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Mentra will soon start shipping its first smart glasses, the Mentra Live. At first glance, theres nothing obvious setting Mentras glasses apart from its more well-known competitors, but they come with their own dedicated app store, and employ an open-source OS with an SDK that developers have had access to since early 2025. Mentra says the MiniApp Store is the first app store of its nature for smart glasses, and it will be available to iOS and Android users through the Mentra app. It might be a bit of a reach to call it the smartphone-ification of smart glasses at this early stage, but that seems to be Mentras aim. Apps might do something as simple as saving hand-written notes on the fly, but a more specific example is "Chess Cheater," which will use the front-facing camera and AI to analyze your position and literally whisper a suggested next move to you. Mentra As for the glasses themselves, theyre powered by a Mediatek MTK8766 chipset and feature a 12-megapixel camera with a 119-degree FOV. There are three microphones and built-in stereo speakers. The front-facing camera also does HD video, with livestreaming functionality supported to the likes of X, YouTube, Twitch and Instagram. You can also listen to music and take calls from WhatsApp, FaceTime and any other calling app you might use. At 43 grams, Mentra says its specs are among the lightest smart glasses you can buy, while battery life is said to be more than 12 hours, with 50+ hours of additional charge stored in the 2,200mAh charging case. The Mentra Live smart glasses are prescription-ready and cost $299. 1,000 pairs were made available for the first batch, which will ship on February 15. Batch two will include a limited amount of glasses available to ship on February 28th.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/mentras-first-smart-glasses-are-open-source-and-come-with-their-own-app-store-150021126.html?src=rss
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During CES 2026, Samsung unveiled plenty of new TVs, monitors and other hardware. However, the company is also looking to expand further into video games and has announced a significant refresh to its Gaming Hub on smartphones. Engadget spoke with Samsungs Jong Woo, VP of Game Services, who explained that the update will offer more personalized, faster ways to play and place greater emphasis on up-and-coming titles. Now available on Galaxy devices, with further updates planned, the new hub wants to be a more active space for the latest mobile games. "We believe that gamers want to find new content that is personalized to them," said the VP of Samsung Games Services. He continued: "We want to bring content to users and make it immediately available for them to play. We have instant plays where, through our cloud streaming technology, we can take Android-native games and put them in the cloud, so that when users want to try them, they don't have to go through the friction of downloading them first. According to Samsung, the mobile Gaming Hub attracts over 160 million users across smartphones and other devices. However, the VP of Game Services at Samsung believes that, despite the vast library of games across many genres available to mobile users, "mobile game discovery is broken." Samsung Initially, the mobile Gaming Hub was a supplemental app for all purchased games, allowing users to track their collection. With this update, all games purchased from both Google Play and the Galaxy Store are stored in the Gaming Hub. It's designed to be a single place for players to view their owned games, find recommendations, access cloud streaming for select games and even watch highlights from content creators. According to Woo, the larger goal of the new Samsung mobile Gaming Hub is to personalize and guide the mobile gaming experience for players, which has remained nebulous compared with gaming discovery experiences on PC and consoles. We're getting a lot of feedback from the users, a lot of it from focus testing and beta testing, and what we're finding is that we believe we are solving pain points for mobile gamers," said Woo about rebuilding the Gaming Hub. "We're getting an idea of gamer preferences at the individual, personalized level. Based on all of that, we're able to provide different types of recommendations." Another reason for the new changes to the Samsung Gaming Hub was to help foster a community for mobile gamers, including players and developers. In addition to sharing YouTube videos and content from gaming creators and streamers, the company plans to add more social elements to the Gaming Hub to make mobile gaming feel more active and less isolating. "Mobile is a very personal experience, right? It's your personal device, and oftentimes when you play games on mobile, it feels like a solitary experience, said Woo. Currently, the revamped Mobile Gaming Hub is only available for Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Users on non-Galaxy devices will still use the previous version of the Gaming Hub, for now. Compared with PC and console online hubs like Steam and PlayStation Network, it's clear that mobile platforms are still figuring out how to create an equally compelling space for engagement. Even with the vast user base, mobile game hubs tend to be a go-between for users to get to the products. There's more work to do, but the new Gaming Hub could be the first step in the right direction.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/samsung-refreshed-mobile-gaming-hub-150010632.html?src=rss
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IO Interactive raised a few eyebrows last week when it announced the minimum and recommended PC specs for 007 First Light. To run the James Bond adventure at in 1080p at 60 fps, IOI initially said you'd need to have a rig with at least 32GB of RAM and a GPU with 12GB of VRAM. The studio has now revised those numbers and other elements of the specs after "the community flagged some inconsistencies in an earlier version of the listing."The developer blamed an "internal miscommunication" which led to it sharing an older version of the specs. One of the recommended GPUs in the original version was an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which has 8GB of VRAM not enough to meet the supposed recommended VRAM settings. It seems a little odd to think that it took IOI over a week and an enormous pile of negative press and online reaction before addressing the inconsistency (not to mention the demand for 32GB of RAM for relatively modest 1080p, 60 fps performance). The studio says it updated the specs after "a thorough re-examination and additional testing."We are providing today an update to the PC system requirements for 007 First Light after the community flagged some inconsistencies in an earlier version of the listing.The earlier mistake was due to an internal miscommunication leading to an older version of the specs to be pic.twitter.com/2M8BBoCjWX 007 First Light (@007GameIOI) January 15, 2026 In the recommended hardware section of the latest version, IOI revised down the VRAM from 12GB to 8GB and it halved the RAM requirement to 16GB. IOI also "fixed" the minimum CPU info. The original specs stipulated that gamers would need at least an Intel Core i5 9500K or AMD Ryzen 5 3500. The former has now been revised down to an Intel Core i5 9500K.For the tape, then, the minimum PC specs to run 007 First Light with a performance target of 1080p at 30 fps are:Processor: Intel Core I5 9500, AMD Ryzen 5 3500Memory: 16GB RAMVideo RAM: 6GBGraphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, AMD RX 5700 or Intel Discrete GPU equivalentAnd the recommended specs for a performance target of 1080p at 60 fps are:Processor: Intel Core I5 13500, AMD Ryzen 5 7600Memory: 16GM RAMVideo RAM: 8GBGraphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, AMD RX 6700 XT or Intel Discrete GPU equivalentThe required operating system is the same on both counts with a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or 11. The storage space needed is also the same at 80GB. IOI apologized for "the confusion it caused with the mixup. It promised to share more details about 007 First Light ahead of the game's arrival on May 27 including details of additional performance targets. Given the way RAM and GPU prices are going, here's hoping IOI isn't looking for too much more to run the game at 1440p or 4K at a decent framerate.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/007-first-light-dev-admits-it-messed-up-pc-specs-announcement-143000670.html?src=rss
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