The 2023 edition of Call of Duty is reportedly eyeing a reveal in early August. As per Insider Gaming, Activision is planning to showcase its next entry in the marquee shooter franchise on August 1, via an in-game event. The format isn’t out of fashion for the publisher, who previously unveiled Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard inside the original Warzone game. While the official name and details on the upcoming title are scarce, earlier reports claimed that Sledgehammer Games was leading development on what’s probably not Modern Warfare 3.

Activision made headlines last year when it revealed that Call of Duty will be skipping its annual release cycle in 2023 — first time in 20 years — to opt for an ‘always on’ live-service mode’. It was then suggested that the shooter be receiving a premium expansion to Call of Duty Modern Warfare II this year, which packages a campaign DLC and a multiplayer ‘greatest hits map pack’ boasting some classics from earlier entries. That content now seems to have evolved into a standalone full-price title, serving as an extension that carries over maps and game modes from MW2. Insider Gaming also revealed some key dates for Call of Duty 2023, including the beta sessions, campaign early access, and the launch date. Take this information with a grain of salt though, as plans could always change.

According to the leak, the untitled Call of Duty game has set two beta weekend periods, with the first one aimed solely towards PlayStation players — scheduled to run October 6–10. The second weekend includes PC and Xbox players as well and will reportedly run from October 12 to 16. As usual, a campaign early access is also expected — possibly as a pre-order bonus on November 2. Meanwhile, the full Call of Duty 2023 launch seems to be eyeing a November 10 date.

Activision is known for rotating between its three main developers — Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games — for its annual Call of Duty games. However, it broke the pattern last year, moving Treyarch’s planned entry from 2023 to 2024, which was previously reported to have a two-year life cycle, with chunks of new content releasing periodically. The delay created a gap and that’s where the aforementioned extension to Call of Duty MW2 comes into play.

Season 3 of the ongoing Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer kicked off last month, bringing new operators, a new Gulag, and two premium maps — Black Gold and Pelayo’s Lighthouse. The latter is set on a stormy island with a lighthouse at its centre, housing several maintenance buildings, a boat dock, and a helipad. Ranked Play was also added in February, with game modes adhering to the rules set by Call of Duty League (CDL).

Lava Agni 3 was launched in India on Friday as the company’s latest midrange smartphone. It sports a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, as well as a 1.74-inch AMOLED touchscreen display that offers access to some of the smartphone’s features. The handset has a triple rear camera setup and a 16-megapixel selfie camera. The Lava Agni 3 is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset along with 8GB of RAM and runs on Android 14. It is equipped with a 5,000mAh battery that can be charged at 66W.

Lava Agni 3 Price in India, Availability

Lava Agni 3 price in India starts at Rs. 20,999 for the base model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, without a charging adapter. The same configuration is available along with a charger for Rs. 22,999. Lava will also sell a 256GB storage variant (charger included) that is priced at Rs. 24,999.

The handset will go on sale in India on October 9 at 12am (midnight) via Amazon. It is available in Heather Glass and Pristine Glass colour options.

Lava Agni 3 Specifications, Features

The dual-SIM (Nano+Nano) Lava Agni 3 runs on Android 14 and is slated to receive three OS version upgrades and security updates for four years. The handset features a 6.78-inch 1.5K (1,200×2,652 pixels) AMOLED screen that refreshes at 120Hz and has a peak brightness of 1200nits. On the rear panel, there’s a 1.74-inch AMOLED touch screen that can be used to perform actions like receiving calls and quickly responding to messages, taking selfies with the rear cameras, music controls and settings timers or alarms.

Lava has equipped the handset with an 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset, paired with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. Up to 8GB of unused storage can also be utilised as ‘virtual RAM’, according to the company. The phone is equipped with an ‘Action’ button that can be used to switch between ringer and silent modes, turn on the flashlight feature, or act as a shutter button for the camera. 

The handset has a triple rear camera setup that comprises a 50-megapixel primary with optical image stabilisation, an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera with a 112-degree field-of-view, and an 8 megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom with electronic image stabilisation (EIS). On the front, the phone has a 16-megapixel selfie camera with EIS. 

You get up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage that can’t be expanded using an external memory card. The Lava Agni 3 has dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos Connectivity options include 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi-6E, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, NavIC, and a USB Type-C port. It is equipped with an accelerometer, gyroscope, e-compass, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor.

The Lava Agni 3 packs a 5,000mAh battery with support for 66W charging that is claimed to charge the phone to 50 percent within 19 minutes. An in-display fingerprint sensor is present for biometric authentication. Besides, it measures 163.7×75.53×8.8mm and weighs 212g.

Amazon Great Indian Festival sale 2023 has entered its second week and the sale event centred around the holiday season is currently offering discounts and deals on laptops, making it an ideal time to purchase a new laptop or upgrade from an older model. You can consider a laptop like the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 that is currently on sale at a discount of 35 percent during the ongoing sale, or you might prefer an ultrabook like the LG Gram (2023) model that can be purchased at a 23 percent discount. You can also pick up the Asus Vivobook S15 (2022) for Rs. 56,990 during the ongoing sale.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 that is powered by a 11th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU paired with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, is currently available for Rs. 44,500 during the ongoing sale. On the other hand, the HP 14s with a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processor and 16GB of RAM is priced at Rs. 54,990 during the Amazon sale.

Here are all bank discounts during Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale

During the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival sale, you can avail of a 10 percent instant discount on a range of products by using an SBI bank card for purchases. Doing so will further lower the price of products that have already been discounted during the promotion. You can also exchange our existing laptop for an additional discount during the Amazon Great Indian Festival sale.

Here are some of the top deals on laptops you can purchase during the ongoing Amazon Great Indian Festival sale — the deal prices of these laptops are the final prices after applying the eligible bank discounts.

Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup is at least an year away from launch, however, speculations about the camera capabilities of the iPhone 17 series are now doing rounds on the Web. A recent leak suggests that Apple will keep periscope cameras exclusive to the Pro models next year. LG Innotek, an electronic component manufacturer, is reportedly investing in new facilities, possibly to be ready for next year’s iPhone 17 Pro cameras. This year’s iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max came with a tetraprism 5x zoom lens, which was also used on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Slim Models May Lack 5x Telephoto Lens

Korean publication DigiTimes claims that only the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max will get the 5x periscope telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom next year. As per the report, Apple supplier LG Innotek will reportedly invest KRW 375.9 billion (roughly Rs. 2 crore) to secure new facilities for camera modules and these facilities seem to be aimed at producing the camera modules of next year’s iPhone 17 series.

Apple will bring camera upgrades to the iPhone 17 series, but will also apply the folded zoom to only the iPhone 17 Pro models, just like the iPhone 16 series this year.

The Cupertino giant usually reserves a few premium features for its Pro models to differentiate the Pro variants from their non-Pro. The company brought the iPhone 15 Pro Max-exclusive tetraprism lens to the smaller iPhone 16 Pro this year. This allows iPhone 16 Pro users to capture up to 5x optical zoom. Next year’s vanilla iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Slim models were initially believed to feature this periscope unit as well.

As per past leaks, Apple will integrate a new under-display Face ID technology in the 2025 iPhone models. The iPhone 17 Pro models are said to be powered by Apple’s A19 Pro chip alongside 12GB RAM, while the standard iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Air could run on an A18 or A19 chip with support for 8GB RAM. All four iPhone 17 models could feature 24-megapixel front-facing cameras. The iPhone 17 Air is rumoured to get a single 48-megapixel rear camera.

EU antitrust regulators are set to approve Microsoft‘s $69 billion (nearly Rs. 5,65,480 crore) acquisition of Activision next week, with May 15 as the likeliest date, people familiar with the matter said.

The European Commission’s imminent clearance comes nearly three weeks after the UK competition authority blocked the deal, the biggest-ever deal in gaming, over concerns it would hinder competition in cloud gaming.

The EU antitrust enforcer is expected to clear the acquisition after Microsoft agreed to licensing deals with cloud streaming rivals including Nvidia, Ukraine’s Boosteroid and Japan’s Ubitus, other people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters in March.

It also has agreements with Nintendo and US distributor Valve, owner of the world’s largest video game distribution platform, Steam, to bring Activision’s Call of Duty to their gaming platforms should the acquisition go through.

The Commission, which has set a May 22 deadline for its decision, declined to comment.

Japan approved the takeover in March while the US Federal Trade Commission is also seeking to block it.

Meanwhile, Microsoft last month signed a 10-year deal with Nware to bring Xbox and Activision Blizzard games to the Spanish cloud-gaming platform. The decision was taken after Britain’s regulation authority decided to blocked its Activision deal.

“While it’s still early for the emerging cloud segment in gaming, this new partnership combined with our other recent commitments will make more popular games available on more cloud game streaming services than they are today,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

The Xbox console maker has signed similar deals with the owners of streaming platforms including Valve, Nvidia and Boosteroid.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

Realme GT Neo 6 with Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC and 120W fast charging support was launched in May. Realme now seems to be already working on that phone’s successor, which is expected to be called Realme GT Neo 7. The Chinese tech brand has not announced anything regarding the next GT Neo smartphone but a Chinese tipster claims that it will launch by the end of this year. The Realme GT Neo 7 is tipped to run an overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.

Realme GT Neo 7 Specifications (Expected)

Tipster Smart Pikachu (translated from Chinese) on Weibo suggested the launch timeline and key specifications of Realme GT Neo 7. As per the leak, the Realme GT Neo 6 successor will be launched at the end of this year. It is said to feature a 1.5K resolution display.

Realme GT Neo 7 is said to pack a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC under the hood with overclocked CPU cores. The tipster has not specified the battery capacity of the phone, but he claims that it will get a larger battery with 100W fast charging support. He states that it would be a potential ‘price killer’.

The Realme GT Neo 7 is likely to compete with upcoming smartphones like iQOO Neo 10 Pro, OnePlus Ace 5 Pro, and Redmi K80 in China. The Redmi K80 could be announced in November.

Realme GT Neo 6 Price, Specifications

Realme GT Neo 6 was launched in China in May with a price tag of CNY 2,099 (roughly Rs. 22,000) for the 12GB + 256GB version.

It boasts a 6.78-inch 1.5K (1,264×2,780 pixels) 8T LTPO AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and runs on Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC. The handset packs up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. The Realme GT Neo 6 has a dual rear camera setup led by a 50-megapixel Sony IMX882 sensor. It is backed by a 5,500mAh battery with support for 120W wired fast charging.