Microsoft is returning with an Xbox Developer Direct next week, promising updates on the much anticipated Indiana Jones game, Obsidian’s upcoming fantasy RPG Awoved, and more. The presentation is scheduled to go live next Thursday, January 18 at 1:30am IST in India/ 12pm PT in the US, and will be available to watch on Xbox’s official YouTube and Twitch channels. True to the name, the event will include both gameplay footage and developer interviews to best illustrate upcoming titles in the ecosystem, a lot of which will be included with Xbox Game Pass. However, it is worth noting that despite the recently completed acquisition, don’t expect any Activision Blizzard games to be shown during the broadcast.

The standout here is MachineGuns’ Indiana Jones game, which was confirmed to be a PC and Xbox exclusive from the Microsoft vs US FTC trial in June. Announced just months after the company acquired ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion (about Rs. 62,264 crore), Indian Jones’ first gameplay trailer will likely put us in the shoes of the famous archaeologist with the whip and give out more details about the general premise of the title. This segment will run a little over 10 minutes. Meanwhile, developer Ninja Theory will take us on yet another behind-the-scenes trip into the world of Hellblade 2, charting a new path in Senua’s tale as she ventures into Viking Iceland to save innocents from a tyrannical rule. Hopefully, we get a solid release date this time — the team has been teasing its usage of Unreal Engine 5 for years now and understandably, players are getting impatient.

Obsidian is at the top of its league when it comes to writing branching RPGs, and fans are expecting to be stunned when they’re transported back to the fictional world of Eora, first introduced in the Pillars of Eternity series. In Avowed, Obsidian’s next RPG, you assume the role of a messenger tasked with investigating rumours of a spreading plague in the vibrant Living Lands, flush with intriguing characters, breathing environments, and absurd wildlife. Master spells, wield swords imbued with elemental magic, and make quick work of enemies through unorthodox methods. Given how much Baldur’s Gate 3 valued player agency and impressed gamers globally, Avowed has got some big shoes to fill. Then Oxide Games will show off some new Ara: History Untold gameplay, alongside ‘details about the inspiration, key features, and the road ahead.’

Shortly after the Xbox Developer Direct event, ZeniMax Online Studios has planned a broadcast for The Elder Scrolls Online, revealing the next big chapter that brings in a whole new zone, plot threads, and quality-of-life features. The show goes live at 2:30am IST in India/ 1pm PT in the US on the same Xbox channel. Elsewhere, there are rumours of Sea of Thieves coming to PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch systems — if true, we could learn more about it during the digital event.

The Xbox Developer Direct is scheduled for January 18 at 1:30am IST in India/ 12pm PT in the US.

Samsung previewed One UI 7 — the latest operating system (OS) for smartphones and other devices, based on Google’s Android 15 update last month. A tipster now suggests that it might come with new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, including a feature that can summarise notifications. This is said to work along the same lines as notification summaries in iOS 18 but could bring support for a wider range of languages as compared to Apple’s feature.

Notification Summary in One UI 7

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), tipster @chunvn8888 shared the discovery of the notification summary feature powered by Galaxy AI – the South Korean technology conglomerate’s AI suite. It is currently said to be only available in Korea and in One UI 7, which is speculated to be rolled out globally before the end of the year.

As the name suggests, One UI 7’s rumoured feature, dubbed AI Notification, might leverage AI to summarise notifications received from apps automatically. At the moment, it is claimed to support multiple languages including English, Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese. In comparison, Apple’s notification summaries in iOS 18 only support English, albeit in various locales.

The tipster suggests that older models will not be able to benefit from the AI Notification feature in One UI 7, hinting that only Samsung smartphones which support the full-fledged Galaxy AI suite will get it.

Other Expected AI Features

Samsung is also tipped to introduce AI writing tools powered by Galaxy AI in 2025. Another recently hinted feature is the ability to disable thermal throttling on Samsung smartphones manually. The feature, part of the upcoming One UI 7, was discovered hidden inside the Developer Options. It is speculated to boost gaming performance with higher frames per second (fps) and reduced lag.

While a release date for the Android 15-based update remains unknown, Samsung has confirmed that One UI 7 beta will be available to all users and not just registered developers when it rolls out.

Snapdragon has become the latest entrant in the PC processor space with its Snapdragon X series chipsets. The company’s integrated SoC in computers is now a necessary classifier to have a device be labelled Copilot+ PCs, which is another Microsoft-given terminology for AI PCs. However, these are just marketing nomenclature, that do not have a lot to do with the overall performance of the chipsets. A new report has now conducted benchmark tests for the Snapdragon X series chipsets to find how they fare against the chips by Apple, Intel, and AMD.

Snapdragon X Series Chips Reportedly Outperform Apple’s M3 Chipset

Extensive benchmark tests conducted by The Verge show that the Snapdragon X Elite chipsets are 2-3 percent faster in single-core performance than Apple’s M2 Max chips that powered the company’s 2023 MacBook Pro model. These benchmark tests were conducted on Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 as they work across all of the company’s processors, as per the publication.

The Snapdragon SoC was also reportedly outperformed Intel’s Core Ultra 7 155H and the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processors by 24 and 17 percent, respectively. However, when compared to the Apple M3 chipsets, the Cupertino-based tech giant is said to be leading the race in The Verge’s single-core benchmark tests.

The Snapdragon X series chipsets fared significantly well in CPU multi-core performance benchmark, according to the publication. However, Apple’s M2 Max and M3 Max were able to outperform them, thanks to a higher number of cores (Apple’s M3 Max has 16 cores vs up to 12 cores on its Snapdragon X series counterpart).

On the other hand, the Apple M2 Max chipset with 12 cores reportedly offered marginally faster performance compared to the highest-tier Snapdragon X Elite chips in the Cinebench 2024 benchmark test.

GPU Performance of Snapdragon X Elite Series Said to Lag Behind Rivals

GPU performance is an important consideration if users plan to run games or apps that are resource intensive. As per the report, this is one area where the Snapdragon X series chipsets fall behind their Apple, Intel and AMD counterparts.

In the Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) benchmark testing, the publication found the highest score for Snapdragon X Elite chips with Qualcomm Adreno GPU to be 24,004 points in the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.

On the other hand, the AMD Radeon 780M GPU in the Acer Swift Go 14 AMD scored 29,199 and the Intel Arc GPU in the MSI Prestige 16 Evo scored 34,528. The leader in this category was the Apple M3 Max in the late 2023 MacBook Pro 16 with a score of 91,480.

Snapdragon X Series Could Offer Competitive Battery Life

Battery life is another important metric for chipset performance. This is the test of the overall optimisation of the SoC in the device. The publication found that Snapdragon-powered laptops, on average, offered between 14 to 16 hours of battery backup. However, none could reach the 18-hour mark offered by the M3 MacBook Air.

Interestingly, AMD and Intel fared even worse than Snapdragon in this area. The only exception reportedly was the Intel-powered Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Ultra which was able to run for slightly longer than 14 hours on a single battery charge.

Based on these metrics, it can be said that while the Snapdragon X series chipsets are not clear winners in benchmark tests, they still offer higher CPU, GPU performance and battery life than previous Arm-based Windows laptops.

Notably, Snapdragon-powered laptops in the US are comparatively cheaper than the ones by Apple, Intel, and AMD, but we do not know how much these laptops will cost in India.

In a recent conversation with Gadgets 360, Don McGuire, the Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm said, “We worked closely with Microsoft for the last three to four years to build the Snapdragon X series chipsets. The new chipsets deliver high performance across CPU, GPU, and NPU. These [Snapdragon chipset-powered] AI PCs will be able to offer better videoconferencing capabilities, overall performance, battery life, and AI performance.”

Redmi A4 5G was launched in India earlier this week as the latest affordable 5G offering from the Xiaomi sub-brand. As the new phone is gearing up to go on sale starting next week, its listing on the company website reveals that it does not support Airtel 5G in India. Unlike recent 5G offerings, the Redmi A4 5G is only compatible with SA (standalone) 5G networks in the country. It runs on Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chipset and has a 50-megapixel dual rear camera setup.

As per the product page of Redmi A4 5G on Mi Website, the handset supports 4G and SA (standalone) 5G networks. The listing states that the handset does not support 5G NSA (non-standalone). Airtel’s 5G network in India is based on the NSA architecture and this makes the new Redmi phone unsuitable with Airtel 5G.

Redmi A4 5G
Photo Credit: Mi.com

Airtel users can only use Airtel 4G on their Redmi A4 5G handsets. Meanwhile, Jio’s 5G network is based on the SA architecture and people with Jio SIM can access 5G service with the device.

Redmi A4 5G Price, Specifications

The Redmi A4 5G was launched in India with a starting price tag of Rs. 8,499 for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage configuration. The 128GB storage variant is priced at Rs. 9,499. It will go on sale starting November 27.

The Redmi A4 5G runs on Android 14-based HyperOS and features a 6.88-inch HD+ (720×1640 pixels) LCD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. It runs on a 4nm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 chip, paired with 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage. It has a dual rear camera unit led by 50-megapixel primary camera. On the front, the phone has a 5-megapixel selfie camera.

The Redmi A4 5G packs a 5,160mAh battery with 18W charging support. It has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and comes with an IP52 rated build for dust and splash resistance.

Microsoft’s stock market value ended a trading session higher than Apple’s for the first time since 2021 on Friday, making it the world’s most valuable company as worries about demand hit the iPhone maker’s shares.

Apple crept up 0.2 percent on Friday, while Microsoft added 1 percent. With that, Microsoft’s market capitalisation stood at $2.887 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,39,26,500 crore), its highest ever, according to LSEG data. Apple’s market capitalisation was $2.875 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,38,27,300 crore), calculated with data in a filing on Thursday.

Worries about smartphone demand have pushed Apple’s shares down 3 percent so far in 2024 after rallying 48 percent last year. Microsoft is up about 3 percent year to date after surging 57 percent in 2023 in a rally driven in part by its lead in generative artificial intelligence through an investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

Apple’s market capitalisation peaked at $3.081 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,55,34,600 crore) on December 14, according to LSEG.

Microsoft has incorporated OpenAI’s technology across its suite of productivity software, a move that helped spark a rebound in its cloud-computing business in the July-September quarter. Its AI lead has also created an opportunity to challenge Google’s dominance of web search.

Apple, meanwhile, has been grappling with tepid demand, including for the iPhone, its cash cow. Demand in China, a major market, has slumped as the country’s economy makes a slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a resurgent Huawei erodes its market share.

Sales of Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset start on February 2 in the United States, marking Apple’s biggest product launch since the iPhone in 2007. However, UBS in a report this week estimated that Vision Pro sales would be “relatively immaterial” to Apple’s earnings per share in 2024.

A handful of times since 2018, Microsoft has briefly taken the lead over Apple as the most valuable company, most recently in 2021, when concerns about supply chain shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic hit the iPhone maker’s stock price.

Both tech stocks look relatively expensive in terms of price to their expected earnings, a common method of valuing publicly listed companies. Apple is trading at a forward PE of 28, well above its average of 19 over the past 10 years, according to LSEG data. Microsoft is trading around 32 times forward earnings, above its 10-year average of 24.

In its most recent quarterly report in November, Apple gave a sales forecast for the holiday quarter that missed Wall Street expectations, hurt by weak demand for iPads and wearables.

Analysts on average see Apple posting revenue up 0.7 percent to $117.9 billion (roughly Rs.9,77,100 crore) for the December quarter, according to LSEG. That would mark its first year-on-year revenue increase in four quarters. Apple reports its results on February 1.

Analysts see Microsoft reporting a 16 percent increase in revenue to $61.1 billion (roughly Rs. 5,06,400 crore), lifted by ongoing growth in its cloud business when it reports in the coming weeks.

© Thomson Reuters 2024