rumor and speculation for now, but one thing we know for sure: we only have 46 days to find out if we’re right.

Are you looking forward to the Huawei Mate 20 series? Let us know on Twitter: @TrustedReviews

When we talk about gaming hardware in 2018, we speak in the language of multi-core gigahertz processors and gigabytes of RAM. Games, now freed from the limitations of physical media, regularly consist of files spanning tens of gigabytes.

Considering the enviable point we’ve reached in 2018, where developers are less constrained by hardware and more by their own budget and imagination, Tanglewood seems like an odd anomaly.

Related: Best PC Games

While most modern PC games run on hardware that is five years old or less, Tanglewood was primarily designed to run on hardware that will be 30 years old in October 2018.

I’m talking, of course, about the Sega Mega Drive, the pinnacle of Sega’s run as a hardware manufacturer, and the closest the company came to dethroning Nintendo as king of consoles in the ’80s and ’90s.

Tanglewood is the brainchild of Matt Phillips, who until recently was a programmer at Dambusters. He quit his job after videos of his side projects developed by Mega Drive went viral on YouTube.

A successful Kickstarter and 18 months in development later, Phillips is finally releasing Tanglewood to the public, a game that has proven to be a challenge like no other at every stage of its development.

Authenticity at every step

Phillips sought authenticity at every stage of the development process, which meant his first challenge was finding working Mega Drive development kits from the ’90s. When working kits weren’t available, he had to fix them himself, after which he developed the game more or less as if he were working on it at the time of the console’s release – although he guiltily admits he’s resorted to it on a few occasions for development inside an emulator when he was working on public transport.

With the development kits in hand, the next challenge was actually to develop the game, which consisted of digging through old development manuals and scouring the internet for the communities of developers that have popped up to support such retro development.

With only a 7.6MHz single-core CPU, 72KB of RAM, 4MB of storage, and a palette of just 512 colors, Phillips had to relearn everything he knew about modern game development and modern conveniences like high-level programming languages and discard multi-threading and caching.

But even as the game was being developed and executed, Phillips’ challenges weren’t over. Although the developer would love it if anyone could play Tanglewood on an original Mega Drive, the reality of the hardware meant a PC version would be required, making it necessary to get the game running through an emulator running some of his old ones introduced weird and wonderful bugs in the process.

However, for the select few, Tanglewood would be released as an authentic Mega Drive cartridge. The lack of a Sega licensing department for a console that went offline decades ago meant access to the official Sega logos was not possible, but Phillips managed to bring together enough different manufacturing partners to produce a physical cartridge.

At £54 they aren’t cheap and Phillips only produce an initial run of around 1000, but producing a physical cartridge was an important aspect of delivering on Tanglewood’s original premise.

Tanglewood is a strange game in which its developer had to overcome more obstacles of its own creation than appeared organically, but it’s all the more unique and original for the result.

Tanglewood is available now for PC, Mac, Linux and of course the Sega Mega Drive.

Still have your old Sega hardware lying around? Let us know on Twitter @TrustedReviews.

Nintendo has uploaded the latest version of its switch Firmware on corporate servers, and hackers have already studied the changes.

As revealed on Reddit, the changes are fairly minor and relate almost exclusively to the upcoming Nintendo Switch Online service. The slogan for this service is apparently “More Games. More features. More fun.”

Related: The best Nintendo Switch games

One of the fun features mentioned above is support for cloud saved games. Anyone paying the £20 per year feature can back up their saved data to the cloud, which in practice looks like this:

The fact that the update primarily relates to the online service is not surprising. Nintendo has already announced that the Switch Online service will launch in September, so it’s only natural to get the millions of Switch consoles out there ready for the big reveal.

Aside from cloud saves, we are to expect old NES games remastered for online multiplayer, as well as the ability to continue playing the titles that already support online gaming.

Related: Nintendo Switch Online Services

Unfortunately, there is precious little there that has nothing to do with the upcoming online features. There are a number of new icons in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Two from Captain himself, two from Toadette, one from Wingo and one from Draggadon. There are also new controller icons for the NES and SNES.

Aren’t the Nintendo Switch controllers cool? pic.twitter.com/MFtTtR1kRZ

— Eman Cisab (@shadowninja108) August 31, 2018

That being said, it just seems like security measures designed to protect the Switch from hacks that could leave it open to piracy and homebrew software.

Suffice it to say that many users were hoping for a little more. “Just give us damn folders,” reads a comment on the Reddit thread. “Honestly Nintendo, how freaking hard is it to add folders?”

Are you excited for Nintendo Switch Online or do you think Nintendo should offer more for the money? Let us know what you think on Twitter: @TrustedReviews

An early access open world survival game with crafting mechanics and zombies… Are we stepping into a time portal back to 2013?

Devolver Digital, a publisher known for some incredible indie hits like Hotline Miami and Enter The Gungeon, has released SCUM for early access: a “Supermax Open World Survival”.

Although you are exhausted from this type of experience, SCUM is awesome. It’s still an Early Access title, but the gameplay is polished, bugs are few, and there’s a solid foundation here that only gets better. In terms of gameplay, the basics are the same as any other open-world survival out there: loot and craft your way from zero to hero. The lore and background on the other hand is quite unique. Everyone is a prisoner thrown into this arena as punishment. Drones fly around filming the prisoners as a kind of sadistic television program for outsiders. Currently, the drones only film for a while and get freaked out, but the developers have hinted at an ominous purpose in the future.

Reality TV basics of things aside, the goal is to survive, and right now there’s not really an endgame. PvP is enabled, allowing other players to pose a serious threat. However, if you’re on a fairly unpopulated server, the bigger concerns come in the form of zombies. They can be found near any point of interest, whether it’s a farmhouse, a seaside village, or a military compound. They’re not particularly difficult to take down, however, and the simplified melee system means you can win a war with a quick strike with your choice of melee weapon or your fists, followed by stepping back to dodge their counterattack of undead attrition.

Related: Best PC Games

The other major threat comes in the form of giant mechs patrolling military sites, underground bunkers and the hottest spot on the map; the airfield. They shoot on sight, can spot you from quite a distance and no matter what you pack, you’ll be downed in a volley of gunfire. Of course, they defend the areas with the best loot. So if you want to gear up, you need to dodge these robotic beasts. Don’t think about trying to take them down: in the few days since the game launched, only one group has managed to take one down. It required going onto a private server and fiddling with the settings to get her damage down to zero, followed by about 15 of his community members firing at it non-stop. Disabling these godless killing machines is beyond the reach of most players.

While the game does have crafting mechanics, these aren’t quite as central to the experience as you might think. From the start, you should find two rocks on the ground so you can craft a stone knife, and then chop a bush so you can carry an improvised wooden spear. This is where most of the crafting comes in, creating makeshift versions of the tools you don’t already have. You’ll always find better versions of your stuff in buildings and terrain, so don’t spend too much time thinking about what you need to do, even if it seems intimidating. Instead, drag yourself to the nearest point of interest and hope you don’t encounter any mechs.

However, craft is very important when it comes to cooking food. You’ll find a variety of fruits and vegetables in the wild, and inside buildings you might come across chips or a candy bar, but they’re nothing compared to roasting multiple skewers of human flesh. As grim as it may sound, becoming a cannibal is the best way to keep you fed – for every zombie you kill there are multiple appendages that you can chop up, skewer and roast over an open fire . Various animals such as deer, pigs and horses roam the wilderness, but as they flee from you and zombies eagerly run towards you, one is much easier to harvest than the other.

Related: Best Battle Royale Games

Characters don’t persist across servers, meaning you can sort of have many different “save files” on the go at the same time. Each character you create has their own “Glory” ranking, which is essentially a point system. The better you do at finding gear, crafting tools, and killing zombies, the more Fame points you’ll earn. It’s a nice system, as Fame can be spent on reviving your character when you die – want next to one Respawn squadmates? It costs you 100 FP. Don’t worry where you restart? You just have to part with 25 FP. If you are fed up with the survival aspect, you can also spend your hard-earned FP participating in deathmatch games. We haven’t seen any that come with rewards for winning, but they offer a great way to get used to weapon mechanics.

When you go into your inventory you’ll see a few tabs at the top, one of which is “Catabolism”. It may seem overwhelming at first, but there’s not much to worry about here. Watch out for “Diseases” under BCU Body Monitor as this will tell you if you need to heal with bandages or pills. On the right side, try to keep all of your nutritional values ​​in the green, but none of that actually matters too much. If your health isn’t failing and you’re eating and drinking regularly, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s possible to minimize your character through a mixed diet, but we haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet.

Could this be the first game that teaches you how to eat properly in the real world? As long as it asks you to grill zombie parts, it’s not conclusive.

Eventually, however, assuming you remain full, your character must urinate and void. Yes, you have to do this manually. Your character will tell you what they need on the left side of the screen and to go to the toilet you need to hold tab, navigate to the toilet icon and then choose what action you want to take. It’s rude and unnecessary for the developers to include something like this, but against my will it was pretty funny to see my prison inmate crouch over a plant and let go.

Early Impressions

SCUM could very well be the next big thing. It has seen immense growth across Twitch and social media channels in the few days since its launch, and with good reason. Despite being early access, the package you get is solid, if a bit bare. This is one to watch.

advantages

• Solid security
• Useful productivity features
• Excellent battery

disadvantage

• Too weak CPU
• Expensive
• A physical keyboard isn’t for everyone

key specifications

• Evaluation Price: £499.00
• Snapdragon 625 CPU
• Physical smart keyboard
• 4.5 inch LCD touchscreen, 3:2 aspect ratio
• 3505mAh battery
• Android 7.1 Nougat operating system
• 12-megapixel rear camera with a Sony IMX378 camera sensor and 8-megapixel front camera
• USB Type C

What is the BlackBerry KEYone?

The KEYone is the latest handset from the former smartphone heavyweight BlackBerry. It aims to bring the classic BlackBerry keyboard experience to the old-school folks who remember the original Bold.

Coupled with the cutting-edge Android Nougat OS and the best battery life I’ve seen on a handset this year, the KEYone basically achieves that goal and is a solid choice for hardcore BlackBerry fans craving a decent work phone.

However, I’m not convinced the keyboard will be enough to win over the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy generations that grew up with touchscreen devices, especially given the KEYone’s rather high price point.

Related: The best smartphones

BlackBerry KEYone theme

The KEYone clearly feels like a classic BlackBerry phone straight out of the early 2000s. It combines design cues from the company’s first Android phone, the Priv, which featured a slide-out “smart” keyboard, and the newer DTEK60, a touchscreen-only phone.

The end result is a handset that looks a little like an outstretched BlackBerry Passport, with the keyboard sitting beneath a rectangular touchscreen. The aluminum chassis and textured back continue the KEYone’s retro feel, but will divide opinions.

When the duo showed the handset to a family friend’s teens, the duo’s reaction was a PG-13 “What the (fudge) is that?” But an elderly relative who’s spent most of her career smashing email on QWERTY Blackberry keyboards squealed with delight when I showed her the KEYone.

As far as typing goes, the KEYone’s keyboard is one of the best I’ve tested, with solid autocorrect and a nifty flick system that lets you quickly accept on-screen word suggestions. However, I am not convinced that younger buyers who grew up with touchscreens will be able to type faster. After a solid week with the KEYone, I still found using the physical keyboard a bit odd and found myself thinking more about what I was doing than I would have liked.

With prolonged use, I can see that it’s great for power users who need to edit lengthy documents on their phone. This is mainly because the backlit ‘smart’ keyboard has the same gesture touch technology as the Priv, allowing you to use it as a trackpad. The feature is a boon, giving you much more control over the cursor when selecting text.

The ability to program shortcuts into each key and a dedicated programmable “Action” key on the right side of the phone are other useful extras. The shortcuts are activated with either a short or long press and are great for people who want to quickly activate or launch regularly used applications and services. I put certain contacts on keyboard keys so I can call them quickly without having to go through my phone book, for example.

Despite BlackBerry’s retro looks, it also manages to load the KEYone with all the kit and connectivity you’d expect from a 2017 flagship.

The keyboard’s spacebar is equipped with a fingerprint scanner, which has proven reliable during my tests, and the use of a USB-C connector and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology ensures that it stands up to rivals in terms of data transfer and loading speeds can keep up.

Build quality is solid, although the textured back is a dirt magnet and the KEYone easily survived a chance encounter with a rampaging toddler with a penchant for chewing or throwing anything.

My only issue with the KEYone’s design is that the keyboard results in some pretty serious compromises for regular users who primarily use their phone for entertainment. The addition of the keyboard and all the clever tech inside means the KEYone is pretty chunky at 9.4mm and weighing 180g.

The dimensions aren’t terrible, especially since the keyboard means you’re using it with two hands 90% of the time, but the phone feels a lot more like a phablet despite only having a 4.5-inch screen.

The bigger issue is how the keyboard affects media consumption and gaming. Aside from the fact that the keyboard reduces the screen size, the way it sticks out of the bottom makes playing games that are generally designed to work in landscape mode a bit awkward.

BlackBerry KEYone – Ad

The 4.5-inch screen’s 3:2 aspect ratio is another small issue that makes some applications, and especially video content, look a bit odd.

Other than that, the screen is pretty good. The 1620 x 1080 resolution gives the display a crisp 434ppi (pixels per inch) density, ensuring text and icons look consistently sharp. The IPS panel also boasts reasonably clean whites, and while blacks aren’t as inky as on AMOLED phone screens like that of the Galaxy S8, they’re reasonably deep. Colors are pretty good too and don’t look too cool or overcooked.

The only slight downside is that the viewing angles aren’t quite as wide as I’d like on a phone in the KEYone’s price range, although that’s considering the fact that most people don’t use it for watching movies or TV shows want, this is a little quirk.

How we test phones

We put every cell phone we test through its paces. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the phone as our main device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.

Learn more about how we test in our Ethics Policy.

Used as our main phone during the period

Verified against respected industry benchmarks and real-world tests

Always has a SIM card installed

Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

The littleBits Droid Inventor Kit is about to roll onto every Star Wars-loving kid’s Christmas list.

LittleBits from New York wants everyone to be an inventor. It has tried to get people of all ages to embrace STEAM (Science, Technology, Arts and Math) through its invention kits, which include modular blocks that snap together with magnets.

It’s all very cool and educational, but now littleBits has a kit that lets you build a programmable, app-controlled R2-D2. If that doesn’t get the kids’ creative juices flowing, now they too may all be accountants and be done with it.

Related: Best Lego Sets

The basic instructions will show you how to use the included six bits (modules), 20 droid parts and three sheets of stickers to create a droid that can be controlled in drive mode, self-navigation and force modes and the 20 authentic R2 unit sounds features from the Star Wars movies.

After that, you can get a little more adventurous, reconfiguring your droid with new abilities, and even taking part in challenges to customize your droid with household items.

It all sounds far from squeezing commands into the back of a Big Trak and wishing it wasn’t slower than a snail with a slight limp, doesn’t it?

The littleBits Droid Inventor Kit will be available from Force Friday 1st September for £99.99 at John Lewis, Amazon, The Disney Store, Harrods and Apple Store.

Do you go on your Christmas list or your child’s? Let us know on Twitter @trustedreviews

Toshiba and Star Wars have teamed up for a 24-inch TV so you can be “an tangible part of the movie magic”.

There’s no shortage of Star Wars technology. Just last year we all wanted Star Wars Battle Drones for Christmas and before that the BB-8 Sphero. To capitalize on the forthcoming release of The Last Jedi this year, Toshiba is releasing a Star Wars-inspired TV that looks more like something released alongside the prequel trilogy than anything from 2017.

In an age where bezels are getting thinner and thinner, just take a look at the size of these. To be fair, Toshiba needed a bigger canvas to plaster its X-Wings, which are said to “take you in on a rush of Star Wars excitement.” This TV is more reminiscent of Revenge of the Sith than The Force Awakens and is only HD Ready and not Full HD.

See also: IFA 2017

Whenever you turn on the TV, the Star Wars logo will be emblazoned across your screens, letting you remember that you’ve bought a Star Wars-inspired TV. The memories are unrelenting if you dare switch off your Star Wars marathon too:

“Each time the television is turned off, it ends with a culminating scene featuring familiar Star Wars sights and sounds, including the appearance of a First Order stormtrooper, accompanied by the telltale low hum of a lightsaber.”

The Star Wars-inspired TV at least has built-in Wi-Fi and access to Toshiba’s Smart Portal and Opera TV Store, so you can expect smart TV functionality and streaming. There’s Toshiba Screenshare for connecting an Android device to bring your content to the big(ish) screen.

Related: Best TVs

“The TV is a collector’s item and comes in a Star Wars themed box, so viewers can enjoy the movie experience before even opening the box. The TV box immortalizes a galaxy of heroes and includes a whole host of well-loved characters.”

Toshiba has announced that the Star Wars-inspired TV will cost €219 and will be available in Q4 2017, no doubt in time for The Last Jedi.

Will the Star Wars-inspired Toshiba TV take pride of place in your bedroom or kitchen? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

Recently, contactless payments have become the must-have for all fitness wearables worth their weight, and Garmin’s Vivoactive 3 follows suit.

Following in the footsteps of the recently announced Fitbit Ionic and Samsung Gear Sport, Garmin has just announced the Vivosmart 3 fitness smartwatch, which marks the company’s first introduction to offering contactless payments. It’s also mimicking the rather unimaginative naming convention of its competitors, naming the new service “Garmin Pay.”

See also: IFA 2017

Ultimately, the convenience of having contactless payments from your wrist is that you don’t need to bring any form of cash or cards with you to your next workout. Provided you’ve added your payment details to your Garmin Pay wallet that supports Visa or MasterCard, you can pay for anything that accepts contactless payments. This is your post-workout protein shake.

Related: Best Running Watches

The Vivoactive 3 packs all the sensors you’d expect from a serious sporty smartwatch, with built-in GPS, a heart-rate monitor, and water resistance. Andrew Silver, Garmin EMEA Product Manager, said at the launch: “The Vivoactive 3 is perfect for anyone on the go who wants to be active, whether it’s running, swimming or going to the gym you can enjoy all your activities and with built-in GPS can be sure everything is being recorded without needing your phone.” You can also expect 15 custom indoor and outdoor sports apps.

Related: What is VO2 Max?

Other recurring features of Garmin’s fitness wearables, such as B. the Vivosmart 3, include VO2 Max estimates courtesy of the FirstBeat algorithm using your heart rate data. This is alongside your fitness age, all-day stress level, and calorie burn.

A new “Side Swipe” interface sounds a lot like Samsung’s rotating bezel from the Gear range, but by the sounds of things this is non-mechanical and purely touch-based. Still, it’s a great way to cover the display with your fingers. In addition to watch faces from the Garmin Connect IQ store, third-party apps are also supported, strengthening the Vivoactive 3’s smartwatch element. While app support isn’t as strong as watchOS or Android Wear, the likes of Uber and AccuWeather are currently available, hopefully more in the future.

Related: The best fitness trackers

What might really be the differentiator over the Fitbit Ionic, Samsung Gear Sport and Apple Watch 2 is the Garmin Vivoactive 3’s battery life. Garmin claims a staggering 8 days in smartwatch mode with 13 hours of continuous GPS tracking. That’s pretty incredible compared to its competitors. Whether it comes close or not needs a full review. The Vivoactive 3 starts at £279.99 and will be available in Q4 2017.

Garmin Vivosport and Vivomove HR

If you fancy something slimmer and want to ditch contactless payments and traditional watch design, Garmin has also announced the Garmin Vivosport. These include a thin band design, GPS sensor, heart rate monitor, water resistance and 7 days of battery life in smartwatch mode for £169.99.

Then there’s the Garmin Vivomove HR, a successor to the Garmin Vivomove. It has now become a hybrid smartwatch with a touchscreen display. As the name suggests, there is a heart rate monitor but no GPS inside. You can expect a battery life of 2 weeks in watch mode or 5 days in smartwatch mode. There’s a Sport version for £169.99 and a Premium version for £249.99 which comes with a leather strap and steel body.

Which fitness smartwatch do you think will make it onto the podium? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook.