Brandon Hill
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
When the first reports surfaced that Google was getting close to enabling the ability to run nearly the entire library of Android apps on Chromebooks, our interests were piqued. When Google made the announcement official, our excitement intensified. However, we hadn’t really gotten a glimpse at how the two distinct...
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By now, we’re all familiar with T-Mobile’s Uncarrier initiatives. The company has shaken up the wireless industry with promotions like 200MB of free tablet data/month for life, Data Stash and Binge On, which have garnered the attention of not only customers, but also government regulators. Uncarrier 11.0 isn’t so much...
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We first brought you news last week that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update would be coming to the Xbox One shortly in preview form. Well, Microsoft today not only officially announced that the update will land this summer for everyone, but that it will actually be available in preview form for Xbox Preview...
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Rumors of Samsung’s rugged Galaxy S7 Active have been making the rounds for months, but the South Korean electronics giant and AT&T today officially announced the follow-up to the Galaxy S6 Active. As its name implies, the Galaxy S7 Active uses the garden variety Galaxy S7 as a starting point, then throws everything...
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If you mention the name Bose to a group of audiophiles, you’re sure to get a broad range of reactions. You’ll have those that swear by the brand, and those that see its products as the ultimate in marketing hype (and everyone in between). Whatever the case, Bose does put out some pretty impressive hardware and that is...
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We can’t say that we didn't see this one coming. There’s been trouble brewing in Alphabet’s Nest home automation division for months. The company has been dogged by reports of missed revenue targets, internal fighting amongst executives, and a less than stellar acquisition of security camera manufacturer Dropcam...
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As we’ve seen in our recent review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, Pascal is kicking some serious butt and shows no signs of taking orders from anyone. Luckily, plenty of NVIDIA’s board partners have lined up to produce graphics cards based on Pascal and here we are today staring at Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 1080 G1...
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We’re not sure that many people expected great things to come from Amazon’s Echo speaker when it was announced back in late 2014. After all, a voice-activated speaker seemed like a superfluous gadget in our increasingly crowded digital lives. However, Echo, which is powered by the Alexa engine, has become one of...
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Hewlett-Packard officially announced its monstrous Elite X3 phablet back in February, well ahead of expected summer launch date. That long gap between announcement and release was both a curse and blessing — eager Windows Phone fans that wanted to get their hands on the device had to wait months to purchase it, but it...
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Are you looking for the perfect accessory to set off your epic new gaming rig? Perhaps you plunked down some serious coin on a 10-core Intel Core i7-6950X processor and have a couple of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 cards thrown in for good measure. But what about a nice gaming keyboard to go along with your fancy new...
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Google continues to make advances in all of its artificial intelligence endeavors, and the most recent fruits of its labors comes from Project Magenta. Magenta comes to use from the Google Brain team and was tasked with actually creating music using a trained neural network.
Using the open-source machine learning...
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Amazon’s Fire lineup of tablets have for the most part offered a lot of features while skewing towards the value side with regards to pricing. This has led to devices that while durable, don’t exactly exude a sense of being “premium” tablets. Amazon is changing that today with the introduction of new aluminum...
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As we reported previously, Google is looking to have more control over its future Nexus smartphones. In the past, Google has farmed out the design and manufacturing of its Nexus devices to third-party OEMs, and has installed a bone stock version of Android. While that approach is nice for those that want a no frills...
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In case you didn’t already know, Microsoft’s augmented reality device, the HoloLens, isn’t running a garden variety build of Windows 10. Instead, it’s running Windows Holographic, which has been specially tailored for computing and navigating in virtual and augmented reality settings. In an effort to ensure the...
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Google is making it easier for those using its Google Fiber TV service to turn any TV in your house into a Smart TV. The company announced today that those who own a Google Fiber TV box will soon be able to take advantage of Google Cast support.
So no longer will customers need to purchase a separate Chromecast...
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If you missed your chance to preorder a Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge and receive a free Gear VR headset, it appears that the train is pulling into the station again. In celebration of Father’s Day, Samsung is once again throwing in the Gear VR freebie for flagship smartphone purchases.
Unfortunately, getting...
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When Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk lifted the veil on the Model 3, customers quickly emptied their wallets to get their place in line to purchase the $35,000 electric vehicle (EV). After all, it’s hard to argue with a sleek-looking [green] vehicle that seats five, can hit 60 mph in under six seconds, can travel over 215...
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Intel is making headlines at Computex this week with its outrageous Core i7-6950X deca-core processor, which comes with an equally outrageous price tag. However, AMD also came to Taipei with new processors in-hand, but they’re not nearly as outlandish or expensive as Intel’s latest and greatest enthusiast chips. The...
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E3 is still a few weeks away, but Microsoft is kicking off the festivities early with another price cut for its Xbox One gaming console. Nearly all of the Xbox One bundles have been given a $50 price cut, which means that base 500GB bundles now start at $299.
The price cuts even extend to more expensive offerings...
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Last year, the BBC embarked on an ambitious project to help inspire children to code. The BBC’s “Make it Digital” initiative aimed to put one million Micro:bit computers into the hands of Year 7 students (11 and 12 year olds) in the UK for free, and drew on the expertise of software and hardware partners including...
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We already know that Sony is making a big play towards virtual reality (VR) gaming with PlayStation VR, and according to recent rumors, Microsoft won’t be too far behind. Previous reports have suggested that Microsoft will support VR (via perhaps the Oculus Rift) in its upcoming, more powerful version of the Xbox One...
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When it comes to making advances in the solid state drive (SSD) space, you can always count on Samsung to spice things up a bit. While Samsung’s most recent SSDs have been hellbent on breaking data speed records, its latest product is more concerned with miniaturization.
The new PM971-NVMe is the world’s first NVMe...
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