We’ve been scouring the internet for good Cyber Monday deals, and we weren’t particularly impressed with TigerDirect’s nor Newegg’s Cyber Monday deals. Newegg’s deals are merely an extension of their Black Friday deals, some of which were very good deals, but the best deals are simply sold out. Getting beyond that, we’ve been looking for some hidden good deals and I think we’ve hit the jackpot.

Performance PCs is an enthusiast PC website, generally for buying cooling products and cases, however they have expanded their offerings over the past few years and now offer virtually everything you might want to buy for a PC. The real great thing about this deal is that it covers virtually everything they sell on the website with the exception of cases, processors, motherboards and Clearance items. This offer is only available today and offers either 75% off most items on the site or 8% off any order over $50 (not stackable).

For example, if you were to go and buy a Razer Goliathus Fragged Speed Edition in Alpha Large size, then you will pay $6.25 (already sold out) compared to $23 on Amazon. The deals they have are really quite good and span across Bitspower, Antec, Roccat, Enermax, Magicool, Koolance, Razer, Icy Dock, Noctua, Xigmatek, Thermaltake, StarTech, Nexus, Kingwin, Azio, Bytecc and Spire. You will very likely see the best deals on Razer products, which is why they are disappearing so quickly, so act fast.

The post Performance PCs Crazy 75% Off Cyber Monday appeared first on VR World.

The 2015 Cadillac ATS Coupe was a much awaited and highly hyped vehicle that many thought would deliver an added boost to Cadillac’s already wildly popular and successful ATS line of vehicles. The ATS was the brand’s first wholly new platform and promised to deliver an entirely new Cadillac experience. In our review, we found that it was a very good vehicle and impressed us on many levels, so we were very interested to see how the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe could improve upon the ATS’ success.

Cadillac’s New Mobile Tech

Other than simply being a coupe version of the 2015 Cadillac ATS, the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe also adds some features that had not been found in the Cadillac ATS line of vehicles or most other Cadillac vehicles. Those two primary features are the car’s ability to enable wireless charging through a Qi charger inside the infotainment system as well as the ability to be a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot.

Qi Wireless Charging with the Google Nexus 5

The Qi wireless charging will only work for devices with built-in Qi charging capability (Nokia devices or Google Nexus devices) or devices with cases/adapters to allow for Qi charging like some Samsung phones. It also only exists within the cavity within the CUE infotainment system, which means that it doesn’t work anywhere else in the car (not in glovebox or center console). In addition to only working in the CUE infotainment’s ‘secret’ compartment, it also require that the device be very snug and stay in one spot because Qi charging is fundamentally very finnicky and has very tight tolerances for movement away from the charging coil. As such, the Qi charging functionality is designed to hold the phone ins a very specific part of the compartment and also causes users to lose some storage space in the compartment due to the height lost to the charging pad. The nice thing is that the car will let you know on the CUE system if your phone is charging as well as the charge level (while it’s connected via Bluetooth) so you don’t really have to worry about it not being charged.

Cadillac’s OnStar LTE Wi-Fi hotspot powered by AT&T’s LTE Network

The 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot feature is powered by Qualcomm’s LTE chipsets and AT&T’s LTE network, as such, users can expect fairly good LTE coverage across the US and fairly decent speeds. Obviously, we had to test this feature out as well and because this is running on AT&T’s network we got fairly good speeds, even though, they aren’t necessarily fast by any standard. The nice thing about having this feature is that if you already have an active AT&T LTE share plan, you can simply add this vehicle to your data pool without needing to have a separate data plan for it. If you aren’t an AT&T customer, you do have to subscribe to the OnStar LTE service powered by AT&T’s LTE and you do get the first 3GB of data on the car for free. This is very similar to how they give SiriusXM satellite radio to users for free and once they’ve gotten used to it, they start charging for it. This feature has already shipped on previous vehicles like the 2015 Cadillac Escalade we reviewed, but it was not activated yet at the time of review.

Twitter text message notifications

The third and less known feature is the ability to receive text messages via smartphone on the car’s infotainment system in order to prevent the driver from looking at their text messages while driving. They can also have their text messages read aloud, but they cannot respond to their text messages without making a phone call, looking at their phone or using one of the pre-defined responses built-into the CUE system. This is probably the biggest downfall of this feature because the point of SMS is to be able to respond to messages and not just see them. There is currently no way of responding to SMS messages outside of the pre-defined responses built into CUE and as such it makes the SMS feature of this car one that does not necessarily improve safety. iOS users with Siri should be able to use their voice features without any problems, but that completely goes around the car’s SMS functionality. Windows Phone also has voice to text capability, as does Android, but Siri seems to work the best.

If you’d like to see a video of these features in action, we’ve got them for you in the video below:

Design and Functionality

The 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe has a very aggressive look, which is increased from the standard ATS sedan in the sense that the grille has been changed and the rear of the car is also quite different. Cadillac did keep the same headlights, which are without a doubt a signature look for many of Cadillac’s vehicles now.

When compared side by side to the 2013/2014 Cadillac ATS sedan, the differences appear much more drastic than simply looking at the cars individually. Many of the stylistic influences between the two cars are very obvious and it isn’t much of a stretch to think that the two are part of the same line of vehicles. However, there is no denying that the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe is an updated look to the ATS’ design, especially when you consider it includes the newly redesigned Cadillac logo.

2013/2014 ATS Sedan (left) and 2015 ATS Coupe (right)

In addition to the exterior design changes and the logo redesign, there are some interior design changes as well, albeit fairly minor.

The changes mostly come in the form of the use of suede in the interior in addition to the already available wood trim, which in my opinion isn’t as nice as the stitched carbon fiber that Cadillac also offers. They also moved the trunk release to the back of the driver’s door rather than the side of the door where it was difficult to find. They’ve also put in a type of bucket-style seat in the back for seating people, but the lack of leg room is going to make that back seat virtually useless unless the driver is very short or the people in the back are small children. This is technically a four-seater two-door vehicle, but really only comfortably seats two.

Possibly one of the biggest mistakes that Cadillac made in building the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe was the reduction of the mirror size from the ATS sedan to the ATS coupe. Cadillac have decided to reduce the height of the rear view mirrors by about 30 to 40% and as a result, the mirrors are virtually useless for checking for vehicles and cannot accommodate a blind spot mirror either. That’s also one of my biggest complaints about almost all of GM’s luxury vehicles in the Cadillac brand, they all lack the built-in blind spot mirror that their lower-end Chevrolet vehicles have. Even the Chevy Sonic has a built-in blind spot mirror, yet none of the Cadillacs do. Also, in addition to having a smaller rear view mirror there is virtually no room for the driver to look over his or her shoulder to check for vehicles in their blind spot due to this car being a coupe and the second window being too tiny to see through. At least in the ATS you can see vehicles in your blind spot through the rear passenger’s window. Cadillac could have remedied this with a blind spot warning system like most luxury brands (and non-luxury brands) already have, but none of their current vehicles have such a system even though they do have adaptive cruise control, lane departure and collision avoidance systems.

One of the other things about the design of the 2015 ATS coupe is that if you get the rear wheel drive version, you cannot have the sunroof and the track performance package. But if you get the all wheel drive version of the vehicle, then you don’t have the track performance package and you can have a sunroof.

Read about our driving experience and conclusion on the next page.

The post 2015 Cadillac ATS Coupe: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back appeared first on VR World.

The GoPro Hero4 has long been awaited by consumers as the company’s affordable 4K camera. And when they announced the GoPro Hero4 Black, a lot of people were excited to finally get their hands on a GoPro that can finally do 4K at 30 FPS as opposed to a semi-slideshow 4K 15 FPS which the GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition was capable of in the previous generation. So, they increased the camera’s capability of recording 4K video from 15 FPS to 30 FPS and somehow they are now claiming that this camera is now worth an extra $100. Yes, it does have an improved Wi-Fi chipset that has better signal and consumers less power, but none of that is really relevant if the only thing consumers can measure is the 4K video performance. GoPro has always released new cameras and their latest and greatest was always $399, so a 25% price increase is going to be hard to chew for some.

We go into this review of the GoPro Hero4 looking to see how it performs overall as a 4K video camera, photo camera, and an overall action camera.

In terms of specifications, the GoPro Hero 4 has the following hardware specs and video recording format capabilities.

Specifications and Features

In terms of specifications, the GoPro Hero4 Black, weighs a tiny 3.10 oz or 88 g camera only and 5.36 oz or 152 g with housing. It has dimensions of 41 x 59 x 30mm, which are identical to the GoPro Hero3 and Hero3+ that came before it. It comes with a 3.8 VDC, 1160 mAh Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery which GoPro states will get up to 1.5 hours per charge. These are the estimated battery life times depending on the camera settings (shown below) and whether or not Wi-Fi or the GoPro app are being used.

GoPro Hero4 Battery Life

Capture 12MP Photos at 30 fps
Ultra Wide Angle Glass Lens + SuperView
Camera Housing Waterproof to 131′
Improved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 Connectivity
Interval Capture for Time Lapse
Protune Mode for Video and Photo (manual exposure, exposure compensation and temperature)
One-Button Operation with QuikCapture
Auto Low Light and Night Photo Modes

GoPro Hero4 Video Resolutions

For those curious, Superview is GoPro’s own way of stretching their 4:3 footage into a 16:9 ratio in order to more properly fit the screen in playback.

The camera itself also has MicroSD, Mini USB and micro HDMI connectivity in addition to the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which it uses for the remote and GoPro App (Android or iOS). The MicroSD card slot only supports microSDXC memory cards up to 64GB, which is really enough for almost anyone seeing as you can record up to 2 hours 10 minutes of footage on the camera before you run out of memory card space based on our testing. The biggest disappointment, however, is GoPro’s decision to continue to use the archaic standard of Mini USB which pretty much died with the Blackberries of 2008-2010. Yet, in 2014  GoPro is still launching brand new ‘cutting-edge’ products with Mini USB, they should really be ashamed of themselves. Why? because nobody and nothing uses Mini USB anymore and having a mini USB cable is a chore and might as well be a proprietary connector because so few things use it nowadays. If anything, GoPro should have adopted microUSB a long time ago and should now be moving towards USB Type-C which should be a smaller connector and have higher bandwidth capabilities and industry-wide availability than mini USB (which is by default USB 2.0). So, instead, you have to take out your memory card in order to properly transfer 4K footage at a reasonable speed because USB 2.0 and mini USB are capped at 30 MB/s and most UHS Class 3 memory cards are 60-90 MB/s read. Basically, the mini USB connector on the GoPro Hero4 is a huge mistake by GoPro and possibly the biggest fault of this device.

Packaging and Accessories

When you buy the GoPro Hero4 Black you get:
Rechargeable Battery for HERO4
Standard Housing
Skeleton Backdoor
Curved Adhesive Mount
Flat Adhesive Mount
Quick Release Buckle
3-Way Pivot Arm
USB Cable
Limited 1-Year Warranty

Watch the video below to see what that looks like, or look at the picture below that to see exactly what it all looks like in one photo.

GoPro Hero4 Standard Accessories

On the next page, we’ll discuss our experience with the GoPro Hero4 and include some video and photo samples as well.

The post GoPro Hero4 Black Review: You're Not Ready for It appeared first on VR World.

The GoPro Hero4 has long been awaited by consumers as the company’s affordable 4K camera. And when they announced the GoPro Hero4 Black, a lot of people were excited to finally get their hands on a GoPro that can finally do 4K at 30 FPS as opposed to a semi-slideshow 4K 15 FPS which the GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition was capable of in the previous generation. So, they increased the camera’s capability of recording 4K video from 15 FPS to 30 FPS and somehow they are now claiming that this camera is now worth an extra $100. Yes, it does have an improved Wi-Fi chipset that has better signal and consumers less power, but none of that is really relevant if the only thing consumers can measure is the 4K video performance. GoPro has always released new cameras and their latest and greatest was always $399, so a 25% price increase is going to be hard to chew for some.

We go into this review of the GoPro Hero4 looking to see how it performs overall as a 4K video camera, photo camera, and an overall action camera.

In terms of specifications, the GoPro Hero 4 has the following hardware specs and video recording format capabilities.

Specifications and Features

In terms of specifications, the GoPro Hero4 Black, weighs a tiny 3.10 oz or 88 g camera only and 5.36 oz or 152 g with housing. It has dimensions of 41 x 59 x 30mm, which are identical to the GoPro Hero3 and Hero3+ that came before it. It comes with a 3.8 VDC, 1160 mAh Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery which GoPro states will get up to 1.5 hours per charge. These are the estimated battery life times depending on the camera settings (shown below) and whether or not Wi-Fi or the GoPro app are being used.

GoPro Hero4 Battery Life

Capture 12MP Photos at 30 fps
Ultra Wide Angle Glass Lens + SuperView
Camera Housing Waterproof to 131′
Improved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 Connectivity
Interval Capture for Time Lapse
Protune Mode for Video and Photo (manual exposure, exposure compensation and temperature)
One-Button Operation with QuikCapture
Auto Low Light and Night Photo Modes

GoPro Hero4 Video Resolutions

For those curious, Superview is GoPro’s own way of stretching their 4:3 footage into a 16:9 ratio in order to more properly fit the screen in playback.

The camera itself also has MicroSD, Mini USB and micro HDMI connectivity in addition to the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi which it uses for the remote and GoPro App (Android or iOS). The MicroSD card slot only supports microSDXC memory cards up to 64GB, which is really enough for almost anyone seeing as you can record up to 2 hours 10 minutes of footage on the camera before you run out of memory card space based on our testing. The biggest disappointment, however, is GoPro’s decision to continue to use the archaic standard of Mini USB which pretty much died with the Blackberries of 2008-2010. Yet, in 2014  GoPro is still launching brand new ‘cutting-edge’ products with Mini USB, they should really be ashamed of themselves. Why? because nobody and nothing uses Mini USB anymore and having a mini USB cable is a chore and might as well be a proprietary connector because so few things use it nowadays. If anything, GoPro should have adopted microUSB a long time ago and should now be moving towards USB Type-C which should be a smaller connector and have higher bandwidth capabilities and industry-wide availability than mini USB (which is by default USB 2.0). So, instead, you have to take out your memory card in order to properly transfer 4K footage at a reasonable speed because USB 2.0 and mini USB are capped at 30 MB/s and most UHS Class 3 memory cards are 60-90 MB/s read. Basically, the mini USB connector on the GoPro Hero4 is a huge mistake by GoPro and possibly the biggest fault of this device.

Packaging and Accessories

When you buy the GoPro Hero4 Black you get:
Rechargeable Battery for HERO4
Standard Housing
Skeleton Backdoor
Curved Adhesive Mount
Flat Adhesive Mount
Quick Release Buckle
3-Way Pivot Arm
USB Cable
Limited 1-Year Warranty

Watch the video below to see what that looks like, or look at the picture below that to see exactly what it all looks like in one photo.

GoPro Hero4 Standard Accessories

On the next page, we’ll discuss our experience with the GoPro Hero4 and include some video and photo samples as well.

The post GoPro Hero4 Black Review: You're Not Ready for It appeared first on VR World.

Is your recently updated Nexus 5 or SHIELD tablet feeling slow after the Lollipop update? You probably are going to need to do a factory reset.

Keep in mind that if you do a factory reset you will lose all locally stored data that hasn’t been backed up to the cloud. That usually means music files, photos (if you don’t have Google+ auto backup enabled), app settings and authorizations and other settings. Most of these things will be saved for you if you are using all of Google’s cloud services, but local music and other files will not be backed up so back those up before you do a factory reset.

In order to do a factory reset, all you have to do is go to the settings potion of the phone, find the Backup and Reset option and then hit Factory data reset. Your phone will prompt you to make sure you want that option and then it will restart after you confirm and reset the phone to factory defaults, which are now going to be the Android Lollipop defaults.

Recently, a lot of phones have been getting updates to Android 5.0 Lollipop and the list is only growing. A lot of users that have updated their Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat devices are reporting that their devices are appearing to perform slower and less responsive after the update. I had this happen with both my Nexus 5 and my SHIELD tablet and a factory reset made both devices as fast as before the update.

The great thing about Android Lollipop that a lot of people haven’t really experienced yet (because most people haven’t had to update their device and do a reset) is that you can completely wipe your device and the Android backup actually does backup all of your apps that were previously installed. In the past, this feature partially worked for me and I didn’t entirely trust it as a result. So, when I did a factory reset of the SHIELD tablet, I was prepared to re-install everything but instead I re-installed nothing and the tablet did it all on its own.

A lot of people are speculating that people are experiencing this issue due to the fact that the OTA files on the phone or tablet were not properly wiped from the phone or tablet’s memory and as a result are causing some sort of an interface lagginess and overall system sluggishness. After all, the OTA is a fairly large file for both devices. There are also speculations that the reason may be some applications that are unoptimized for Lollipo but those are fairly unjustified because after a factory reset those apps return and performance is still fast.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t actually affect overall system performance as much as we thought, as when we had originally gotten the SHIELD tablet it had performance of 4579 in Futuremark’s PCMark Android benchmark. After the Android 5.0 lollipop update, it went up to 5127 points even with the lagginess and after the factory reset it went up to 5322, which means that when the Android 5.0 lollpop update is applied correctly the SHIELD tablet gets  20% performance bump, not the 15% we had seen.

So if your newly updated Android device is feeling sluggish or slow after the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, then you should seriously consider doing a factory reset as one of the first options before you waste too much time on other things.

The post Nexus 5 or SHIELD Tablet Feeling Slow after Lollipop? appeared first on VR World.

Yes, you heard that right. Newegg’s Black November (because Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t enough) has given us a pretty awesome deal. This deal is for an Acer B286HK 28″ 4K monitor that can display 4K video at 60 FPS and does it over DisplayPort 1.2. This monitor’s original price was $699, which isn’t that bad for a 4K monitor, but there are others out there with arguably better panels and design than the Acer at that price.

However, at $349, there is no monitor on earth that can compete with a 28″ 4K monitor at that price. In fact, someone recently pointed out that 4K monitors are starting to sell at lower prices than 1440P monitors and for some reason they are easier to find as well. We can partially thank the Chinese panel manufacturers for that, and we can also thank the fact that 4K gaming is finally starting to take off and people just aren’t interested in 1440P as much as 4K.

The other great thing about this monitor is the plethora of connectivity that it supports, which includes DVI (DVI w/HDCP), MHL, Displayport(v1.2) and MiniDP. It also tilts, swivels and adjusts the height. So you could theoretically have three 4K monitors in portrait mode and not even spend $1,000 which is something that was unheard of until today’s Acer deal. In fact, the reality is that you can have 4K surround gaming with these monitors for under a grand and that’s about as much as it’ll cost you to run three Nvidia G-Sync monitors together.

It does only have a viewing angle of 170 (H) and 160 (V) which clearly indicates that it is not an IPS panel, very likely a TN, but at $349 nobody is going to complain about a 4K TN panel. There are plenty of people out there that would happily buy a TN 4K planel for $349 and I suspect that this monitor will very likely not last until Cyber Monday unless Newegg has some ridiculous amount on hand.

The post Get an Acer 4K Monitor for $349 appeared first on VR World.

We’ve made up a list of our favorite Android phones of 2014 and they are all some of the best phones that money can buy in 2014. Now that all of the major phones have launched for the year and the holiday shopping season is upon us, there is no reason not to help you find the right phone for you or a loved one.

LG G3

LG’s G3 is probably one of our favorite Android phones of this year for multiple reasons. This is because The LG G3 has a fantastic 5.5″ 2560 x 1440 display and a laser fast 13 MP (literally uses a laser for focus) camera that grabs fantastic photos in both light and dark scenarios. Any camera that can take great photos in the dark is going to be a great all around camera as a rule of thumb. The thing that makes the LG G3 so great is also the fact that the phone itself has almost no bezel on the sides of the phone which makes it feel like there is almost no phone and all screen. As such, the LG G3 has the same screen size as the iPhone 6+ but a much much smaller body and as a result is more comfortable to hold. In addition to having one of the highest resolution displays of any phone to date, LG also gives the LG G3 expandable memory and a removable battery which is a big deal to a lot of users.

The LG G3 also has a Snapdragon 801 and great battery life thanks to the 3000 mAh battery even though it does have a fairly large and power consuming display. On Verizon’s network the LG G3 easily lasts over a day of normal usage and with Wi-Fi could last you up to 2 days. The only drawback of the LG G3 is the fact that it lacks a good speaker or front-facing speakers like the HTC One M8, one of its competitors. However, the G3’s biggest weapon is also price… even though Samsung and HTC launched before LG did with the LG G3, LG’s pricing was so competitive (both on and off contract) that it forced Samsung and HTC to drop their prices in order to compete which immediately resulted in lower prices for consumers regardless of their choice.

The post Top 5 Android Phones of 2014 appeared first on VR World.

According to Roometrics’ latest data for the second half of 2014, if you are a customer of AT&T (NYSE: T), T-Mobile (NYSE: TMUS) or Verizon (NYSE: VZ) you are going to get about exactly the same experience. However, if you go with Sprint (NYSE: S), you will suffer some performance or coverage issues. That means, when you compare AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile you can do so knowing that your experience will essentially be around the same in San Diego and that you can buy based on value rather than ‘marketing’ from the carriers.

Traditionally, Verizon and AT&T are the most expensive, with T-Mobile coming in much cheaper, so if you are considering a new phone, you should probably look at T-Mobile before renewing your contract with AT&T and Verizon. Especially if you consider the fact that T-Mobile’s phone selection is just as good as or better than both Verizon and AT&T, even though AT&T does have a lot of exclusives. AT&T’s exclusives, however, can easily be purchased outright and get an unlock code and then you can activate it on T-Mobile. And if you’re happy with your phone and your contract is up on AT&T, you can very likely switch to T-Mobile without any issues and probably save $20-$30 a month, minimum and regain unlimited data, which AT&T doesn’t have.

Unfortunately for Sprint, they seriously lagged in reliability and data performance, which are the two major factors of why their score is so much lower than the rest of the carriers. Even though, if you looked at the scores of all four San Diego carriers you would realize that there really isn’t that much of a difference, even if you add Sprint. But, if you look at the observed data speeds from some of the carriers, there are some significant differences. Perhaps Rootmetrics’ Rootscore needs to re-weight certain factors like download speed more heavily over call quality, etc.

Rootmetrics measures their ‘coverage’ as a factor of reliability and speed, with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile tying for reliability and Verizon and AT&T coming in as tied for speed, even though the difference between the three scores is 0.4 out of 100, or less than 1%. It makes you wonder why this wouldn’t be considered a three-way tie. Especially when you look at the differences in speeds.

According to Rootmetrics’ testing AT&T’s median download speed increased from 12.1 to 14.3 Mbps since the march testing. Sprint’s median download speed decreased from 7.5 Mbps to 5.2 Mbps and their upload suffered a drop from 3.2 to 1.1 Mbps, a very poor showing. T-Mobile’s median download speed also decreased from 17.3 Mbps to 15.3 Mbps, but still came in higher than AT&T’s. Curiously enough, Rootmetrics had Verizon win the Data RootScore award for the second consecutive time with the fastest median download speed of 18.4 Mbps while T-Mobile recorded the fastest median upload speed of 15.1 Mbps. This is where it gets interesting. If T-Mobile has the fastest upload speeds and the second fastest download speeds, why would they be ranked below AT&T in the Rootmetrics Speed Index? We will reach out to Rootmetrics to understand exactly what this means for San Diego carriers because it simply doesn’t make sense at AT&T would have a higher score than T-Mobile if T-Mobile actually has faster speeds for both upload and download.

Here are some of their scores, including data performance which varies from their ‘speed index’ every so slightly and somehow puts AT&T above T-Mobile even though T-Mobile has faster speeds according to their own tests. Either way, call performance is essentially the same and so is text performance even though T-Mobile and Verizon slightly edge out AT&T and Sprint.

What we can conclude from all of this, even with a few slight irregularities is that T-Mobile is still the best value in San Diego and Sprint is still the slowest in almost every measurement.

The post San Diego Carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile Tied in Performance appeared first on VR World.

1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

The post Regin: Stuxnet's Best Spying Malware Cousin appeared first on VR World.

1. Regin. /ˈreɪɡɪn/ 1. (Norse myth) a dwarf smith, tutor of Sigurd, whom he encouraged to kill Fafnir for the gold he guarded.

Regin is essentially a murderous dwarf who is caught/killed by his own greed. This Norse mythology is at the core a description of the Regin virus that has injected itself across the globe and today has finally been brought to light by Symantec and Kaspersky researchers. The Regin cybvervirus is a virus that has been tracked over the course of the past few years by security firms like Symantec, Kaspersky and McAfee, but they simply did not have enough data to build the whole picture of the computer virus’ scope nor its target. As a result, this research has been going on for quite some time and today multiple security companies have published their findings on the Regin malware and what it seeks to accomplish once it has infected a system.

According to Symantec’s research, Regin is being used as a covert espionage tool to go after very specific targets and infect them at a very deep level to either gain access to information or to gain access to a user of that network’s information. They say that Regin is a very complicated and highly encrypted piece of malware that hides its final form from anyone looking to find it unless they have access to all five stages of the malware’s unpacking. They detail the process in their technical whitepaper but it is essentially a multi-stage virus that hides its ultimate target and execution unless users can obtain every form/stage of the virus’ unpacking until it becomes the final payload.

This multi-stage approach is similar to what was seen from Duqu and Stuxnet and is once again very likely to be a sovereign-built piece of malware from some government. And as you can see, the targets that it goes after are very broad and appear to be focused mostly developing countries with Russia, Belgium and Germany being the exceptions. Those countries according to Kaspersky are:

Algeria
Afghanistan
Belgium
Brazil
Fiji
Germany
Iran
India
Indonesia
Kiribati
Malaysia
Pakistan
Russia
Syria

However, if you use Symantec’s data, the list of countries actually expands to include Saudi Arabia, Austria, Ireland and Mexico.

Regin Countries

Additionally, Kaspersky discovered a strong attack on GSM networks, especially in the case of Belgium where an entire operator was infiltrated by this malware and had publicly announced that they had been attacked, but were not aware of the perpetrator nor the target. What’s interesting, however, is that both Kaspersky and Symantec had discovered that this malware’s structure and payload delivery system (the mutli-stage approach) were specifically designed to obscure the malware’s existence and once it had infected a system it was designed to be inconspicuous as it continued to linger on the infected system, making detection incredibly difficult.

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We’ve scoured the internet for Black Friday deals and we’ve found some of the best deals that you should consider before you go out and buy. Some of these deals are already live and others will become deals on Black Friday. Check the company’s own Black Friday deal page for when their deals start.
Best Buy – Samsung 55″ 4K 60Hz Smart LED HD TV (UN55HU6830FXZA) – $899 (appears to be Best Buy exclusive, Black Friday special deal, compare against others to see if features are missing).
Best Buy – Samsung Gear Fit – $99.99
Best Buy – Pebble Steel – $149.99
Best Buy – NETGEAR AC1200 Dual-Band Wireless-AC Router – $59.99
Newegg – Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD – $359
Newegg – Samsung U28D590D Black 28″ UHD Monitor
Microcenter – Core i7 4970K – $249 (In Store Only)
Microcenter – Core i7 5960X – $899 (In Store Only)

Save an additional $40 when you bundle Intel CPUs with X99 and Z97 Motherboards (In Store Only)

Microcenter and Newegg – AMD FX 8350 – $149.99

Microcenter offers an additional $50 when you bundle AMD CPU with motherboard (In Store Only)

Microcenter – NZXT Phantom Full Tower – $99
Microcenter – Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SSD – $99
TigerDirect – APC 5000 mAh Power Pack – $14.99
TigerDirect – Tt eSports Shock Gaming Headset – $19.99
Fry’s Electronics – LifeCharge Juicy Pack 16,800 mAh battery pack – $25
Fry’s Electronics – Sony 128GB SDXC Memory Card UHS-1 – $79

From what we saw, Microcenter had probably the biggest Black Friday deals, which makes sense because their online presence is not as significant as their retail in-store presence. They are the masters of the cheap Intel CPU in-store only deal. However, if you wish to find component deals on Black Friday, Microcenter (if there’s one around you) is probably your best bet. I have a strong feeling that Newegg is still holding back a lot of their best deals for Cyber Monday, as is TigerDirect. Fry’s Electronics is shielding most of their Black Friday deals, so we’re only able to look at what they’ve posted publicly so far. Most of their deals will be in store, but could possibly be found online as well.

Don’t forget that after Black Friday there is going to be Cyber Monday, where websites like Newegg, Amazon and TigerDirect really push their biggest sales to snap up all the people waiting to buy things on Cyber Monday.

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Verizon (NYSE:VZ) is trying to get on the softer side of consumers. You could either consider this the more emotional side, or the software side, either would be applicable here. Verizon is deeming the day before Thanksgiving, November 26th, one of the busiest travel days of the year Connection Day. Connection Day is Verizon’s way of saying thanks to their customers and anyone that might need some help while they’re traveling home for the holiday.

The first thing they’re doing is that they’re giving existing Verizon More Everything plan customers a free, one-time gift of 1GB of data and another 1GB of data for the next billing cycle. In addition to Verizon’s own customers anyone and everyone can get in on Verizon’s Connection Day ‘gifts’ or ‘free offers’ by simply heading over to the Connection Day page.

Verizon FIOS is offering free mobile access to their popular movies and TV Shows on November 26th via their FIOS Preview mobile app.

Verizon has partnered with Amazon to offer a selection of 10 free/discounted apps, plus two free Audible.com book downloads (for new members) or $10 in Audible credit (current members). You will also get 10 free songs from Amazon Music and 10 curated playlists with Amazon Prime Music.

Apple has also joined the Connection Day gifting craze by offering a ‘special offer’ which will be revealed on November 26th, Connection Day.

Verizon also partnered with Condé Nast to offer free digital edition downloads of all 17 of the company’s publications which include Wired, Vanity Fair and GQ.

Verizon has also partnered with Boingo and GoGo to offer half an hour of free internet service in airports and planes on November 26th, Connection Day. And if you’re flying on Jet Blue, there will be free in-flight Wi-Fi for all flights between November 26th and December 31st.

Last but not least, Verizon partnered with Pandora to offer a free seven-day trial of Pandora One (Pandora’s premium subscription music service).

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San Diego LAN (SanDiegoLAN.net) is hosting a 3 day/ 2 night event in Southern San Diego, CA trying to help reinvigorate the San Diego LAN scene.

The LAN will feature League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Call of Duty 4 (Original Modern Warfare), Blur, Nazi Zombies and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

During off-tournament times, they will also have a lobby for people to hang out, play other games be they PC or other platforms. There will also be opportunities to watch streams together and get to know other gamers in the San Diego area. They will also have some demos running including an Oculus Rift for anyone to try out that hasn’t had a chance to so far.

There is enough seating for almost 100 attendees and with a 125 Mbps internet connection for outside network connections and a dedicated gigabit LAN. They will also be casting League of Legends and Starcraft matches live on Twitch.

The event’s sponsors are: Thermaltake, InWin, CPU Magazine and RIOT Games, who will be providing Riot Points for League of Legends winners.

More information can be found on www.SanDiegoLAN.net/LANAThon.html and entry fee is $15 per person, which helps cover the costs of the event including Pizza on Saturday night and a raffle ticket for prizes.

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There have been some fantastic graphics cards released this year, many with varying price points and performance levels. We are going to take a look at the best of all the GPUs available in 2014 and give you our explanation why. Do keep in mind, that some of these cards may have been released in late 2013, but remained relevant for most of 2014 and still are to this day. And without further ado, we give you the five best graphics cards of 2014. They are going to be listed in descending order from most expensive to least expensive and hopefully they will help you pick the right card for your budget. You can click on the image of the card below to find the card at the posted price on Amazon.

AMD Radeon R9 295X2 – $799

The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 was specifically designed for 4K gaming and to this day remains the best card for 4K gaming for a lot of reasons. In our review of the R9 295X2 graphics card, we found it to be one of the best cards for 4K with a single graphics card. One of the other things that made the R9 295X2 so fantastic and worthy of this list is that the liquid system that cooled this card is probably the most effective cooling solution that has ever cooled a graphics card, ever. The AMD R9 295X2 is also a great card because instead of bringing down the level of the 290X in order to be thermally manageable they actually clocked it even higher and gave you a card that was faster than two R9 290Xs. Currently, you can find the R9 295X2 selling at retailers for around $799 which is a great deal when you consider it launched earlier this year for $1,500 and the price has dropped all the way down to $799. There are some places selling a VisionTek R9 295X2 for $779, but that’s just one card at one store and $799 is a much more realistic price because the Visiontek card is likely to sell out. But why, you may ask, is AMD’s card that launched back in April at $1,500 now selling at $799 in November, only 7 months later? That would be because of the competition from the next card on our list.

The post Top Five Graphics Cards of 2014 appeared first on VR World.

There have been some fantastic graphics cards released this year, many with varying price points and performance levels. We are going to take a look at the best of all the GPUs available in 2014 and give you our explanation why. Do keep in mind, that some of these cards may have been released in late 2013, but remained relevant for most of 2014 and still are to this day. And without further ado, we give you the five best graphics cards of 2014. They are going to be listed in descending order from most expensive to least expensive and hopefully they will help you pick the right card for your budget. You can click on the image of the card below to find the card at the posted price on Amazon.

AMD Radeon R9 295X2 – $799

The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 was specifically designed for 4K gaming and to this day remains the best card for 4K gaming for a lot of reasons. In our review of the R9 295X2 graphics card, we found it to be one of the best cards for 4K with a single graphics card. One of the other things that made the R9 295X2 so fantastic and worthy of this list is that the liquid system that cooled this card is probably the most effective cooling solution that has ever cooled a graphics card, ever. The AMD R9 295X2 is also a great card because instead of bringing down the level of the 290X in order to be thermally manageable they actually clocked it even higher and gave you a card that was faster than two R9 290Xs. Currently, you can find the R9 295X2 selling at retailers for around $799 which is a great deal when you consider it launched earlier this year for $1,500 and the price has dropped all the way down to $799. There are some places selling a VisionTek R9 295X2 for $779, but that’s just one card at one store and $799 is a much more realistic price because the Visiontek card is likely to sell out. But why, you may ask, is AMD’s card that launched back in April at $1,500 now selling at $799 in November, only 7 months later? That would be because of the competition from the next card on our list.

The post Top Five Graphics Cards of 2014 appeared first on VR World.

Today, Jolla, the open source operating system and phone, announced it is now going to have its own tablet as well.

The Jolla Tablet is the company’s first tablet, featuring a 7.85″ screen and an Intel quad Core mobile SoC. This tablet is going to sell for under $200, which may make it one of the best deals in the tablet world next year. While the Jolla tablet runs the open source Sailfish OS, it also has some awesome aspects to it that make it more consumer friendly, like the fact that it has 32 GB of storage as well as an SD card slot. Something that the iPad, Nexus 9 and the newly announced Nokia N1 don’t have.

But there are some compromises here, it has a slower 1.8 GHz Intel chip, 2GB of RAM and a 4300 mAh battery, which is only 30% more than the current crop of smartphones. The Nexus 9 and iPad Mini 3 both have more than 50% more battery capacity than the Jolla Tablet, so I would suspect that battery life will not be this tablet’s strong suit, unfortunately. It also only has 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and no MIMO, which means that battery life will likely be even worse due to weaker Wi-Fi signal. Battery life should be a major concern for this device and isn’t even mentioned once anywhere in Jolla’s documentation. It also sports a measly 5mp main camera and a 2mp front-facing camera. Once again, not a huge fan of tablet photography, but this is probably a way that Jolla is able to get the Jolla Tablet’s cost so far below its competitors while still having that ‘camera’ tick box functionality.

Jolla Tablet Specs

What is awesome about this tablet, however, is that it is completely crowdfunded on Indiegogo and they have only opened up the campaign today and are already over 200% of their goal and are very likely to run out of tablets to sell within the day. So, this tablet is both open source and crowdfunded and not like the project from Canonical where they wanted the public to completely fund the profitability of Canonical through a crowdsourcing campaign.

It also appears as though Intel’s success in the mobile space in 2015 looks to be much better than it was in 2014, even if they are only partnering with emerging brands. If Intel properly ties themselves to upcoming and upstarting projects and products, they may actually find a way into the market and test their capabilities with biggest customers later on. The expected delivery date is May 2015. After that, they will very likely start putting the tablet up for sale for around $200 (they said $189).

There’s almost a certain chance they will sell out, the question will be whether it will be today or not, which is currently looking very likely. Below, you can watch Jolla’s promotional video about the Jolla Tablet.

The post Jolla Announces Open Source Jolla Tablet with Intel Inside appeared first on VR World.

Today, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) followed up yesterday’s Cat9 carrier aggregation interoperability announcement in conjunction with Ericsson with its own Gobi Modem announcement.

Gobi is Qualcomm’s own branding for its modem line of products, separate from its Snapdragon line of products. Gobi Modems are standalone modem products that are generally found in devices that do not have a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip inside or have a Snapdragon applications processor that doesn’t have a modem built-in. This new line of modems, the Gobi 9×45 line of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) modems follows in the path of the 9×35 family of modems which has yet to even take hold in the market. The MDM9x45 is a successor to the Cat6 MDM9x35 family of 20nm modems from Qualcomm. In fact, the MDM9x35 family of Gobi modems were Qualcomm’s first 20nm products and still are to this day the only 20nm chips Qualcomm has in devices now, until they start shipping Snapdragon 810 and 808 chips in phones in early 2015.

The 9×45 family of Gobi LTE modems are classified as LTE Category 10 modems which are technically classified as LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), which means they are the exact same downlink speed as Category 9 LTE, but with double the uplink speed. This means that if someone were to have a Cat9 modem and got perfect speeds out of it, they would get 450 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload, a pretty uneven performance number. Now, with Cat10, you are doubling the uplink speed to up to 100 Mbps, meaning that with Cat10 you see no downlink speed increases, but rather a doubling of the uplink speed to up to 100 Mbps. In addition to announcing the new Cat10 9×45 modem, Qualcomm also announced their second generation RF360 envelope tracker, the QFE1300 which is also sampling to customers along with the MDM9x45 modems and should be in devices in 2015.

Much like the Cat9 announcement yesterday, in order to achieve these 450 Mbps speeds, the MDM9x45 modems will need to utilize 60 MHz 3X CA (carrier aggregation) by combining three different 60 MHz bands in order to deliver such blazing speeds. It also requires 40 MHz 2x CA in order to be able to do the 100 Mbps uplink speeds. The QFE3100 is designed for a 30% smaller board area and enhanced power efficiency as compared to the previous generation, as well as allows improved calibration and implementation tools to ease Envelope Tracking design-in for OEMs and accelerate commercial deployment. This new generation of envelope tracker is once again designed to bring down the overall power consumption of the phone when using cellular data when paired with the Qualcomm MDM9x45 modem, much like the QFE1100 when paired with the MDM9x35.

And all of these speeds are fantastic to have, but one of the biggest problems is that even if there is a carrier in the US remotely capable of having three 20 MHz blocks of LTE in a single market, they also have to have the backbone to support anything remotely close to 450 Mbps downloads and 100 Mbps uploads. Right now, the carriers are severely hampering the speed of innovation, much like the ISPs do in the wired world. In fact, most of the current modems shipping in phones like the iPhone 6, LG G3, Sony Xperia Z3, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4 and many other flagship phones all have modems capable of speeds up to 150 Mbps with CA. Yet, the highest speeds I have ever seen in the US have been 80 Mbps, just slightly over half of the speed that our phones are capable of. And if you were to take most flagship phones around your city and test it virtually any time of day, the fastest you’ll realistically get is around 30-40 Mbps up or down.

So, even though Qualcomm is clearly leading the pack with LTE innovations and LTE-A, the carriers are really limiting the value of Qualcomm’s innovations as now Qualcomm’s competitors can merely come out with Cat4 LTE modems and still achieve similar speeds with minimal effort.

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Well, it appears that Nokia isn’t interested in letting the brand die after the company sold its mobile division to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for a sum of $7.2 billion, which many called undervalued. What was left of Nokia is now known as NSN and now that Microsoft is killing the Nokia name brand for phones and simply calling them Microsoft Lumia phones, Nokia still has the rights and ownership of the Nokia brand name. As such, they’ve decided to do something with it and have been hinting for some time that they might make a device.

The 7.9″ Nokia N1 harkens back to the days of when Nokia had phones like the Nokia N8 and Nokia N9 before their genius management decided to go to Windows Phone and then sell the whole division to Microsoft. Anyways, the N1 may be a sign of the brand’s rebirth but not a complete rebirth, because the reality is that this device is a bizarre lovechild as a result of Foxconn (TPE:2354) and Nokia’s relationship. According to The Verge, this device’s design, user interface and brand name are licensed to Foxconn who then manufactures the device and probably takes in all the profits as well. So, it isn’t quite clear if this is really a Nokia device or a Foxconn device or some weird amalgamation of the two. Either way, the end result is an Apple iPad looking device that features an Intel Moorefield Z3580 SoC and USB Type-C connector which should allow for some awesome functionality thanks to DisplayPort and MHL Alt Mode which could theoretically be available on this device.

Additionally, the Nokia N1 has the Z Launcher from Nokia which is Nokia’s own take on the Android OS launcher and will ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop in addition to having USB Type-C reversible USB connector capability.

Nokia N1 Z Launcher

The Nokia N1 itself sports a 2048×1536 resolution on the 7.9″ display, which makes it quite competitive with other tablets and has an 8 megapixel main camera as well as a 5 megapixel front-facing camera. The main camera is only capable of 1080P video, meaning that the resolution of the tablet’s display is greater than the camera’s capability. Perhaps higher-end versions of Nokia’s tablets will have higher resolution displays (on larger models) and with better cameras, even though I personally don’t care much for tablet photography or videography.

Nokia N1 Battery

The tablet also has 2GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage standard, which makes it a great value at $249, which is the expected sale price when the Nokia N1 goes for sale next year around the Chinese New Year time frame. One thing that some people also may have missed is that Nokia and Foxconn actually opted for a higher quality audio processor with the Wolfson DAC, specifically the Wolfson WM8958E, independent audio codec. It does, however, have a fairly small 18.5 Wh (5300 mAh) rechargeable LiPo battery (3.7 V) which means that you probably can’t expect much battery life out of this thing compared to an iPad, unless Intel, Nokia and Foxconn have managed to do some power management wizardry. Not to mention, this is the highest clocked processor from Intel’s 22nm family of mobile SoCs, so nobody really expects fantastic battery life.

It will also, amazingly enough, have dual band MIMO 802.11/a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi connectivity, which would make it one of the better connected tablets out there, even though AC should really be the standard on all mobile devices nowadays. Oh yeah, and in true Nokia spirit, the whole body is made of anodized aluminum (yes, like the iPad). Honestly, the similarities between this tablet and the iPad are striking, but there’s also no doubt that a lot of people would happily buy an iPad clone that runs Android. Especially if it really does end up selling for $249.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) have jointly announced that they have successfully tested the world’s first inter-company interoperability between Qualcomm’s Cat9 LTE (Category 9) MSM mobile chipsets and Ericsson’s LTE-A (LTE-Advanced) network infrastructure.

This test was done between the two companies in order to prove that interoperability is already possible on Cat9 hardware from both companies. Since, Qualcomm is both an infrastructure and client chipset company while Ericsson is only infrastructure since the company folded up the ST-Ericsson’s joint venture that produced competing products to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors.

The two companies were able to achieve the Cat9 450 Mbps speeds thanks to carrier aggregation (combining multiple frequencies/bands) that Qualcomm’s chipsets and Ericsson’s infrastructure are both capable of doing. Ericsson actually even tells us which hardware they accomplished this on, their RBS 6000 family of base stations for macro and small cell networks. Which means these are fairly small base stations and fairly short distance connections. Additionally, thanks to Ericsson’s specs of the RBS 6000, we know that Qualcomm and Ericsson used 60 MHz 3x carrier aggregation in order to deliver the Cat9 LTE speeds of 450 Mbps.

Qualcomm, unfortunately, doesn’t tell us which Snapdragon chipset this is that’s running the new 450 Mbps speeds, but they do say that it is a future chipset which could be something coming next year or something 2 or 3 years from now. We simply can’t know. But what we do know is that the carriers are very very unlikely to deliver anything anywhere near these speeds. The unfortunate reality, however, is that right now there are no carriers in the US even technically capable of delivering three 20 MHz different bands of  LTE based on their spectrum allocation. And even if they had the spectrum holdings to enable Cat9 LTE with carrier aggregation, they wouldn’t even have the backend to support it.

The post Qualcomm and Ericsson Successfully Test Cat9 LTE at 450 Mbps appeared first on VR World.

We recently talked about the fact that DisplayPort would be transmitting over USB Type-C in a format called DisplayPort Alt Mode, well, now there’s announcement from MHL who is announcing a similar alternative solution. MHL is the mobile connectivity standard body that allows for mobile devices to connect to your TV or other HDMI-enabled devices while still being able to use one connector and deliver power to your mobile device. Currently, MHL 3.0 is capable of transmitting 4K video over a microUSB 2.0 to HDMI MHL cable and simultaneously delivering power to the device as well. This standard is specifically designed to work with TVs and HDMI ports as one of MHL’s biggest members is Silicon Image, who are also the co-creators of HDMI and MHL.

With MHL Alt Mode, there is now going to be the ability to use USB Type-C for MHL signaling, which means that signaling  standards like HDMI will be supported over USB Type-C, which isn’t necessarily unexpected considering that MHL had already achieved that in the past with an MHL 3.0 cable with a microUSB connector. The cool thing about USB Type-C, though, is that it enables powering of devices and HDMI signaling thanks to MHL Alt Mode. And because MHL Alt Mode and DisplayPort Alt Mode use exactly the same pins on USB Type-C you could theoretically have a device that supports both standards simultaneously without the consumer ever knowing. Obviously, that’s not going to be the case in most situations, but there’s a good chance that now DisplayPort can be transmitted over USB Type-C that MHL is going to have more competition than they did in the past.

Not to mention, DisplayPort is royalty free, unlike MHL or HDMI, which may end up being less costly solutions. But there’s no escaping the reality of HDMI and the fact that HDMI 2.0 is going to prolong the life of HDMI probably for another 10 years. MHL already has a fairly large 650 million device install base, with multiple SoC vendors building in MHL functionality directly into the SoC. So, clearly, there is still quite a bit of competition expected to exist between MHL and DisplayPort even though they both will likely use the same connector on most mobile devices in the future. In addition to that, MHL’s new USB Type-C MHL Alt Mode standard already supports HDCP 2.2 out of the box, which is going to be important for delivering protected content from a PC or a smartphone to a TV with HDMI. MHL also enables some really interesting use cases like docks that allow for you to dock your phone or tablet and then use it as a desktop with keyboard and mouse functionality being enabled by the MHL dock.

MHL Dock

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