Week 38 in review: Asus ROG Phone 6D announced, Pixel 7 series pre-order date confirmed

Welcome to our recap of the biggest headlines from week 38.

The Apple iPhone 14 fever is still here – we saw the regular iPhone 14 pass a durability test where it fared quite well. The 14 Pro models had their shaky camera problem ironed out with its latest iOS 16.0.2 update.

In semi-related news, Android makers such as Xiaomi and Realme are preparing to implement Dynamic Island-type notification systems to their upcoming devices – can’t say we didn’t see that coming. Xiaomi is set to launch its Civi 2 smartphone on Tuesday, September 27 with a centered pill-shaped cutout on its screen.

Google’s Pixel 7 series marketing campaign is in full force as we got a new teaser for the phones and the Pixel Watch ahead of the October 6 launch event. Pre-orders for the Pixel 7 series start on the same date as the announcement.

Asus debuted its ROG Phone 6D duo consisting of the ROG Phone 6D and ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. Both phones share nearly identical specs to the ROG Phone 6 lineup with the big change being the Dimensity 9000+ chipset which replaces the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The vanilla 6D start at £799 in the UK while the Ultimate alteration asks at least £1,199. Asus also launched a Batman edition ROG Phone 6 which goes for €1,199.

Nvidia announced its RTX 40-series graphics cards with a claimed 2-4x performance boost and DLSS 3. The baseline 12GB RTX 4080 starts at $899 while the top-of-the-line RTX 4090 will go for a cool $1,599. Official sales for the RTX 4090 start on October 12 while the RTX 4080 will be available from November.

The big rumors of the week include Samsung continuing to use Exynos chipsets for the Galaxy S23 series and Apple finally bringing 8K video to next year’s iPhone 15 Ultra. We also got some details for the upcoming OnePlus 11 Pro which should be bring the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip alongside 100W charging.

These were the biggest headlines for this week. See you next time.