Whiskers

This won't happen often, if at all. Their focus is on their streaming service, as offering a PS4-compatible version for download would require a fully-fledged port of the game which is entirely uneconomical and would require a separate purchase by consumers.

I feel that when Apple try to implement a new feature within their devices, it seems much more 'complete' than when their competitors try to do it. It feels more like the realisation of a lengthy research, design and development process rather than the result of a fat middle aged businessman deciding to tack on this and this to sell 50000000000000000000 units for the sake of increasing the company's profit margins by 0.0001%. I guess I should elaborate. When Apple introduced the iPhone 4 with its retina display, it felt like they had made a leap forward with the display technology of smartphones. It felt like they had reached a clear goal which was the result of extensive research and development. However when HTC announced the HTC One with its 1080p screen, Samsung announced the Galaxy S4 with its 1080p screen and later Oppo with their Find 7's 1440p screen it feels like they're just slapping in higher-resolution panels without a lot of forethought or reasoning, then market them with the rationale that higher numbers equate to higher sales. If you want to get a decent Android device, good luck. Some devices have great build quality, some devices are responsive, some have great features, some are great for productivity, some have great cameras, some have water and dust resistance, some are ultra-fashionable, some are ultra-powerful and some are ultra-affordable. Very few offer a package as well-rounded and complete as the iPhone however, and the few that do still have some glaring drawbacks - the fluidity, consistency and responsiveness of the Android OS and its UI, for example. Apple make exquisite products. They may not always be for me, personally - however I still adore their philosophy on the penultimate importance of great design and the great implementation of it. They get it, and they really do seem to focus more on making a great product than making a device that sells well. They achieve the latter by targeting the former, whilst their competitors fail to achieve the former by targeting the latter.

Depends on what you need and what price you can get it at. Most people seem to agree that the Galaxy S5 is a hideous looking device, and realistically has very few advantages over the S4. However, the S4 itself was never a great device - TouchWiz managed to take the powerful hardware the phone has and make it run like a mouldy, half-eaten potato. If you want build quality, get an HTC One (or if you don't mind the... 'different' aesthetic, the upcoming HTC M8 / One 2 / whatever it's called). If you want all-around versatility (waterproof, dustproof) and build quality, get an Xperia Z2. If you want productivity, get a Galaxy Note 3. If you are obsessed with being 100% up to date with the most insignificant and pointless of updates, get a Nexus 5. If you want a customisable phone with an extremely zippy user experience, get a Motorola Moto X. If you want a cheap and cheerful (yet still rather great) phone get the Motorola Moto G. We need more info on what you need and want from your phone to recommend one to you.

I fail to see why so many people are suggesting that iPhone devices have terrible battery life. They're typically on par with and sometimes better than their Android competitors. Personally, I've always found my iPhone's battery life to be considerably more consistent than my Android devices - at times for better, at times for worse. Battery life is equally rubbish on the majority of smartphones these days. It's far from an iPhone-only thing.

An interesting read.

Why? It's an important thing to have in workloads where an error could destroy hours of work. What does that have to do with it? That guy being a bit of a tosser has nothing to do with the Mac Pro. Yes, using how many of them? How long did it take them to render? Having more powerful machines decreases rendering time and if you're working with the same material decreases the number of machines required to render. Unless you're suggesting we should still use the same machines Jurassic Park used to render with back in 1992? If I recall correctly they used something like 70 machines to render the CGI effects for the film. PhotoShop doesn't require an extremely powerful machine and we all know it. Irrelevant point. You seem to be suggesting the Mac Pro isn't good because we have no use for it. Well, that's rather the point - it's a workstation computer, not a consumer-grade or gaming computer. It's not meant for us.

The original Galaxy S had an AMOLED screen. The S2 had a better one, the S3 had a better one than that, the S4 had a better one than that... As I said. New technology improves over time.

You're rather missing the point. This is a new type of sensor. Samsung believe it has benefits over current sensors used in cell phones - that does not mean that the current iterations of the sensor are on par with their claims, it means that they will be. New technologies aren't always instantly superior to their older competitors, often they require some time to improve before their advantages start to truly shine. It is impossible to determine yet whether or not this new sensor is better than any other as we have next to no information or footage upon which to judge. Several edited images on a Samsung advertisement in the form of a severely compressed YouTube video is far from sufficient. Let me give you an example. When LCD televisions started to be sold to consumers many many many years ago everyone thought they were a joke. They had terrible picture quality, ridiculous pricing and a stupendous lack of features - CRT televisions were superior in all but three ways: Size, Weight and Power Draw. However, as the technology grew stronger so did the products - jump to today and LCD televisions are extremely popular.

Very nice. I would change the squiggle though, personally. It's a bit too much at the moment - perhaps lower the opacity, make it slightly smaller or change its colour to a light grey.

You're only seeing several examples of a new type of sensor. Far from sufficient information to judge it upon. Interesting. I'll wait until we start seeing more information or examples of its benefits before I am excited for it, but it certainly sounds like it could lead to some nice improvements over current cell phone cameras.

Gaming GPU, not a workstation GPU. And you don't have an ECC-compatible CPU or ECC RAM.

Lord almighty. TN is not the devil-spawn of display technology that some people seem to think. Likewise, IPS is not some perfect angelic deity from the pearly gates. They both have advantages and disadvantages. Complaining that a CHEAP 4K monitor has a TN panel (which is reportedly quite a good quality one) is ludicrous. It's like criticising the Galaxy Note 3 for not having desktop-class graphical power. It's a completely unrealistic expectation that won't happen for a long time when the technology has evolved.

I agree that the memory cards are a little frustrating. From what I heard, Sony decided to use a proprietary design as they came to the conclusion that MicroSD was simply too slow for what they needed... ie, loading a lot of game data quickly. Which sort of makes sense I suppose. Personally, my biggest gripe with the Vita is that it sort of feels a bit clunky to use and doesn't do much outside of gaming. The UI is rather rubbish and for features other than gaming it's actually somewhat of a downgrade to the PlayStation Portable, really. As an example - on the PSP one can simply drag and drop their music files to the device and play them whenever they wish, and music playback is integrated tightly into the XMB UI. On the Vita however, transferring music files is quite a lot more involved as it requires some silly Sony software to do it, and whenever you wish to play music you need to launch an application for it. The same goes for photos and videos, too - and you cannot have a custom wallpaper, you can only choose a colour. All in all, it's actually a fantastic device. But I truly hope that Sony expand upon it and try to make it a true successor to the PSP in every way, as right now it's rather lacking in a lot of areas.

Consumer grade i7 CPUs are not comparable to a server and workstation grade Xeon E5. Consumer grade non-ECC RAM is not comparable to server and workstation grade ECC RAM. Xeon CPUs exist for a reason, as does ECC RAM. Throwing together what is essentially a high-end gaming computer and claiming it's better than a Mac Pro is absurd. Not to mention that its pricing is actually very good. Compare it to any workstation prebuilt made by another company and it's typically between $500 to $1000 cheaper at least. HP specifically were rather absurd for this.. when I checked the pricing of one of their workstations a month or so ago they were offering a lower-end Xeon CPU with a single lower-end GPU and an SSD with half the capacity of the equivalent Mac Pro.

Yeah, probably. I want an iPhone with a 5" screen. Gimme dat glorious iOS and build quality. <3

Console.

Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3, Gran Turismo 5, Gran Turismo 6 (zomg amazing game), God of War etc. You can get a 1st gen PS3 for around £80. Definitely worth it.

You seem to be suggesting that all biased communities are negative, and indirectly as a result that anyone who is biased are contributing negatively to any communities that they are in. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some biases are the result of logical reasoning, intuition and knowledge - for example, I shall never recommend a Razer headset to anyone as I've found their build and sound quality to be absolutely abysmal with their prices typically twice as high as they should be. That's not an irrational fanboy's comment, it's a rational conclusion reached by someone who has used and evaluated the products in question and happens to own a Razer peripheral himself. That said, I do not like it when I see people just 'following the crowd'. I get the impression that a lot of people on the forum tend to adopt what they perceive as the popular opinion on something, perhaps as an attempt to fit-in.

I'm fairly certain the PS3 does support .MKV files. I use my PS3 as a media device almost every day and have used quite a few .MKV files in the past. Unless my streaming software is transcoding it on the fly without my knowledge... but I doubt that given the machine I was running it off for a while couldn't transcode 420p films let alone 1080p ones.

No, that is GTA IV. The image is also quite horribly compressed - the game does look a little nicer than that in reality.

That may be true. But what I meant was I doubt it'll be very easy at all to find another 780Ti for such a good deal again. My 780 has been dispatched anyway.

In that case, UbiSoft have evidently screwed the game up big time on the PS4. This is unacceptable for current-gen consoles, let alone next-gen...

OP asked for recommendations outside of Android and already explained why. Certainly, phones like the S4 and Note 3 would make no sense for what his mother needs.