We last got an iPad Pro refresh in October 2022, when the premium 11-inch and 12.9-inch slates were updated with the Apple M2 processor. According to the rumor mill, those screens will be changing in 2024 when the next models are due to appear.
This comes from display analyst Ross Young, speaking to MacRumors. First, the display technology will apparently be changing from the IPS LCD LED (11-inch) and IPS LCD mini-LED (12.9-inch) of the current iPad Pros to OLED – just like the flagship iPhones.
That should mean even better screens in terms of contrast and darker blacks, though the panels attached to the current iPad Pro range are already impressive. We've been hearing rumors that Apple would switch to OLED on its iPads for some time now.
Changing sizes
There's also going to be a change in the display sizes, Young says. The 11-inch iPad Pro will become an 11.1-inch iPad Pro, while the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will become a 13-inch iPad Pro – not much of a difference then, but one that's worth noting.
It's possible that Apple is going to be able to shrink the bezels on these two premium iPads, so the overall dimensions of the slates would stay the same while the displays get slightly bigger. OLED panels can mean thinner and lighter devices as well.
Additionally, despite earlier leaks suggesting that Apple was working on a super-sized iPad Pro, that's apparently no longer on the way according to Young. It seems that for the next iteration at least, Apple is going to stick to the two sizes we've talked about.
Analysis: making the iPad Pros more Pro
The iPad Pros have always been high-end luxury devices for those with big budgets who need as much power as possible: bear in mind that the entry-level iPad (yours for $449 / £499 / AU$749) does basically everything that the more expensive models do.
Once the switch to OLED is made, that will be another differentiator that will help to justify the high price of the iPad Pro models. Whether these slates will cost the same remains to be seen – but we're assuming that's what Apple is going to aim for.
The change in size is less interesting, though Apple clearly wants to keep a large iPad Pro in its range. As well as offering more screen space, it helps to give buyers a reason to consider one of the more expensive tablets rather than the iPad Air.
With these updated tablets apparently getting launched in 2024, it could be a quiet 2023 in terms of Apple tablets. That might give its competitors time to catch up, but it also means there should be a substantial performance boost when the new iPad Pros do appear.
Price cuts on gadgets are always good news for consumers, and it would seem that the iPhone 15 could be in line for one if the latest leak can be believed: apparently Apple is considering cutting the pricing of the iPhone 15 Plus due to launch in September.
This comes from reputable online source Yeux1122 on South Korean social network Naver (via Macworld). The move is apparently being given serious consideration, and would be made in response to underwhelming sales of the current Plus model.
The iPhone 14 Plus that was unveiled with the rest of the family earlier this year has a starting price of $899 / £949 / AU$1,579 for the 128GB version, but it doesn't appear to be attracting buyers in the numbers that Apple would like.
A tale of four phones
While canceling the Plus model would be an option for Apple, it's likely that development on the iPhone 15 is too far down the line for that to happen. A price cut on the handset that replaced the iPhone 13 mini would be the next most logical step.
It's worth bearing in mind that the iPhone 14 Pro Max offers the same screen size as the Plus, but adds in features like a faster chip, the Dynamic Island and the always-on display for another $200 / £250 / AU$320 – which makes it the better deal.
As yet there's no indication of how big the price cut could be, or how it might affect the pricing of the other models in the range. We've also been hearing that Apple could introduce a more powerful, more expensive iPhone 15 Ultra next year too.
Analysis: getting the pricing right
Pricing is always key for any smartphone: the best cheap phones may not have the fastest chips or the best screens, but they cost substantially less than the premium flagships on the market, and so still represent good value for money.
As for Apple's iPhone series, for the last few years the Pro models have been the handsets with the most appeal. That's even more the case with the iPhone 14 Pro, because the less expensive models come with last year's A15 Bionic chip inside.
Buyers of the iPhone 14 are getting a phone that's slower than the Pro, with a camera system that's not quite as good, and without several other cool features. Okay it's cheaper, but there aren't a lot of other reasons to prefer it over the Pro.
We'll have to wait and see what Apple does in 2023, bearing in mind that it has the budget iPhone SE (2022) on sale as well. Next year could be the year when Apple's flagship phone gets closer to mid-range pricing than ever before.
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to smartphones as everyone’s tastes and requirements are different. If you are still undecided on which phone you should upgrade to, we have come up with a list of all the best smartphones that launched in 2022.
The Redmi K60 Series Ice Cooling Case is said to be capable of reducing the maximum temperature of a handset by up to 4 degrees Celsius. It can be purchased currently for CNY 79 (roughly Rs. 1,000).
What kind of 2022 did Microsoft experience? The company made some big moves during the course of this year, including a gargantuan near-$70 billion acquisition – mired in controversy – and it also brought the first major feature update to Windows 11. Let’s take a deep dive into how Microsoft fared across the software, hardware, and gaming fronts over the past year.
Windows 11’s big update (and bugged updates)
Windows 11 is still relatively new, having arrived late in 2021, and the biggest thing to happen to the OS this year was the debut of its first major update. (Remember that there’ll only be one feature update per year now, rather than twice yearly as was the case in the past). The Windows 11 2022 Update (informally known as 22H2) pitched up in September, applying a whole lot of polish, alongside some major and useful changes to the interface. We were also treated to a new system of ‘Moments’, fancy Microsoft jargon for smaller updates more agilely applied as needed outside of the big yearly feature upgrade.
Some of the notable improvements piped through included the introduction of tabs for File Explorer, allowing for multiple folders to be opened in one File Explorer window, in the same way there are multiple tabs in a browser. That represented the delivery of a long-promised feature from Microsoft. The taskbar also received a lot of attention, with a taskbar overflow panel being brought in, and after lots of clamoring from a good many Windows 11 users, drag-and-drop functionality was finally returned to the taskbar.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Indeed, it seems that something of a theme for the year was Microsoft listening more to feedback and user needs, as another much complained about aspect of the taskbar – the removal of the option to ungroup apps on the bar, a piece of functionality that’s in Windows 10 – looks set to be remedied. Or at least that facility has been present in testing with Windows 11, and should be here soon, fingers crossed, for those who don’t want multiple instances of the same app combined on the taskbar.
The feeling that Windows 11 is a work in progress still remained, with Microsoft needing to do a good deal of honing and revamping to knock various bits of the interface into better shape (and clear up cluttered legacy corners of the UI) – plus frustrating bugs were still a problem.
Throughout 2022, while there weren’t any show-stoppers in the way of Windows 11 bugs (as has been seen with Windows 10 in the past), we’ve reported on far too many glitches, and some nasty enough ones. Like printers having much of their functionality stripped away, for example, as well as gremlins that dragged down performance levels in various ways, and gamers came under fire from some seriously annoying bugs, too. Flaws in File Explorer seemed particularly rife, as well, which is a concern given that this is the core pillar of the UI (the very files and folders you work with every day).
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Perhaps the real acid test we can use to measure the success of Windows 11 in 2022 is looking at how many people made the move to the OS (or bought a new PC with it installed, of course). According to Statcounter’s figures (as of November 2022, the latest available at the time of writing), 16% of all Windows users are on Windows 11. That’s not great for an operating system which has been out for over a year now, especially considering Windows 7 holds almost a 10% share of the market. A completely outdated OS is not far behind, in other words.
Furthermore, a year into its reign as the cutting-edge operating system for Microsoft, Windows 10 had secured almost 30% adoption, nearly twice as much as Windows 11 has managed. Although that said, Windows 11 is hampered somewhat because some people can’t upgrade, as their PC doesn’t meet the more stringent requirements (particularly on the security front), so Microsoft will have expected migration to be slower when they baked those elements into the design of the OS.
Overall, Windows 11 made reasonable headway in applying important interface changes, for sure, but we’d like to see more progress still, and especially a better effort in combating bugs, with an overhaul long overdue for Microsoft’s QA processes in our opinion.
(Image credit: Future)
Surface so-so
Just like any other year, another bunch of refreshed Surface devices emerged.
In June we got our first glimpse of the Surface Laptop Go 2, which wasn’t hugely different to the original laptop, but made some useful improvements, and remains a great choice for a compact notebook.
Then in October, at a big Microsoft event we witnessed the revelation of the Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5, alongside the Surface Studio 2+.
This wasn’t the best crop of Surface hardware for Microsoft, sadly. For starters, the Surface Laptop 5 failed to wow us, turning out to be spectacularly middle-of-the-road. Not terrible, but hampered by performance issues, and definitely not worth the hefty asking price pinned to the laptop.
The Surface Pro 9 turned out to be a better device, for sure, taking some laudable steps forward from the Pro 8. It also made an interesting move in having two flavors: a 5G model with a Qualcomm SQ3 (ARM) CPU, and a version with an Intel processor, the former being a great option for some (businesspeople on the move, for instance), albeit with ARM-related gremlins in the works. The Pro 9 remained pricey, but an undeniably slick device overall, and a good upgrade from its predecessor in the performance stakes.
The Surface Studio 2+ received just a minor upgrade, as the 2+ (rather than a 3) denoted, but Microsoft implemented some solid changes, albeit nothing particularly exciting. Which about sums up what happened on the Surface front overall: nothing bad, by any means – certainly not with the Surface Pro 9 – but nothing great, either.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)
Game for an acquisition
In January, Microsoft pounced to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard in a huge acquisition for close to $70 billion. Yes, that Activision – the one with franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and many other big-name games in its stable.
The magnitude of this deal can’t be underestimated, meaning that in the future, Xbox Game Pass owners could get the next Call of Duty blockbuster for nothing as part of that subscription (whereas PlayStation fans will have to stump up cash, and we’re all very familiar with the eye-watering cost of games these days).
Indeed, the ripples from this deal are still ongoing now, because at the time of writing this piece, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s acquisition on the grounds that it could suppress rivals to the Xbox console.
Naturally, Microsoft has given us a whole raft of assurances on how it won’t throw its weight around in anti-competitive fashion after snapping up Activision, but there are plenty of doubters, and the FTC points to Microsoft’s past history and the ZeniMax (Bethesda) acquisition. While in that case, promises were also made about not withholding games from rival consoles, the FTC observes that post-acquisition, titles like Starfield, Redfall, and Elder Scrolls 6 were made Xbox exclusives.
Microsoft’s Activision buyout could still come a cropper at the final hurdles, then, potentially.
(Image credit: Shutterstock.com / Butsaya)
Ads nauseum – but with a glimmer of something positive?
While you might expect to see ads in a web browser, you don’t in your operating system. Because, you know, you paid good money for that OS, in the case of Windows anyway (or good money for the machine it came on, and that was part of the bill).
But ads taking up real-estate in Windows menus or panels again became a worry in 2022, as Microsoft tested – and note, these were just experiments that didn’t come to the release version of Windows 11 – adverts for OneDrive in the user session (shutdown) menu. And even more galling, the company briefly flirted with ads in File Explorer too, that central pillar of the Windows interface. That those waters were even tested is a concern, really.
All this could make you think that adverts are going to be a thorn in the side of Windows 11 users in the future – especially given Microsoft’s past form, this is not a new thing, of course – but instead, another possibility emerged late in the year.
Namely the notion that Microsoft could be angling towards low-cost PCs which are sold on subscription, rely on cloud services, and are supported by ads (to make them cheaper – so there’d be a benefit in this case). This was just a rumor, picked up (in November) via a Microsoft job listing, but earlier in July of this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about incorporating ads in its products.
There were clearly heard groans at this prospect, but as we observed, in a cost-of-living crisis, where not everyone might be able to afford a new PC, this could be a good thing to make Windows computers more accessible to those struggling with money.
(Image credit: Shutterstock / Blackboard)
Head in the clouds
Speaking of cloud services tied in with those ad-supported cheap PCs, this is an area where Microsoft went from strength to strength during 2022. Cloud revenue was strong right from the start of the year, and then in October, Microsoft’s Q1 2023 fiscal results showed that while the Windows division faltered – and was down 15%, in fact, partly due to the slump in PC sales this year – cloud revenue was buoyed by 24% compared to the same quarter in 2021.
Microsoft made $25.7 billion in just one quarter – over half its total revenue for that period – if you had any doubt about where the future lies for swelling the software giant’s coffers.
Concluding thoughts
With the PC slump, it wasn’t the best year for Microsoft – but cloud revenue was a clear highlight, and going by those various experiments with advertising in Windows 11, the company may have future plans to stoke profits in a different way, with low-cost ad-supported systems.
2022 was a pretty run-of-the-mill year for Surface hardware, albeit with some solid upgrades for some devices. And Windows 11 was a similar case of some reasonable progress being made, in the main, albeit with thorny asides in the form of bugs. However, a highlight with Windows 11 was seeing Microsoft listen more to user feedback, although arguably, some of the introductions made based on popular demand should have been addressed more swiftly.
That mammoth Activision Blizzard acquisition very much remains something to watch, as it’ll have potentially huge ramifications for the gaming industry next year if it goes through; but it feels like there’s still a distinct possibility of it coming off the rails.
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One of the improvements coming in 2023 with the iPhone 15 could be better battery life, with Apple's chip maker of choice TSMC (the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) promising increased efficiency with its next generation of silicon.
As per Bloomberg, TSMC has announced the move to chips made using a 3 nanometer manufacturing process, which is a jump from the 5 nanometer process currently used. Essentially, the smaller the number, the more tightly packed the elements of the processor are going to be.
Crucially, TSMC says that their new chips are going to use around 35% less power, as well as being faster in terms of performance. That should relate to better battery life for devices made by TSMC's partners – including the successor to the iPhone 14 made by Apple.
Chips with everything
There are some caveats here: Apple designs the Bionic processors found inside the iPhone, so it may choose to engineer the improvements that 3 nm offers in a different way rather than maximizing power efficiency.
However, the signs look good that the A17 Bionic chip – widely expected to make its debut in the next round of iPhones – will offer better performance without as much power draw. There's plenty of time for TSMC to perfect its manufacturing process before it starts work churning out iPhone 15 handsets.
If Apple follows this year's plan though, only the Pro models of the 2023 iPhone will get the new silicon. The standard iPhone 15 and the follow-up to the iPhone 14 Plus, if there is one, will most likely get the A16 chipset instead.
Analysis: the rumors are ramping up
The iPhone 15 rumors – like the one above – have already started rolling in, and they'll only increase in number as we go through 2023. No other handset attracts the same kind of attention and anticipation as the Apple flagship, even when we don't get huge year-on-year upgrades.
One upgrade that might be coming with the iPhone 15 range is a "state-of-the-art" camera sensor that's better at capturing pictures and video in challenging conditions. Considering the cameras on the iPhone are already very good, that sounds promising.
There's also been talk of certain iPhone 15 models coming with solid-state power and volume buttons. That's a rumor that's been floating around for years, but it sounds as though 2023 could be the year when it actually happens.
What isn't yet clear is how many iPhone 15 devices we'll get, or what they'll be called. The emphasis in terms of improvements is once again expected to be on the Pro models, and there has been speculation that Apple is working on a new super-powerful, super-expensive iPhone 15 Ultra handset.
How did Intel fare in 2022? In many respects, this was a bit of a rollercoaster ride of a year for Team Blue, with some highs, and some marked lows. Let’s dive straight in and take a close look at where Intel made good progress this year, and where things came off the tracks to a lesser – or greater – extent.
Raptors on the loose
Early in 2022, Intel made progress in gaining desktop market share back from AMD with robust Alder Lake processor sales, and followed that up strongly later in the year with the launch of new 13th-gen CPUs.
Intel unleashed its Raptor Lake processors in October 2022, or at least the first bunch of desktop CPUs led by the flagship Core i9-13900K. And despite this being ‘just’ a refresh of Alder Lake on paper, the 13th-gen newcomers added a lot of pep into the mix over and above Intel’s 12th-gen. Raptor Lake bristled with far more efficiency cores, it ramped up cache, and performance received a good boost over Alder Lake overall.
(Image credit: Future)
The flagship 13900K blew us away in terms of multi-core performance in particular, and is a seriously good heavyweight chip, although it is power-hungry, and obviously not cheap. Further down the Raptor Lake range there were CPUs that also shone, though, and the Core i5-13600K turned out to be a more affordable option that offered great gaming performance at an excellent value proposition.
There’s no question that Intel won the battle of the mid-range chips here against AMD’s Ryzen 7600X, which hit shelves just before the 13600K, and while those CPUs were actually well-matched in performance terms, Team Red lost out due to the upgrade costs of moving to the new Zen 4 platform. (Namely a new motherboard – with no truly wallet-friendly options on the table still, at the time of writing – plus DDR5 RAM is compulsory, whereas cheaper DDR4 memory can still be used with Raptor Lake).
In short, Raptor Lake was a big win for Intel in 2022, to the point that AMD slashed prices of its (still very new) Zen 4 CPUs (for Black Friday in particular, but also afterwards too). As a short aside, the Core i9-13900K also stole the crown of the fastest overclock ever for a desktop CPU – an astonishing 8.8GHz. That underlined the potential this silicon holds for enthusiasts overclockers.
(Image credit: Acer, Intel)
Intel’s not so magical Alchemist GPU launch
In 2022, Intel finally unleashed its Arc Alchemist discrete graphics cards to take on AMD and Nvidia. This was Intel’s big moment to begin establishing itself as a third player in the graphics card market, and inject some much needed competitivity, although sadly the start that Arc GPUs (for laptops and desktops) got off to could be described in two words: shaky and wobbly. Both of those words mean the same thing, of course, but the early days of Arc were so all over the place that it bears doubling-down on the faltering nature of the launch.
We witnessed delays, GPUs which were only launched in Asia, promises from Intel that things weren’t so far off, then more delays… you get the picture. In short, disappointment reigned on many fronts, from the pushing back of launch dates – or not even providing them – to the performance of the Arc graphics cards that did emerge as 2022 rolled onwards (the budget-oriented A3 series and top-end A7). Wonky drivers and performance problems proved to be thorny issues for many games.
In fact, at the end of the year, Intel took some serious strides forward with Arc GPU drivers, ushering in big performance boosts for some games. That’s an optimistic note to finish on for 2022 at least, and if Intel can continue ironing out drivers, and price competitively, the story Arc of its new GPUs might have a happy ending after all. Which is definitely not what we envisaged mid-year, that’s for sure.
It’s clear that Nvidia is still open to attack at the budget end of the market, which seems to remain a much lesser priority for Team Green, and a definite space where Intel could capitalize against the dominant GPU power as a result.
XeSS success
XeSS – which is Intel’s equivalent to Nvidia DLSS, or AMD FSR – also quietly established itself as a force in the frame rate boosting world, with an impressive initial showing in its early days.
What we must remember here is that in their first incarnations, DLSS and FSR had their fair share of stumbling blocks, and Intel’s opening salvo with XeSS is comparatively impressive in this initial implementation. That bodes well for the future, alongside the progress made with the Arc graphics driver that we just mentioned.
(Image credit: Future)
Flooring the process accelerator
Intel closed out 2022 with some big talk on how it’s accelerating chip development and production, including manufacturing chips for third-parties, like MediaTek, and dropping to more advanced processes – meaning faster, more efficient chips – without any delays. And delays on this front is something Intel has suffered badly with in the past, as you may recall (getting stuck on 14nm refreshes of its CPUs for what seemed like forever).
All that’s in the past, though, according to Intel’s Ann Kelleher, VP and Technology Development General Manager, who said in December that Intel isn’t just on track, but it’s actively ahead of the game in some areas. Team Blue is already mass producing 7nm chips – that’s the next process from current 10nm silicon – and the company is ready to start with 4nm, the step after that.
That’s code for ‘watch out AMD – we’re coming to steal further turf from Ryzen processors.’
(Image credit: Intel)
Sliding profits and job cuts
While progress may be back on track in honing and ushering in new processes, and plans to take back chip production leadership underway, this didn’t come without difficult decisions for Intel in 2022, as its profit levels dropped markedly (the big slump in PC sales not helping Team Blue, of course).
You may recall Intel shut down its Optane memory business in July, and then in September, we had CEO Pat Gelsinger warning that Intel’s performance was going to continue sliding in the future, in vital arenas such as server CPUs (where a decline is predicted to continue until 2025, in fact).
All this culminated in an October announcement of cost-cutting plans that involve a “meaningful number” of staff layoffs, with Intel looking to save some $3 billion over the course of next year (and far more than that down the line, to the tune of up to $10 billion in yearly cost reductions come 2025).
Concluding thoughts
Intel did have success stories in 2022, notably with consumer processors – and Raptor Lake more than solidifying the progress made off the back of Alder Lake – but that played out against a backdrop of difficulties in the server market, an awfully rocky and disappointing Arc GPU launch, alongside dwindling profits and job cuts.
It’s hard to call the year a favorable one for Intel, then, but the company does appear to be realigning itself to be ably positioned for better things to happen going forward. Certainly in terms of bolstering chip production capabilities and staying on track with advancing to new processes without delays – Meteor Lake CPUs remain on target for a 2023 launch.
And let’s not forget that Arc graphics cards weren’t entirely a wash in 2022. It was a bad start for the GPUs, let’s make no bones about that, but Intel’s drivers made good progress with performance gains as the year drew to a close (and XeSS established itself nicely). Indeed, Intel gained a meaningful discrete GPU market share of 4% as the year ended, with the potential to eke out more in the budget arena in 2023.
There’s a sense that the negative aspects of this past year are going to be turned more positive, perhaps – aside from those very unfortunate job losses, of course.
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Realme has pushed out the Realme UI 4.0 update based on Android 13 for Realme GT Neo 3T and Realme Narzo 50 Pro handsets in India. The new update has brought new aquamorphic design features, and is said to offer efficient performance. The Android 13 update on both the phones carries latest firmware version and security patches.
Samsung Galaxy A34 is reportedly in the works. This Galaxy A series smartphone is yet to be officially announced by the South Korean smartphone brand, but ahead of that, it has leaked through renders. It is expected to be powered by an Exynos 1280 SoC.
A reliable tipster has claimed that the Xiaomi 13 Ultra’s periscope camera performance will “shock everyone.” In addition, this handset could feature 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. Xiaomi 13 and Xiaomi 13 Pro powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC were launched in China earlier this month.
Oppo Find X6 Pro has leaked multiple times. Now, a new leak suggests the camera details of the upcoming phone. As per the leak, the Oppo Find X6 Pro will come with 50-megapixel triple rear cameras. It has also been tipped to feature a 32-megapixel sensor at the front.
India's 5G smartphone shipments will reportedly exceed that of 4G shipments by the end of next year, driven by the mass adoption of the high-speed network and the rise in the sale of handsets in the lower-price bands. 5G data speed in India is expected to be about 10 times faster than that of 4G, with the network seen as vital for emerging technologies like self-drivi...
A recent code change for Google Chrome has uncovered an updated feature that will see the popular web browser automatically preventing insecure downloads from HTTP sites.
Formerly the norm, many HTTP sites have since been updated to use HTTPS encryption in an effort to protect extensive data that we share about ourselves on the web.
Now the favored option, Google has already implemented a series of changes that see its users retrieving and sharing data more securely.
Chrome: HTTP and HTTPS
One such change is a recently-introduced “Always use secure connections” toggle that tells Chrome to upgrade any sites from an HTTP connection to HTTPS. Older sites that are HTTP-only also display a “Not Secure” warning in the address bar.
The code change spotted by 9To5Google indicates that the toggle will now warn users against downloading anything from an HTTP connection. Previously, Chrome users were notified when an HTTPS website downloaded a file in HTTP format, known as mixed content.
In-keeping with the nature of a toggle button, it will serve mostly as a warning that full prevention, allowing users to continue to use the web as they need, which in some cases may still involve a less secure HTTP connection.
The update is unlikely to appear in Chrome 111, expected in March 2023, for testing, but could well be part of the company's next release later in the year.
Google’s commitment to its browser, be it security enhancements or other features like the recently announced memory and energy saver modes, is applauded among web users, to the point where it now accounts for two-thirds (66%) of all desktop browsers installed according to StatCounter.
Microsoft Edge and Apple's Safari trail far behind in second and third place, representing around 11% and 10% of the desktop browser market respectively.
Taiwanese tech giant TSMC said Thursday it had started mass production of its 3-nanometre chips, among the most advanced to come to market. Its 3nm-process chips are expected to have more processing power while using less power, boosting battery performance.
Promotional images of the upcoming Motorola ThinkPhone have leaked online. A tipster posted the images on Twitter, showcasing the phone’s design. The ThinkPhone is tipped to run on Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and is expected to feature triple rear camera setup, led by a 50-megapixel primary sensor. The handset is said to sport a 6.6-inch pOLED display with 144Hz refresh rat...
Oppo s reportedly working on Oppo Reno 10 series. In a new development, schematics of the Oppo Reno 10 Pro+ 5G have surfaced online, suggesting the design changes the company would bring over to the next-generation Reno smartphones. The leaked images suggest a pill-shaped camera module and a hole-punch cutout on the display.
OnePlus 11 5G will be unveiled in China next week. In the buildup to the launch, the company is actively teasing the design and specifications of the handset via Weibo. It is confirmed to come in two RAM options. It will feature a new Bionic Vibration Motor. The OnePlus 11 5G will have Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC under the hood.
What with the iPad mini 6 launching in September 2021, it would be reasonable to expect a follow-up appearing in September 2022 – but of course we haven't seen any such tablet, and the rumor is that we might not get one until early in 2024.
This comes courtesy of reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who reckons that the next small slate that Apple releases is going to start shipping by the end of 2023 or in the first half of 2024 (though it's not clear what that's dependent on).
Kuo goes on to say that the "main selling point" of the iPad mini 7 is going to be a new processor. The current model carries the A15 Bionic chipset that also appeared in the iPhone 13 series that Apple unveiled at the same time as the iPad mini 6.
Folding iPads
This iPad mini claim was actually preceded by another bit of crystal ball gazing by Kuo: he says that a foldable iPad is "unlikely" to replace the iPad mini in 2025, a move that has been "previously predicted" in some quarters of the industry.
The analyst points out that a foldable iPad is going to cost substantially more than the iPad mini – the model on sale now goes for $449 / £479 / AU$749 and up – and that suggests that the future of the iPad mini is safe for the time being.
We've heard plenty of talk about a foldable iPhone in recent years, but less so about a foldable iPad. They might in fact be one and the same device: an iPhone-sized gadget when it's folded, and an iPad-sized tablet when the screen is opened out.
Analysis: Apple evolves its product line
There's clearly one area where Apple lags behind Samsung at the moment: foldable devices. Apple doesn't have anything to match the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 or the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4, and that's something of a problem.
Apple being Apple, it's not going to want to dive into the foldable device market until its sure that the technology has reached a satisfactory level – and we'd say that's definitely the case with the foldables on the market at the moment.
With that in mind, a prediction of 2025 for the launch of something foldable by Apple – whether it's marketed as an iPhone or an iPad – looks about right. We suspect the first Apple foldable will run iPadOS, so a folding iPad seems more likely right now.
Meanwhile the iPad mini lives on, apparently – at least for the time being. It doesn't appear to be one of Apple's top priorities (with no product refresh this year), but we imagine that there are still plenty of people out there who prefer the smaller form factor.
Realme has rolled out the Realme UI 4.0 beta update based on Android 13 for Realme 9 5G handsets in India. The update is currently under testing and the stable version will be brought soon with the new features and performance improvements. Users will have to enroll in a beta program to receive the update on their phones.
Motorola might be working on their next phone in the popular G series of smartphones. Latest leaks suggest the Motorola Moto G 5G (2023), follow-up to the Moto G 5G (2022), could be on its way. According to the leaks, which includes phone cases and renders for the handset, the Moto G 5G (2023) could feature a flat body design and a 50-megapixel primary camera.
While last year was a relatively quiet one for AMD – well, as quiet as things get for a tech behemoth which is a huge presence in the CPU and GPU worlds – 2022 was very different in terms of being a year of major next-gen launches. We witnessed the arrival of the long-awaited Zen 4 processors, and also RDNA 3 graphics cards, plus more besides.
AMD had a lot to live up to, though, in terms of rival next-gen launches from Intel and Nvidia respectively, and Team Red certainly ran into some controversies throughout the year, too. Let’s break things down to evaluate exactly how AMD performed over the past 12 months.
(Image credit: Future)
CPUs: V-Caching in, and Ryzen 7000 versus Raptor Lake
In the CPU space, AMD’s first notable move of 2022 was to unleash its new 3D V-Cache tech, launching an ‘X3D’ processor in April that was aimed at gamers. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D was hailed as a great success, and indeed really did beef up performance levels with gaming for the 8-core CPU, as intended.
Of course, this wasn’t the big news for 2022 – that was the arrival of a new range of Ryzen 7000 processors based on Zen 4. This was an entirely new architecture, complete with a different CPU socket and therefore the requirement to buy a new motherboard (along with a shift to support DDR5 RAM, bringing the firm level with Intel on that score).
The initial Zen 4 chips were the Ryzen 5 7600X, Ryzen 7 7700X, and the high-end Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X, all of which hit the shelves in September. The flagship 7950X stuck with 16-cores, as with the previous generation, but that’s plenty enough to be honest, and as we observed in our review, this CPU represented a superb piece of silicon, and a huge leap in performance over the 5950X.
However, the Zen 4 top dog soon ran into a problem: Intel’s Raptor Lake flagship emerged just a month later, proving to have considerably more bite than the 7950X. In actual fact, performance-wise, there wasn’t much between the Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 7950X, except the Intel CPU was somewhat faster at gaming – the real problem for AMD was pricing, with Team Blue’s chip to be had for considerably less (a hundred bucks cheaper, in fact).
Compounding that was the situation of AMD’s new AM5 motherboards being more expensive than Intel’s LGA 1700 boards, plus buyers on the AMD side had to purchase DDR5 RAM, as DDR4 wasn’t compatible – but with Raptor Lake, DDR4 was an option. And the latter memory is a fair bit cheaper, for really not all that much difference in performance (at least not in these early days for DDR5 – that will change in the future, of course).
All of this added up to a problem in terms of value proposition for Ryzen 7000 compared to Raptor Lake, not just at the flagship level, but with the mid-range Zen 4 chips, too. Indeed, the added motherboard and RAM costs made themselves even more keenly felt with a more modestly-targeted PC build, so while the Ryzen 7600X and Intel’s 13600K were well-matched in performance terms (with a little give and take), the latter was a less expensive upgrade.
It soon became clear enough that when buyers were looking at Zen 4 versus Raptor Lake late in 2022, AMD’s product was falling behind in sales due to the aforementioned cost factors.
(Image credit: Future)
Hence Team Red made an unusual move, slashing the price of Ryzen 7000 CPUs during Black Friday, and keeping those discounts on as a ‘Holiday promotion’ afterwards. That kind of price-cutting is not normally something witnessed with freshly launched CPUs, and it was an obvious sign that AMD needed to stoke sales. Even as we write this, the 7600X still carries a heavy discount, meaning it’s around 20% cheaper than the 13600K – and clearly a better buy with that relative pricing.
AMD’s actions here will presumably have fired up sales considerably as 2022 rolled to an end (we’d certainly imagine, though we haven’t seen any figures yet). And while these price cuts aren’t permanent, more affordable motherboards should be available soon enough in 2023, taking the price pressure off elsewhere. Add into the mix that new X3D models are coming for Zen 4 which should be excellent for gaming – and rumor has it they should be revealed soon at CES, with multiple versions this time, not just one CPU – and AMD looks like it’s going to be upping the ante considerably.
In summary, while Zen 4 got off to a shaky start sales-wise, with Raptor Lake pulling ahead, AMD swiftly put in place plans to get back on track, so it could yet marshal an effective enough recovery to be more than competitive with Intel’s 13th-generation – particularly if those X3D chips turn up as promised. Mind you, Intel does still have cards up its own sleeve – namely some highly promising mid-range CPUs, and that 13900KS beast of a flagship refresh – so it’s still all to fight for in the desktop processor world, really.
(Image credit: Future)
RDNA 3 GPUs arrive to applause – but also controversy
Following a mid-year bump for RX 6000 models led by a refreshed flagship, the RX 6950 XT – alongside an RX 6750 XT and 6650 XT – the real consumer graphics showpiece for AMD in 2022 was when its next-gen GPUs landed. Team Red revealed new RDNA 3 graphics cards in November, and those GPUs hit the shelves in mid-December.
The initial models in the RDNA 3 family were both high-end offerings based on the Navi 31 GPU. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT used an all-new chiplet design – new for AMD’s graphics cards, that is, but already employed in Ryzen CPUs – meaning the presence of not just one chip, but multiple dies. (A graphics compute die or GCD, alongside multiple memory cache dies or MCDs).
We loved the flagship RX 7900 XTX, make no mistake, and the GPU scored full marks in our review, proving to be a more than able rival to the RTX 4080 – at a cheaper price point.
Granted, there were caveats with the 7900 XTX being slower than the RTX 4080 in some ways, most notably in ray tracing performance. AMD’s ray tracing chops were greatly improved with RDNA 3 compared to RDNA 2, but still remained way off the pace of Nvidia Lovelace graphics cards. Nvidia’s new GPUs also proved to offer much better performance with VR gaming, and creative apps to boot. But for gamers who weren’t fussed about ray tracing (or VR), the 7900 XTX clearly offered a great value proposition (partly because RTX 4080 pricing seemed so out of whack, mind you).
As for the RX 7900 XT, that GPU rather disappointed – like the RTX 4080, it was very much regarded as the lesser sibling in the shadow of its flagship. That didn’t mean it was a bad graphics card, just that being priced only slightly more affordably than the XTX variant – just a hundred bucks less – the XT didn’t work out nearly as well in terms of comparative performance.
(Image credit: Future)
The 7900 XTX suffered from its own problems, though, partly due to its popularity, and quickly becoming established as the GPU to buy versus the RTX 4080, or indeed the 7900 XT (for the little bit of extra outlay, the XTX clearly outshone it). Stock vanished almost immediately, and as we write this, you still can’t find any; except via scalpers on eBay (predictably). Those auction prices are ridiculous, too, and indeed you could pretty much get yourself an RTX 4090, never mind 4080, for some of the eBay price tags floating around at the time of writing.
The stock situation wasn’t as bad for the RX 7900 XT, with models available as we write this, but still, many versions of this graphics card have sold out, and some of the ones hanging around are pricier third-party models (which obviously suffer further on the value proposition front).
Part of the reasons for stock being initially sparse pertained to some card makers not having had all their models ready to roll mid-December – indeed, MSI didn’t launch any RDNA 3 cards at all (and may not have custom third-party boards on shelves until Q1 2023, or so the rumor mill theorized).
Aside from availability – which is, let’s face it, hardly an unexpected issue right out of the gate with the launch of a new GPU range – there was another wobble around RDNA 3 that AMD had to come out and defend itself against in the first week of sales.
This was the speculation that RX 7000 GPUs had been pushed out with hardware functionality that didn’t work, and were ‘unfinished’ silicon – unfair criticisms, in our opinion, and AMD’s too, with Team Red quickly debunking those theories.
What did still raise question marks elsewhere, however, was some odd clock speed behavior, and more broadly, the idea that the graphics driver paired with the RDNA 3 launch wasn’t up to scratch. In this case, the rumor mill floated more realistic sounding theories: that AMD felt under pressure to get RX 7000 GPUs out in its long-maintained timeframe of the end of 2022, only just squeaking inside that target, in order to make sure Nvidia didn’t enjoy the Holiday sales period uncontested (and to keep investors happy).
(Image credit: Future)
The same rumor-mongers noted, however, that AMD is likely to be able to improve drivers in order to extract 10% better performance, or maybe more, with headroom for quick boosts on the software front that really should have been in the release driver.
All of that is speculation, but it’ll be good news for 7900 XTX and XT buyers if true – because their GPUs will quickly get better, and make the RTX 4080 look an even shakier card. Indeed, we may even see the 7900 XTX become a much keener rival for the 4090, rather than the repositioning AMD engaged in at a late pre-launch stage, pitting the GPU as an RTX 4080 rival. (Which in itself, perhaps, suggests that Team Red expected driver work to be further forward than it actually ended up being for launch – and that these gains will be coming soon enough).
Even putting that speculation aside, and forgetting about potentially swift driver boosts, AMD’s RDNA 3 launch still went pretty well on the whole, with the flagship 7900 XTX coming off really competitively against Nvidia – performing with enough grunt to snag the top spot in our ranking of the best GPUs around. Even if the 7900 XT did not hit those same heights...
And granted, the controversies around RDNA 3 and hardware oddities didn’t help, but these felt largely overblown to us, and the real problem was that ever-present bugbear of not enough stock volume with the initial launch. Hopefully the supply-demand imbalance will be corrected soon enough (maybe even by the time you read this).
(Image credit: Future)
The GPU price is right (or at least far more reasonable)
One of the big positives of 2022 was the supply of graphics cards correcting itself, and the dissipation of the GPU stock nightmare that had haunted gamers for so long.
Early in the year, prices started to drop from excruciatingly high levels, and by mid-2022, they were starting to normalize. The good news for consumers was that AMD graphics cards – RX 6000 models – fell more quickly in price than Nvidia GPUs, and towards the end of the year, there were some real bargains (on Black Friday in particular) to be had for those buying a Radeon graphics card.
Of course, a lot of this was down to the proximity of the next-gen GPU reveals, and the need to get rid of current-gen stock as a result. But there’s no arguing about the fact that it was a blessed relief at the lower-end of the market for folks to be able to pick up an RX 6600 or 6650 XT for not much more than $200 in the US for the former (and as little as $250 for the latter at some points).
It was a good job these price drops happened, though, because like Nvidia, AMD’s GPU launches in 2022 did little to help the lower-end of the market. AMD released the aforementioned RX 6650 XT in May, but the graphics card was woefully overpriced in the mid-range initially (at $400, which represented terrible value). Offerings like the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 further failed to impress, with the former being very pricey for what it was, and while the latter did carry a truly wallet-friendly price tag, it was a shaky proposition performance-wise.
These products were generally poorly received, so let’s hope next year brings something better at the low-end from RDNA 3, eventually. Otherwise both AMD and Nvidia are really leaving the door open for Intel to carve a niche in the budget arena (with Team Blue’s Arc graphics drivers undergoing solid improvements as time rolls on).
(Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)
FSR 2.0: AMD switches to temporal
Not to be beaten by Nvidia DLSS, AMD pushed out a new version of its frame rate boosting FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) in May 2022. FSR 2.0 brought temporal upscaling into the mix – which is what DLSS uses, albeit AMD doesn’t augment it with AI unlike Nvidia’s tech – and the results were a huge improvement on the first incarnation of FSR (which employed spatial upscaling).
It was an important step for AMD to take in terms of attempting to keep level with Nvidia in the graphics whistles-and-bells department (even if Team Red couldn’t do that with ray tracing, as already noted, with its new RDNA 3 GPUs).
Support is key with these technologies, of course, and in December, AMD reached a milestone with 101 games now supporting FSR 2.0, with that happening in just over half a year. DLSS 2.0 may support more games, at 250 going by Nvidia’s latest figure, but that includes some apps, and has only risen by 50 in the past six months (it was 200 back in July).
So, AMD’s overall rate of adoption looks to be twice as fast, or thereabouts, backing up promises Team Red made about FSR 2.0 being easier to quickly add to games – which bodes well for future acceleration of those numbers of supported titles.
Of course, Nvidia just unleashed DLSS 3.0 – as an RTX 4000 GPU exclusive, mind, and with vanishingly few titles right now – and so AMD revealed it’s working on FSR 3.0, too. Team Red told us that it uses tech similar to DLSS 3.0 and Nvidia’s Frame Generation, and could double frame rates (best-case scenario).
But with any details on FSR 3.0 seriously thin on the ground, it felt like a rushed announcement and rather a case of keeping up with the Joneses (or the Jensen, perhaps). Which doesn’t mean it won’t be great (or that it will), but with a vague ‘coming in 2023’ release date, we’re not likely to find out soon, and FSR 3.0 is probably still a long way off.
Threadripper goes All-Pro
AMD deployed a superheavyweight 64-core CPU this year aimed at professional users. The Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX (backed by the 32-core 5975WX, and 24-core 5965WX) faced no opposition from Intel, though, which hasn’t released a high-end desktop (HEDT) range in years (but that should change in 2023, mind you, if rumors are right).
Meanwhile, the 5995WX strutted as an unchallenged champion (and will have a successor next year, as well), but the bad news on the AMD front is that there were no non-Pro Threadripper models – and won’t be in the future either.
As these Pro categorized chips are ridiculously expensive, that puts Threadripper out of the pricing reach of all but the richest of PC enthusiasts. That said, as December rolled to a close, a rumor was floated suggesting maybe AMD will bring out non-Pro chips with the next generation of Threadripper (but take that with very heavy seasoning).
(Image credit: AMD)
Server success
AMD forged ahead in the server market during 2022, with its Q3 earnings report showing that the firm’s data center business boomed to the tune of 45% compared to the previous year. AMD moved up to hold 17.5% of the server market, grabbing more territory from Intel, and experiencing its fourteenth consecutive quarter of growth in this area, no less.
AMD has new fourth-generation EPYC chips to come in 2023, including Genoa-X processors utilizing 3D V-Cache tech to offer in excess of 1GB of L3 cache per socket (a larger amount than any current x86 chip). It’s no wonder Intel has forecast a difficult time for itself in the server sphere in the nearer future.
(Image credit: Future)
Concluding thoughts
AMD had a pretty good year with both its new CPU and GPU ranges, but not without problems – a lot of which were to do with the heat of the competition. While Ryzen 7000 provided a very impressive generational boost, the Zen 4 chips struggled on the cost front against Intel Raptor Lake (and the relative affordability of Team Blue’s platform in particular).
AMD wasn’t afraid to take action, though, in terms of some eye-opening early doors price cuts for Ryzen 7000 processors. And in the (likely very near) future, fresh X3D models based on Zen 4 hold a whole heap of promise – not to mention cheaper AM5 motherboards to make upgrading to AMD’s new platform a more affordable affair.
As for graphics cards, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX made quite a splash, and on the whole, RDNA 3 kicked off well enough. Even if the launch felt rushed, with question marks around the drivers perhaps needing work, and the 7900 XT failed to be quite such a hit as the XTX.
There’s no doubting that Nvidia clearly held the performance crown in 2022, however, with the RTX 4090 well ahead of the 7900 XTX in most respects. (Driver improvements for RDNA 3 could be key in playing catch-up for AMD, though, as we discussed above).
All that said, arguments about the relative merits of these high-end graphics cards from both Nvidia Lovelace and AMD RX 7000 are not nearly as important as what comes in the mid-range. That’s going to be the real GPU battleground – outside of these initial top-end boards that cost more than most people pay for an entire PC – and we’re really excited to see how these ranges stack up against each other.
And we’re praying that the budget end of the GPU spectrum will actually get some peppier offerings from AMD (and Nvidia), otherwise Intel might well take advantage with low-cost Arc cards next year.
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The price of the Oppo Reno 8 Pro 5G House of the Dragon Limited Edition is the same as it is for the standard Oppo Reno 8 Pro with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
The Oppo Find N2 Flip global variant has been reportedly been spotted on the FCC and BIS certification sites. This handset is expected to arrive globally in Q1 of 2023. Oppo's Find N2 Flip features a 6.8-inch AMOLED primary display, 3.62-inch cover display. It is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ SoC.
Realme 10 will be launched soon in India. Realme has also set up an event page for the device on its India website. There is no launch date yet but the event page says it is coming soon. The Realme 10 was unveiled in select global markets last month. It has a dual rear camera setup led by a 50-megapixel primary sensor.
A reliable tipster has shared several details regarding the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S23 series. Notably, the vanilla Galaxy S23 series is tipped to also offer 1,750 nits of peak brightness. It is believed that the Galaxy S23 series will come with Android 13-based One UI 5.1 out of the box.
2022 was a great year for phones, but the tech industry never sleeps, so we're already looking ahead to 2023's handsets - and many of them are shaping up to be very exciting.
Leaks and rumors mean we've already heard a fair bit about key handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S23 series and the iPhone 15 line, and they certainly rank among the most anticipated phones of 2023.
But there are less obvious yet no less exciting upcoming phones too, from brands including Xiaomi, Sony and more.
So below, you'll find the phones we're most looking forward to in 2023. These are phones that in most cases are likely to be great, and at the very least should be interesting, unusual, or innovative.
Samsung Galaxy S23
(Image credit: @OnLeaks / SmartPrix)
The Samsung Galaxy S23 and its siblings - including the Galaxy S23 Plus and Galaxy S23 Ultra - are likely to be the most popular Android flagships of 2023, and we're expecting to see them early in the year, probably in February.
Leaks suggest that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra could get a monstrous 200MP camera, and that every S23 model will use a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset everywhere in the world, rather than some regions getting an Exynos one.
Beyond that, their specs might not be a million miles from those of the S22 series, but expect camera and screen improvements, even where the core specs are similar. You can see an unofficial render showing the rumored design of the Galaxy S23 Ultra above.
A Google Pixel 7(Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)
The Google Pixel 7 only launched in October 2022, but it and the Pixel 7 Pro were so good that we're already eager to see what Google cooks up for the Pixel 8.
So far we haven't heard much about this phone, other than that it will probably use a Tensor 3 chipset, support satellite communications, and that it might have 12GB of RAM, but we expect class-leading cameras and generally strong software.
Stay tuned for more information, because leaks and rumors are sure to start emerging in greater quantities as we get closer to the phone's launch.
An unofficial render of the Google Pixel Fold(Image credit: FrontPageTech)
The Google Pixel Fold is a phone that we've been hearing about for years, and more recently there have been suggestions that it might land in either Q1 2023, or May 2023.
Based on the rumors so far, the Google Pixel Fold might have a 7.6-inch foldable OLED screen, a 5.8-inch cover display, and a Tensor - or more likely Tensor G2 - chipset. It could also look like the phone in the image above, which sources claim shows the design of the Pixel Fold.
There's disagreement on the cameras, but they might impress too, with one leak pointing to a 64MP / 12.2MP / 10MP rear camera combination.
We'd take all of this with a pinch of salt for now, but this could end up being one of the few non-Samsung foldable phones that's worth getting excited about.
An iPhone 14 Pro Max(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Obviously the entire iPhone 15 line is enormously anticipated, but it's the intriguing talk of an iPhone 15 Ultra that has us the most excited.
This phone could land in place of an iPhone 15 Pro Max according to rumors, and could have better cameras than even the iPhone 15 Pro, including a long-range periscope snapper, along with a focus on battery life, a titanium frame, and a very high price.
A Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is set to be Samsung's next foldable flagship, but we're not expecting to see it until August 2023, so there's a while to wait.
As such, we also don't know much about it yet, but an early leak points to it using the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and having similar cameras to the Galaxy Z Fold 4.
If nothing else, expect it to have a big foldable screen so it can double as a tablet, coupled with a similarly big price tag.
The Sony Xperia I IV was one of the most interesting phones of 2022, thanks among other things to a continuous optical zoom camera. That's a feature you won't find on other brands, and it helped Sony's flagship stand out from the crowd.
So far we haven't really heard anything about the Xperia 1 V, but we'd expect it will offer similarly unusual cameras, plus a great screen and flagship power - along with, hopefully, some innovative surprises. Look out for it around the middle of 2023.
The Xiaomi 13 Pro has actually already been announced, but so far it's only available in China, with a global launch expected in early 2023.
This phone has a 6.73-inch 1440 x 3200 OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a 4,820mAh battery with 120W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, a top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, and up to 12GB of RAM.
It also has water resistance and a premium design as you'd expect, but the most exciting aspect of the Xiaomi 13 Pro is its cameras, which include a 50MP f/1.9 primary camera with a big 1-inch sensor, which should help it take better shots than most phones.
It also has a 50MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, and a 50MP f/2.0 telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. And if that's not enough for you then there's also talk of an even more accomplished Xiaomi 13 Ultra, although we haven't heard much about this yet.
The OnePlus 11 will probably land within the first few months of 2023, and leaks suggest it won't be joined by a standalone OnePlus 11 Pro - or rather, the OnePlus 11 will be the OnePlus 11 Pro in all but name.
So expect this phone to compete with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus or Ultra, despite the rumored lack of a Pro, Plus or Ultra suffix.
Leaks point to a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, up to 16GB of RAM, a 6.7-inch QHD+ 120Hz AMOLED screen, a 5,000mAh battery with 100W charging, a 50MP main sensor, a 48MP ultra-wide camera, and a 32MP telephoto one with 2x optical zoom.
You can see how the OnePlus 11 might look in the unofficial render above.
Along with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, we're also looking forward to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, which is likely to be the better seller of the two, thanks to a more palatable price.
This upcoming clamshell foldable phone will reportedly use the top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, have a 3.3 or 3.4-inch cover screen (up from 1.9 inches on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4), and will have a less visible crease than the current model.
That all sounds very promising, but Samsung will have its work cut out to stay at the top of the clamshell foldable heap, thanks to tough competition from the likes of Oppo and Motorola.
OnePlus 11 5G will go official in China on January 4. Ahead of the launch, the company has shared the first look of the smartphone showing off its, colour options, and specifications. The OnePlus 11 is confirmed to be powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC.
Honor 80 GT has been launched in China. This smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. It sports a 6.67-Inch Full-HD+ AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The handset has been launched at a starting price of CNY 3,299 (roughly Rs. 40,000). This latest entry into the Honor 80 series sits between the Honor 80 Pro and the vanilla variant.
Over the past year, Nvidia has certainly experienced its fair share of problems and controversies, as you’re unlikely to have missed. Good things happened in 2022, certainly, but there were a fair number of bad occurrences, and even some ugly ones (melting adapters on top-end GPUs springs to mind in that category). Without further ado, let’s get cracking on summarizing Nvidia’s progress – or lack of it in some cases – during 2022.
(Image credit: Future)
Lovelace GPUs arrived with a superfast flagship – and some serious problems
Nvidia’s Lovelace GPUs succeeded Ampere, with the first next-gen model coming out in mid-October, the flagship RTX 4090. That was followed by the RTX 4080 a month later, and while both desktop graphics cards were undeniably fast – particularly that flagship – they were both equally undeniably dogged with some thorny problems.
Let’s start with the RTX 4090 and the case of the melting adapters. Even before the RTX 4090 came out, we knew it would be a powerful but power-hungry beast, and so it came to pass, with the flagship sporting a TGP of 450W. So, any buyers had to take care that their power supply could handle that, and that their case design could cope with the heat produced by the RTX 4090 (and that the GPU would fit inside the case in the first place, of course).
However, not long after the RTX 4090 emerged, worrying reports of melting adapter cables reached our ears. These were few in number to start with, and Nvidia was quick to say it was investigating, but gradually these complaints multiplied.
The problem was being encountered by those who used the adapter supplied with the RTX 4090 so it could be connected to an ATX 2.0 power supply. (Those PSUs are what most PC owners have, with not many folks having upgraded to the very new ATX 3.0 models. But the 4090 comes with a 16-pin power connector that works directly with ATX 3.0 PSUs, and doesn’t fit ATX 2.0 models – so with the latter, the adapter has to be used).
Unfortunately, that adapter was melting in some cases, and damaging the graphics card, too, in some of those instances. Which is obviously a terrible situation (not to mention the fire risk element, if you’re not around when the smoking begins).
Now, we should note very clearly that according to the Nvidia investigation, as of mid-November, there were only 50 cases globally. That’s 50 cards in purported sales of something like 125,000 boards, which if correct, would mean the chance of a melting adapter is very unlikely. As the big Reddit mega-thread on this issue points out, the chance of a melt being experienced is 0.04% – but still, it can happen.
There was lots of theorizing about why the adapters were melting, and the most prominent theory – that the adapter wasn’t seated properly in its socket in the GPU – was confirmed by Nvidia to be the most likely culprit. As Nvidia told us: “Our findings to date suggest that a common issue is that connectors are not fully plugged into the graphics card.”
Part of the problem here, though , is that to fit this gargantuan graphics card in your PC, you have to bend the power cable round quite tightly (maybe with it pressed up against the side panel of the case), and this could put strain on the adapter and perhaps begin to pull it out of the socket slightly.
What’ll be Nvidia’s final conclusion on this affair? We still don’t know that at the time of writing, but this has left a somewhat sour taste in the mouths of some buyers who paid a lot of money – a small fortune, in fact – for the Lovelace flagship.
However, we should make it clear that the RTX 4090 itself is a jaw-droppingly speedy high-end GPU, and an incredible performance high point, make no mistake on that (for gamers and creatives alike). But a design flaw like this, no matter how very uncommon it might be, is really quite a serious drop of the ball from Nvidia (even if the company is offering expedited returns for affected graphics cards, as you might expect). No matter how great the RTX 4090 might be in raw performance terms, this episode has still tarnished Nvidia’s reputation to an extent.
(Image credit: Future)
Let’s move on to the RTX 4080, which may not have suffered from melting controversies, but actually caused more of a stir than the RTX 4090 in the end – thanks to pricing, and the fact that it turned up as two variants, one of which was quickly canceled.
When Nvidia revealed the RTX 4080, two models were shown off – one with 16GB of VRAM, and the other with 12GB (and a lesser spec GPU chip). Immediately there was an outcry about the latter lower-tier model, and how relatively pants it was – for its price – and the undoubted confusion caused by having two such very different flavors of RTX 4080. Especially when one of those flavors looked suspiciously like an RTX 4070 in RTX 4080 clothing (with that theory very much underlined by RTX 4070 Ti rumors later in the year).
Following all this controversy, Nvidia famously ‘unlaunched’ the graphics card and consigned it to the dustbin. (That said, its resurrection is rumored to be imminent as the aforementioned RTX 4070 Ti, but that story will be for next year).
Price-wise, like the scrapped lower-tier model, the RTX 4080 16GB that went on sale was still a price/performance nightmare. Particularly when custom third-party boards pushed up the already exorbitant MSRP ($1,199 in the US) to dizzying heights that made them almost as costly as the RTX 4090 – which is very much a faster GPU.
So why on earth would you buy the RTX 4080, and not the flagship? That was the thinking of quite a few folks, and the value proposition of the RTX 4080 prompted us to call it the GPU that Nvidia should have canceled (referencing the aforementioned canned 4080 12GB, of course).
And going by sales estimates floating around via the rumor mill – with some pretty consistent approximations – it seems GPU buyers agreed, and RTX 4080 sales flagged, trailing the RTX 4090 by a long, long way.
All in all, the Lovelace graphics card launches for 2022 were seriously problematic in some respects, then. But this shouldn’t draw away from the fact that the RTX 4090 offered an astonishing level of frame rate shifting power – plus don’t forget DLSS 3 was added into the mix with all Lovelace cards, too (we’ll talk more about that later) – and even the RTX 4080 is a powerful GPU, make no mistake.
It’s just that the price of the RTX 4080 is way more off base than the Lovelace flagship, value-wise – which is really saying something – although Nvidia may well be about to correct that pricing according to the rumor mill. (Particularly in light of how that value proposition looks even worse compared to the freshly launched AMD RX 7900 XTX). Indeed, by the time you read this, maybe that RTX 4080 price correction could’ve already happened…
As a final note on Lovelace, another blow to Nvidia was delivered by EVGA, one of its larger graphics card manufacturing partners, which announced just before the launch of RTX 4000 GPUs that it wouldn’t be making or selling these products (amidst controversial rumors – such as “disrespectful treatment” – about why). Effectively that wound up EVGA’s operations on the graphics card front, although the firm still supports RTX 3000 boards, of which some are still on sale – which brings us onto our next point…
(Image credit: Future)
RTX 3000 stock still hanging around
Another issue that Nvidia faced late in 2022 was the amount of RTX 3000 graphics cards that were still on shelves or in warehouses with the RTX 4000 launch looming. That represented a problem because once Lovelace GPUs were released (or even revealed), it’d mean gamers were looking to buy (or wait for) those next-gen graphics cards – and Nvidia, or more precisely its partners, still had all that RTX 3000 stock to shift, and that’d be interfered with.
So, this meant Nvidia employed a strategy in which RTX 3000 GPUs were ‘layered on top’ of next-gen GPUs, as the company put it. In practice, this meant we got the new RTX 4090 and 4080, the weighty high-end offerings we’ve just been discussing, whereas the rest of the market remained Ampere (RTX 3070, 3060, 3050 – and the older budget offerings below that).
In short, this meant all we got from Lovelace was super-expensive GPUs, allowing breathing room for that whole range of RTX 3000 stock below to sell through. And while throughout 2022, and particularly as the year rolled on, graphics card pricing had been dropping – well, normalizing from inflated levels, and finally dropping just below MSRP eventually – that trend stopped dead in November with Nvidia cards. Sadly, RTX 3000 pricing actually rose during that month for many GeForce models, as our sister site Tom’s Hardware, which tracks GPU price tags on a monthly basis, observed, with chunky price rises (urgh) on the Nvidia front for the RTX 3090, 3080 and 3070.
Perhaps because people realized they weren’t getting an RTX 4060 anytime soon, at least not going by the grapevine – and leakage being thin on the ground – so mid-range options, or certainly mid-to-lower range, are pretty much to look at Ampere for the foreseeable.
This is what Nvidia wanted, obviously enough – to be able to clear that stock – but a pair of exorbitantly priced next-gen cards, and rising price tags on Ampere GPUs when previously the RTX 3000 series had been dropping in cost significantly, is very much not what gamers wanted. And the way this is working as intended, we presume, is likely another reason as to why we shouldn’t expect an RTX 4060 any time in the near or even medium-term future.
(Image credit: Future)
Budget GPU woes (again)
2022 was another year in which Nvidia neglected the budget end of the GPU market, which is an ongoing theme in the contemporary world of graphics cards, it seems.
Last year, we bemoaned the lack of an RTX 3050 at the more wallet-friendly end of the spectrum, and this year, we finally got this graphics card. Shame, then, that it turned out to be, well, not exactly a budget card, with an MSRP of $249 in the US – which might sound okay, but it’s a good chunk more than xx50 model GPUs that went before it – and you couldn’t buy the RTX 3050 at that price anyway. It’s still a fair chunk above that recommended price at the time of writing, and it was not far off double upon launch early in the year (and thin on the ground, stock-wise).
Nvidia also deployed the GTX 1630 in June, a model actually targeted squarely at the budget arena, but it was so weak sauce (plus it was well overpriced at launch, and still pricey today, for what it is) that the less said about this GPU, the better.
Those new offerings for 2022 were not a solution, then, and to heap more misery on the situation, Nvidia could be in the process of making things worse on the cheap GPU front. If the rumor mill is right – and there’s been some fairly consistent chatter on this – the RTX 2060 is being discontinued, and the same might be the case for the GTX 1660. While we must take word from the grapevine with a great deal of seasoning, if true, this would leave Nvidia’s line-up at the very cheapest end of the market looking extremely thin. And things are already shaky as it is, as mentioned.
Okay, so don’t get us wrong, the budget situation throughout 2022, particularly later on, was better than last year. Mainly because 2021 was an absolute farce, really, with gamers paying seriously silly money for the likes of a GTX 1650 Super at the budget end of the spectrum. But still, even with GPU pricing normalizing to more reasonable levels (finally), and the RTX 3050 being added to Nvidia’s roster, Team Green simply didn’t do enough here, and budget buyers remained restricted in choice, to put it mildly.
Plus, don’t forget that as we’ve already touched on, the RTX 4060 looks to be a long way off still, although how ‘wallet-friendly’ this GPU might be is entirely debatable anyway (the RTX 4050 isn’t in sight either, for that matter; laptop GPUs aside). Apparently what we’ve got for now in the somewhat-more-affordable-department is a refreshed RTX 3060 Ti (with faster VRAM) which was brought into play late in the year – and that’s not nearly enough. (Plus it’s another sign not to expect the RTX 4060 anytime soon, arguably).
Ah, well. Maybe next year will be different for budget desktop GPUs. Here’s hoping.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
More frame rate boosting with DLSS 3
Nvidia DLSS, the company’s well-established upscaling tech, got a third-gen incarnation this year which was revealed in September. DLSS 3 recruited a bunch of new features (Optical Multi Frame Generation, Optical Flow Accelerator; read up more here) to further accelerate frame rates and ensure a smoother gaming experience.
There’s been some controversy around DLSS 3 and its exact use cases, along with concerns about increased latency as Techspot reported, which can impact certain games, like twitch shooters as opposed to, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator. But where it works well – with supported games, and Flight Simulator is very much a highlight here – it’s a great new tech, and another step up in terms of getting a seriously smooth frame rate.
The obvious caveats, though, are that support is thin on the ground thus far, and only RTX 4000 graphics cards need apply. Which makes DLSS 3 feel a bit like a tool that’s being used to help improve the value proposition of the super-pricey Lovelace GPUs which are out there, the cynical might suggest – although Nvidia has told us there are reasons for the tech being RTX 4000-only. (Namely that it’ll require additional research and engineering to be applied to older Nvidia GPUs, and any benefits wouldn’t be as pronounced).
(Image credit: Nvidia, Bethesda)
Remixing old games with ray tracing
You know the saying: in with the old, and… wait a minute, that’s not right. But this was one of the bright ideas Nvidia had on the ray tracing front this year, with RTX Remix. This new tech (built on the Nvidia Omniverse platform) was revealed at GTC 2022 alongside Lovelace graphics cards, and it truly is a modder’s dream, allowing for old games to easily be given a fresh coat of RTX paint with ray tracing and DLSS.
Nvidia showed off Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in its remastered glory at GTC, which looked very impressive indeed. The theory is that when it’s released next year, RTX Remix will allow the modding community to spruce up a whole bunch of older games, giving them a new lease of life. An exciting prospect indeed.
(Image credit: Nvidia)
GeForce Now kept streaming ahead
If you couldn’t afford a new GPU, then maybe you signed up for Nvidia’s game streaming service in 2022. Those who did benefited from some solid improvements to GeForce Now, one of which was the ability to stream in 4K for those on Windows PCs and Macs. That was for those gamers on the higher-tier RTX 3080 membership, and there was another useful change with that plan – namely the ability to sign up for just a month, allowing folks to try it out for a short time and see how smoothly the fastest GeForce Now offering runs for them.
Nvidia is building a more attractive streaming option, slowly but surely, and the demise of Google Stadia this year (well, it officially closes down mid-January 2023) has helped make more breathing space in the game streaming arena, something Team Green has been trying to take advantage of, naturally.
Nvidia said farewell to ARM
Nvidia’s attempted acquisition of ARM, a huge $40 billion move, was dogged with problems from the outset. Initiated way back in 2020, the buyout ran into nothing but trouble throughout 2021, culminating in a lawsuit from the FTC to stop the deal proceeding on the grounds that it was anti-competitive. This year, in February, Nvidia finally gave up this ambition and officially terminated its bid for ARM. In the end, given all the opposition and the vehemence of those naysayers, this was hardly a surprise.
(Image credit: Future)
Concluding thoughts
As you made your way through this article, you may have found yourself feeling a bit depressed. A lot of what we’ve discussed here is Nvidia’s woes and missteps, and that’s inevitable, because, well, 2022 contained a fair few of them. Most obviously, sky-high pricing for new GPUs, issues around both the RTX 4090 (adapters melting) and RTX 4080 (that canceled version, plus value proposition), and more drawn-out budget graphics card misery.
And yet, to be fair to Nvidia, those Lovelace graphics cards represent some seriously impressive pieces of engineering (adapter cables aside), with the RTX 4090 being ridiculously fast, frankly (and a long way ahead of AMD’s rival RDNA 3 flagship, albeit with outliers). DLSS 3 also looks very promising (with the caveats that we mentioned) early doors, and RTX Remix is a seriously nifty idea, too.
It’s not like there weren’t positives, then, but too many clouds of negativity were blotted across the sky for Nvidia this year. But even so, guess what – Team Green is still by far the most dominant desktop GPU power. Indeed, the latest stats we have at the time of writing (for Q3 2022, from Jon Peddie Research) show Nvidia with an 88% market share of discrete graphics cards. 88%! Or what we’d call a Google level of dominance.
Is Nvidia untouchable in the desktop GPU space? Could this level of domination be the reason why the company feels confident in pricing new GPUs the way it did with Lovelace? Well, whatever the case, Nvidia better not get too confident, or comfortable on its GPU laurels, as AMD has produced a compelling offering with its RX 7900 XTX flagship – one very much capable of taking on the RTX 4080, at a lower price point (as we write this) – and there’s more to come in the RDNA 3 range, of course.
Things could start to change quite quickly if Nvidia doesn’t relent in the practice of pushing ever-dizzying premium pricing on its new GPUs, because extracting every last dollar from gamers amidst a cost-of-living crisis could leave Team Green looking at a dwindling reservoir of goodwill in terms of its public perception. Which could lead to more people turning to AMD, or maybe even Intel at the budget end of the GPU spectrum, which Nvidia still seems unwilling to address in a meaningful way.
Let’s see how 2023 starts, with the rumored RTX 4070 Ti launch supposed to be happening at CES, and if that goes ahead as predicted, then come on Nvidia: let’s have a pleasant surprise on the pricing front, for once.
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