The new Samsung (KRX:000830) VR headset add-on for use with only its Galaxy Note 4 has arrived for sale on Samsung’s store for $199.99.  The device is power by Oculus-driven software to provide an immersive virtual reality experience using the Note 4 Super AMOLED display and the device itself to run the software.

Samsung stirred up a lot of talk earlier this year with the announcement that it was going to have an add-on for the Galaxy Note 4 that would make the pair a VR headset.  The Samsung Gear VR Innovator edition just popped up on the store for sale at Samsung’s website.  The good news is that this is only a $199.99 investment for those who already have a Galaxy Note 4.  The bad news for those who want to try it out and do not already own a Galaxy Note 4, is that the Gear VR  will only work with the Note 4.  This add-on most definitely will help to get more people buying the Note 4 than would if there wasn’t the Gear VR add-on.  This is a good move by Samsung for not only helping to drive VR innovation, but also to help its bottom line.  The Gear VR has access to Oculus store to have access to a fresh supply of ever growing content.

The Gear VR Innovator Edition comes with the headset, a carrying case, a replacement face cushion, a lens cloth, 16GB microSD memory card with the starter content pre-loaded, SD card adapter, user manual, and the warranty statement.  The controls that the headset has are a touchpad, a dedicated back button, focus adjustment wheel, volume keys, and a phone lock button.

Right now for those who purchase the Gear VR Innovator Edition there is two coupon codes to help get a discount for accessories.  The Samsung Gamepad is $30 off with the coupon code STAVR1, and the Samsung Gear Circle headset is $20 off with the coupon code STAVR2.

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With the holidays approaching fast and the sales that come with it many people will be getting new notebooks this holiday season.  Researching what the best notebooks out there are takes time and we though we could help out by giving you our choices in five different categories of notebooks.  They are gaming, ultraportable, Chromebook, business, and Apple MacBook.  With the latest computer parts in these notebooks it will be certain that they will be able to earn there keep for quite some time.  There are many things to consider when looking for a notebook and budget is a big one.  Most of these choices are going to be in the higher end range since they perform better.

Gaming Notebook: MSI Computer GT72  Dominator Pro with GTX 980M – $2,299

This gaming notebook is the top of the line from MSI, and it does not disappoint.  Equipped with Intel i7-4710HQ, 16GB of DDR3-1600, a 128GB SSD, and a Nvidia GTX 980M 8GB, this will tear through any recent and upcoming game.  The best thing about the GT72 Dominator Pro is that MSI has taken steps to ensure that you can update the graphics down the line when new and better GPUs come out.  This means that the investment made in this computer will last a lot longer than comparable notebooks that are stuck with their graphics for the life of the product. If you are wanting some more speed from the notebook then throw in four identical M.2 SSDs inside and put them in RAID 0 for read/write speeds of up to 1600MB/s.  From experience with MSI’s SuperRAID as it is called I can attest to how massive of an improvement that speeds like this can be, it makes using the notebook just so much more enjoyable.  You can even attach three monitors to the notebook with two mini-displayport and one HDMI outputs.  The keyboard feels like no other notebook keyboard and is made by the gaming company SteelSeries. Bottom line is that if this is in your budget and you are a gamer or even a power user, I have little doubt that you will love this notebook.

Apple Notebook: 15″ 2.5GHz MacBook Pro with Retina display – $2,374.99

There is no denying it, Apple makes good notebooks and they are arguably the best notebooks for running Windows on as well.  The Retina display will allow for better multi-tasking with various windows as the resolution gives lots of screen real estate.  The Retina display will be great for those who edit photos or video as the display will reproduce colors very well. The construction of the MacBook Pro is amazing and the fit and finish are things that other companies could learn a thing or two from.  The choice with the 2.5GHz Intel i7 was made for what would be the most capable and powerful option with a reasonable price.  At Apple you can customize the MacBook Pro with up to a 1TB SSD and a 2.8GHz Intel i7.

Ultraportable Notebook: Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro – $1,382.99

The 2-in-1 Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro is the latest model in the Yoga line and features an amazing watchband style hinge.  The hinge is made up of hundreds of individual pieces that allows the notebook to flex like no other and fold to use it in different positions.  The screen is a high resolution (3200×1800) IPS touchscreen that will reproduce colors very well and look much better than lower quality panels.  If needing something very light, portable, and a long battery life then this notebook should be on your list of ones to check out.  The stylish Yoga 3 Pro is one of the most stunning designs out now and is powered by the brand new Intel Core M processor.

 Chromebook – Toshiba Chromebook 2 1080p $329.99

Chromebooks are a new breed of notebook, and people are really loving them.  Chromebooks generally are affordable, light, and have long battery life making it an easy choice for those who need something portable.  The best thing about this model is likely the 1080p IPS panel that will look much better than panels that are in other models.  Powering the notebook is an Intel Celeron processor, and while not very powerful it will get the job done and sip power giving longer battery life.  The battery should be good for up to 8 hours and 45 minutes.  The audio has been fine-tuned by Skullcandy meaning that it should deliver much nicer sound than the standard Chromebook.  This will be useful if you enjoy listening to streaming music while you surf the web or do work.  The 802.11ac Wi-Fi is blazing fast and will allow you to get better coverage over other Chromebooks.

Business Notebook: Lenovo X1 Carbon – $1,619

When looking for a business notebook it is wise to choose something that is portable and light so you can easily get work done no matter where you are working.  The X1 Carbon also offers great battery life allowing up to 9 hours from a single charge.  Lenovo is the the most used PC maker for businesses and they sure do know what they are doing with its lineup that is geared for productivity.  The keyboard is surprisingly good and has back-lighting making it easier to get work done while on that red-eye to an important meeting or at home in the evening.  The integrated fingerprint reader should help simplify secure login by allowing you to simply swipe a finger over it.  When it comes to a business notebook, choosing Lenovo is a wise choice that millions have made before.

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During today’s Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) earnings call for Q3 with very good numbers, Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang indicated that the company was already actively discussing licensing its GPU technologies in the mobile space to certain partners.

While Huang did not say how many partners they were working with or at what stage they were in the discussions, he did say the following, “Our licensing discussions are very active. And we have many in important stages.”

That statement was a response to an analyst question about the success of Maxwell and if it was bringing any potential progress on the licensing front. Currently, Nvidia is the sole user of its mobile GPUs and mobile GPU IP, however, with the success of Maxwell in desktop, there is a very good chance that some companies would become interested in utilizing it for their SoCs. Afterall, if you look at some of our Maxwell reviews, you can see that Nvidia is getting much more performance out of their GPUs while using the same process (28nm) as the previous generation and simultaneously reducing power. These advancements eventually trickle down to Nvidia’s mobile products as the company’s product roadmaps have indicated in the past.

Currently, the Tegra K1 utilizes Nvidia’s Kepler architecture, which was originally launched in desktop and laptop GPUs back in 2012 and then perfected in 2013 with the GTX Titan. Following the Kepler release in 2012, Nvidia announced the Tegra K1 (formerly known as Tegra 5) with Kepler in the beginning of this year and has been shipping Tegra K1 SoCs since the summer. So, a realistic timeframe to see Maxwell GPU IP in mobile is very likely going to be towards the tail end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016, so that isn’t necessarily going to be as quick as the mobile refresh cycle usually is. However, with each generation of SoC Nvidia has vastly improved the speed of GPU architecture implementation so there’s no knowing exactly how soon we could see an Nvidia GPU in something like a MediaTek.

It will be interesting to see how Nvidia will balance their GPU IP licensing with customers if they are also simultaneously competing with them. After all, ARM and IMG license both CPUs and GPUs, but neither of them actually produce their own products that compete with their licensees. There is also a chance that Nvidia may be trying to muscle weaker companies into licensing their technology because of the strength of their patents, which may be why Nvidia recently sued Samsung and Qualcomm.

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GT Advanced Technologies (NASDAQ:GTAT) once had a market cap of over $2 billion. The company specializes in material sciences and manufacturing and is well known as an expert in sapphire applications in manufacturing and technology. Originally, rumors of a sapphire iPhone 6 display had pointed to GT Advanced Technologies as being the primary company responsible for supplying such displays and as a result, their stock rose from the sub-$10 range to $20, effectively doubling the company’s value in a few short months.

The rumors of GT Advanced Technologies involvement started with a CNET article talking about how Mark Shuttleworth had claimed that Apple had snapped up the majority of the Sapphire display supply. Since the publication of that article, GT Advanced Technologies’ stock never dropped below that price again, until the iPhone 6 announcement. This was mostly thanks to analysts and press who would continually pump up the rumor with new rumored information about the sapphire displays. The rumors would waiver between being saphhire-coated and being a full sapphire display as well as having a sapphire layer. Either way, once again, the press were responsible for pumping up a stock based on rumors and speculation rather than fact and reality, and partially, Apple is also to blame for this with all of their secrecy and minimal communication.

Now, after the iPhone 6 announcement it became quite clear that Apple was not using sapphire crystal in their displays which meant that GT Advanced Technologies’ biggest rumored buyer wasn’t going to be building millions and millions of sapphire crystal displays using its products. This immediately spurred a series of articles on September 19th saying that either GT Advanced Technologies could not supply enough displays for Apple in order to be able to launch with it, or that Apple had never planned to use sapphire displays to begin with.

If you look at GT Advanced Technologies’ shares on that day, they had a very steep drop. In fact, GTAT appears to be one of the pure cases of a pump and dump. The stock would get pumped up near $20, and then dumped by whoever really knew the truth or by people that weren’t convinced that the rumors would come true. This happened by the looks of it, three times. The final time, however, appears to have been GT Advanced Technologies’ nail in the coffin as the company today filed for bankruptcy protection and caused the shares in the company’s stock to drop 90% where it currently sits at $1.07. GT Advanced Technologies had a $2 billion market cap when it was worth around $20 and now it has a market cap of around $150 million, which means that $1.85 billion in wealth has been erased today. We are very sorry to hear that this has happened to investors of GTAT, but the reality is that the company’s value (above $10) was based almost entirely on rumors and not much else.

We will continue to follow the story as it develops once we hear more from GT Advanced Technologies executives and the company’s own official statements about the chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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Normally, we don’t like to post most rumors of phones that are rumored to be launching, but considering that we’re nearing the launch of the iPhone 6 this month, many of the rumors, pictures and videos appear to be becoming more and more credible.

As is the case with the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)  iPhone 6, with the Rozetked video that claims to show a final production iPhone 6 alongside an iPhone 5S. In fact, everything that they show in this device (which is in HD) clearly falls in line with the majority of the low-res leaks that have appeared over the months. This video is entirely in Russian, however, there are English subtitles and we can translate for you what they claim the specs to be, including what appears to be the confirmed 4.7″ display and power button being moved to the right side of the phone.

As expected, the iPhone 6 did get thinner than the iPhone 5S, but it also got wider and longer as a result of the larger display. Unfortunately, Apple did not make a backlit Apple logo, but they did return to having a metallic Apple logo returning to the previous designs of iPhones made of the all rumored liquid metal which is virtually impossible to scratch. In fact, in order to verify the credibility of this video they took the iPhone 6 apart to show that it is a genuine iPhone 6 and not a dummy model that has nothing inside like some of the leaked pictures did.

Also, if you continue to watch the video you can see that their teardown verifies that the iPhone 6 runs on Apple’s yet-to-be-announced A8 chip and does include NFC functionality (hoorah). They also talk about the front glass of the iPhone 6 and how beautifully rounded it is and that even though it does make the phone very comfortable to hold in your hand and to use, it is very expensive to produce and from our experience easy to scratch. But they do say that it is still a much better display and even brighter than the previous iPhones’ displays. Apple also kept the size of the center button the same as the iPhone 5, but have supposedly increased the size of the sensor which should result in better touchID performance. Apple decided to keep the lightning, headphone jack and speaker essentially in the same place, making its use very familiar to current iPhone 5S users.

In addition to that, they talk about the camera being too big to fit into the even thinner body, which resulted in a camera that protrudes from outside of the body much like the iPod Touch, however this is only because they couldn’t fit it inside of such a thin body and many people may find this annoying. But even so, they say that the iPhone 6 fits very comfortably inside of your hand and that it will sell very well.

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iFixit recently tore down Amazon’s supposedly wildly innovative phone. However, they actually had quite a hard time tearing it down. The only phone that beats the Amazon Fire Phone in terms of unrepairability is the HTC One M8. That phone scored a lowly 2 in terms of repairability, but even so, Samsung’s lowest scoring phone (The Galaxy S5) still managed a score of a 5. Repairability will determine how expensive repairs for your phone will cost and whether or not you can do them yourself. On certain phones, some components are simply too bonded together or impossible to take apart and as a result, get pretty poor scores.

Even though the Amazon Fire Phone isn’t necessarily that technologically unique of a phone, Amazon has managed to make it almost as unrepairable as HTC’s. However, HTC’s phones are not as hyped as Amazon’s in terms of features and unique features. Some of these features, however, are partially attributing to the phone’s unrepairability score.

As iFixit states, the four dynamic perspective cameras are actually encased in glue, which means that any sort of replacement of them will require heat and cutting. In addition to this, a replacement display would likely need to include those four cameras, which would make replacing the display outrageously expensive. If the cameras are not replaced, but rather transferred, the amount of work to do so will also be expensive and tedious. They also say that the plethora of cables and connectors make disassembly tedious and reassembly difficult. iFixit also says that the Amazon Fire Phone is not modular and as a result many components share the same cables, which increases the cost of replacement parts.

Now, repairability may not be a factor for everyone buying a phone, but it is worth noting or at least knowing when buying the phone. The Amazon Fire Phone will likely fail, as we had suspected it would primarily because most of its features are gimmicky or encourage Amazon product consumption, without anything in return. Amazon’s pricing and placement of this phone (AT&T) are ultimately going to be what dooms it, until they drop the price. I don’t particularly see them being very successful with it unless its free on contract. And even then, the likelihood that someone would go with this phone over an HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5 or LG G3 is very small.

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It seems as though May is going to be a pretty busy month in the smartphone industry, much like April was. This month we saw the Launch of the HTC One M8 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S5, after their announcements in the months before. Now, it appears to be Motorola’s and LG’s turn as Motorola is rumored to be announcing the Moto E and Moto X+1 on May 13th and LG is expected to launch the LG G3 on the 27th, an update to the G2 from last year. The G2 last year was a fantastic phone and really cemented LG’s platform in a way that got Google to borrow from it for the Nexus 5, which is made by LG for Google. The G2 is actually a renaming of the original line’s naming as the Optimus G series, but LG had already made an Optimus G2 phone, so they dropped the Optimus name and now we’re coming up on the G3.

LG G3 Launch Invitation

With LG’s G3, the expectations have mostly been that the company will launch a phone in the 5-5.5″ ballpark since the LG G2 is already a 5.2″ nearly bezel-less phone. The expectation is that LG will continue this trend with the G3, which means no buttons on the sides of the phone and all of the buttons on the back of the phone. The big deal about the G3, however, is that it is rumored to be bringing a 2560 x 1440 (or 2560 x 1600) resolution display to the smartphone formfactor which is eagerly awaiting a phone with that kind of resolution from a mainstream manufacturer. OPPO’s Find 7 is supposed to have a 2560 x 1440 display, but that phone isn’t quite available yet in most markets and it isn’t necessarily a mainstream/tier 1 manufacturer. It will probably have a pretty impressive camera like the G2 did and it will probably have an even bigger battery than the G2 did, which was already a massive 3100 mAh lithium polymer battery. I don’t really know what LG can do that’ll be considered innovative outside of the new display, but anything they introduce should be received well, even if their phone does come a bit later than Samsung’s and HTC’s. I think the 2560 x 1440 resolution is worth waiting for, purely because of the quality of the display and because it may also mean a Snapdragon 805 as opposed to a Snapdragon 801.

Motorola Launch Invitation

In terms of Motorola’s announcement, the rumored devices that are expected to be announced are the Moto E and Moto X+1 which are essentially a new budget phone (Moto E) and a new flagship phone (Moto X+1). However, one must remember that Motorola is technically now a Lenovo division and this may affect where they try to position the Moto X+1 because frankly, the Moto X was overpriced for what it offered and as a result, I don’t think they sold as many as they had thought. Perhaps they’ll realize this with the new Moto X+1 and offer it at a lower price like the current Moto X is, at $299 tomorrow. Their business model should be to offer the bare experience at $299 and then to offer various premium experiences of that phone at $349, $399, $449 and $499, encouraging people to spend more money for a better looking phone but lure them with the base price. Heck, its what all the car manufacturers have been for decades.

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