We've been seeing the OnePlus 10 Pro series leak so frequently in the last few weeks, that your eyes might gloss over at seeing even more – but to shake things up, OnePlus itself has unveiled the design of the phone, and has also confirmed its launch date.
As part of CES 2022 , an annual tech show which is currently going through an exhibitor crisis due to Covid , OnePlus has provided some information on its upcoming smartphone family.
The OnePlus 10 Pro is set to debut in China on January 11 at 1am ET, 6am GMT and 4pm ACT, which is 10pm PT on January 10. So it's only being shown off in one region right now, and without its non-Pro sibling by the sounds of it. We expect a global launch, with a full mobile family, to come later in 2022.
That's quite early in the year for a OnePlus launch, as the company generally waits until March or April to show off its new phones, and that's when we'll likely see the full unveiling.
Unlike companies like Huawei or Xiaomi, we also generally don't see OnePlus show off its phones in China before the rest of the world, so the January 11 event marks a curious new precedent there too. We'd expect the phone to only go on sale in China to begin with, so you won't be able to buy it straight away, but fingers crossed the full release won't be delayed for too long.
OnePlus 10 Pro pictures
Alongside the launch announcement, OnePlus shared some pictures of the 10 Pro. The phone will seem very familiar to anyone who's been following the leaks, because it turns out those early images were entirely accurate.
The images show two phones, a green and a black one, with a few key features listed between them.
The OnePlus 10 Pro will get a notification slider by the camera bump, as well as what seems to be a power button on that edge too, suggesting the volume rocker is on the other side.
There are three rear cameras, with very visible branding for Hasselblad – the camera company that OnePlus outsources camera parts from. You'll see a fourth lens bump too, which contains the phone's ring LED flash; the letters on the bump say 'P2D 50T', and we've no idea what that means, but hopefully the launch event will enlighten us.
When a OnePlus phone launch is coming up, the company often teases information about the device in the run-up to the full unveiling, and there's no reason to believe this isn't going to happen for the January 11 launch. So expect more information to come out before too long.
Warzone update: season 3 release date, trailers, and weapons
A huge Warzone update is here, and Season 3 is upon us. Activision has dropped the latest season, and we know what's come to its mega-popular battle royale. Including, both Godzilla and King Kong, in what promises to be a mammoth battle in the Pacific.
As with the launch of any new season of Warzone , at the top of your agenda should be avoiding a swift trip to the gulag; second on the list is figuring out what changes are coming to the Pacific island of Caldera.
Warzone Season 3 is called ‘Classified Arms’ and it introduces new weapons to back that name up. Though, whether they'll be of much use against the oversized threats is a big question. Nebula bombs have been exploding around Caldera, and they've set loose some familiar giant-sized creatures rampaging. Godzilla and King Kong have been marching around Caldera Island leaving their imprint on the land. And they're even going to get their own event, called Operation Monarch. Hints to the event are scattered all over the map, including weird ancient cave paintings and an 'otherworldly axe'. Expect a new level of loot and scoot in your future if you want to survive and overcome the challenges Warzone Season 3 throws at you.
Warzone update: cut to the chase
Warzone update: release date and platforms
Season 3 is available now! The Warzone season 3 release date was April 27 at 9am PST/12pm EST/5pm BST, 2am ACT.
The new season is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X |S, PS4 , PS5 , and PC simultaneously. As ever, it open for cross-play across all platforms.
Warzone Season 3 also launched across all of Call of Duty: Vanguard 's core pillars. New content is here for the multiplayer and zombie modes, too, so if you play the other modes as well as Warzone, there is a ton of new stuff to get into.
Warzone update: trailers
For a tease of what's in the new Warzone update, you should take a look at the Season 3 trailers. Activision has released a few that detail the upcoming changes.
Warzone season 3 cinematic trailer
The key Warzone trailer to watch is the cinematic trailer, as it gives a real flavour of everything that's coming in the Classified Arms update:
Warzone season 3 Operation Monarch trailer
The big (emphasis on the big) addition in the new Warzone update is an epic battle between King Kong and Godzilla. Activision is keeping cagey about what exactly that will entail but you can see glimpses of it in this monster-filled trailer for Operation Monarch:
Warzone season 3 battle pass trailer
For the nitty gritty of what's included in the Warzone update is the season 3 battle pass trailer. It gives you a look at the new cosmetics and weapons blueprints you're going to be fighting to unlock across the new season:
Warzone update: weapons
It wouldn't be a warzone update without new weapons, and Season 3 comes loaded with new gear. Activision has revealed four new weapons will be added to the battle royale, and two of them will be available on launch day.
With the other two weapons showing up mid-season:
Warzone new operator
The new Warzone update brings a new Warzone operator, Mateo Hernandez, who you can unlock instantly by buying the battle pass. He comes with two elite skins if you buy the battle pass and there are another two you can unlock by completing tiers in the Warzone season 3 battle pass, as well as two quips and a finishing move.
Warzone update: map changes
Caldera will be in focus this season, as Nebula bombs have been set off on the island. It's good to see the map get the attention, as it hasn't gotten much love since the Pacific update was released.
The biggest change is the addition of an entirely new POI, but there are also changes to existing ones on the map:
Warzone update: event details
The rumors of the king of crossover events were true: the next Warzone update will sow the seeds for Operation Monarch, a major in-game event that will debut part way into season 3 on May 11.
Operation Monarch sees King Kong and Godzilla battle it out over Caldera Island, but even though they don't arrive until next month, we'll see signs of their coming from the moment the new season launches thanks to updates to the map.
Recent bombing has unearthed prehistoric fossils across the Warzone map, along with other signs of less than fossilized creatures.
Operation Monarch isn't just about fighting monsters, it also brings with it unique skins, like this Kong outfit:
There are lots of new skins to unlock and buy, many of them themed after Kong and Godzilla.
Separate to the skins on sale, there are more than 25 free items and blueprints that can be unlocked over the course of Warzone season 3, such as the “Retrofashioned” Shotgun, “Regimental” Marksman Rifle, and the Legendary “Photon Phantom” Pistol.
Warzone: patch notes
The big season 3 update is here, and the patch notes tell quite the story. Caldera's Iron Trials is back as a game mode, sniper rifles have received a nerf that forces you to be more range conscious if you want to click heads, and all the goodies we've covered above. Check the full Warzone patch notes out for yourself.
Warzone's Season 3 update came with a few hiccups, including game-breaking bugs for some players.
Raven Software has acknowledged that it's working on the main issues that are presenting obstacles. A number of users were running into a 'Corrupted Loadout Data' error. The devs tweeted that they were working on it and would provide an update asap. And thankfully, it's since been sorted out .
The major glitch that was ruining everyone's good time was cropping up on Xbox consoles. The Warzone bug required Xbox Live Gold membership for people wanting to dive into the free-to-play game. If you've not been driven to sign up for Xbox Game Pass or Xbox Live Gold in your desperation, sit tight! Raven is working on a fix .
"We are investigating an issue where Xbox Live Silver users are unable to play Warzone."
If you can't wait until then, and want to take advantage of the double XP weekend, you can check out the cheapest Xbox Game Pass deals for April . The subscription comes with all kinds of perks, and you may end up loving it.
Looking for more? Activision has finally started talking about Warzone 2
Netflix's Inventing Anna: what you need to know about Anna Delvey's tangled web
Netflix’s new drama Inventing Anna has all the makings of a must-watch show. The series stars Ozark’ s breakout lead Julia Garner in the true story of German fraudster Anna Sorokin, who conned wealthy New Yorkers, banks and hotels out of tens of thousands of dollars between 2013 and 2017. All nine episodes are available to watch now on Netflix.
The series comes from production powerhouse Shonda Rhimes, who stewarded Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How To Get To Away With Murder for US giant ABC before being snapped up by Netflix in a megabucks deal. Rhimes’ first project for the streamer was the period smash Bridgerton , and now she’s delivered her second trick.
Rhimes has left behind Regency England but still delivers Shondaland’s trademark high drama. The series is based on Jessica Pressler's 2019 article for New York magazine How Anna (Sorokin) Delvey Tricked New York's Party People. It's actually Pressler's second trip to the screen, after her 2015 article The Hustlers at Scores was turned into Jennifer Lopez's 2019 vehicle, Hustlers.
We've reviewed Inventing Anna here , but, if you want to go into the TV series completely cold, then beware, there are plenty of spoilers here, but if you want to find out the real story that inspired Rhimes’ new blockbuster, then it’s all below for you…
What is Inventing Anna all about?
Inventing Anna chronicles the journey of Anna Delvey, supposedly a wealthy German heiress who bragged to friends that she was sitting on a fortune of over $60 million.
Anna Delvey turned out to be Anna Sorokin. She had no fortune and didn’t stand to inherit a thing. Between 2013 and 2017, she fleeced her new friends for thousands of dollars.
Among her victims were wealthy art dealer Michael Xufu Huang and Rachel DeLoache Williams, a one-time photo editor with Vanity Fair. It was Williams who Sorokin stuck with a $62,000 bill for a Moroccan retreat she'd agreed to pay for.
As well as her friends, Sorokin also scammed two Manhattan hotels, a private jet company and a series of banks, with the total amount she owed coming in at more than $200,000. She was also on the verge of convincing a hedge fund to give her $25 million to open a private club worth twice that amount.
In the end, the money ran out and unpaid credit card bills began to rack up. Sorokin was arrested in October 2017 and convicted in May 2019 of attempted grand larceny (trying to steal vast sums of money). She was sentenced to serve 4 to 12 years in prison.
Netflix’s take on the saga is told from the perspective of Vivian Kent, a fictionalized version of Pressler, as she tries to wheedle the story out of Delvey and save her own career in the process.
Where is Anna Sorokin now?
After apologizing for her crimes at a parole hearing in October 2020, Sorokin was released from prison on grounds of good behavior in February 2021. It was expected she would then be deported to Germany.
However, a month later, Sorokin was arrested by immigration officials for overstaying her visa and is still in a New Jersey county jail awaiting deportation.
How did Netflix get the rights to tell the story of Anna Sorokin?
In order to get Sorokin’s sign-off for her life rights, Netflix had to hand over $320,000.
Now, normally under New York State law, criminals are not allowed to profit from their crimes, and, when it was first suggested that Netflix pay Sorokin, law enforcement officials immediately intervened to block the payment.
However, Sorokin appealed, and, at the start of last year, Albany County Judge Richard Platkin unfroze Sorokin’s bank accounts and allowed her to settle some of her many outstanding bills using the cash.
The story of Delvey, or rather Sorokin, is perfect fodder for Rhimes. It’s fizzy, glamorous and packed with intrigue and suspense. It’s easy to see why the company was so keen to get its hands on the story.
Who is Anna Sorokin?
Anna Sorokin was born in Russia in 1991 but moved to Germany at the age of 16 with her parents and younger brother. After graduating high school, Sorokin moved to London to study at Central Saint Martins College but ended up dropping out and heading to Berlin, where she interned in fashion PR. After that, she relocated to Paris, where she landed an internship at Purple magazine. It was here she took on the name Anna Delvey.
In the summer of 2013, she headed for New York to attend Fashion Week. After enjoying a productive week and making some fast friends, Sorokin opted to stay, transferring to Purple's New York office.
She didn’t stay there long and instead focused her energies on her idea of the ‘Anna Delvey Foundation’ – a private members' club and art foundation. The friends she’d made assumed that it would be paid for by a trust fund, as she’d told them all she was a German heiress. (Why else would you need a foundation?) As she’d suggested putting her club in Church Missions House, a vast six-story building in Manhattan that was last on the market in 2014 for a cool $50 million, it was an understandable assumption.
Initially, she tried to score investment capital, but couldn’t convince investors to put money in. Getting desperate, Sorokin created fake bank statements that seemed to show she had access to about €60 million stored in Swiss bank accounts. She put these in as part of a loan application for $22 million to City National Bank. They refused, so she took the proposal to Fortress Investment Group.
Fortress agreed to consider the application, but only if Sorokin paid $100,000 to cover legal expenses relating to the application.
Penniless, Sorokin returned to City National Bank and used her charms to convince an employee to grant her a temporary overdraft facility. However, the application failed and Sorokin’s hope that she could ‘fake it until she made it’ was dashed.
All the while, Sorokin’s lifestyle was growing ever more extravagant. She’d racked up bills at several of New York’s most expensive hotels and even managed to book a private jet to Nebraska, without paying the $35,390 fee upfront.
At every hotel, Sorokin used the same scam, booking without putting a credit card on file. Once the hotel demanded fees, she’d make a claim about a wire transfer, which would never arrive, at which point she’d be evicted. The tactic was enough to rack up over $50,000 in unpaid hotel bills. In the end, the Beekman and the W hotels demanded charges be pressed against her. And once her financial activity was under real scrutiny, everything fell apart for Sorokin.
All this earned her a nickname, the Soho Grifter. It was splashed across newspapers in the days after she was charged and is what convinced Netflix to part with so much money for her story.
Who was Anna Delvey's boyfriend?
Inventing Anna largely sticks to the facts of Sorokin's deception, which are quite enough in themselves, but, as it points out in disclaimers at the start of every episodes, it does take some liberties with the truth. One of those is with Delvey's boyfriend.
In the series, Saamer Usmani plays Chase Sikorski, who we are introduced to as Delvey's boyfriend. We watch the two of them together and Sikorski tries to raise money for his app Wake, which aims to capture and crowdsource data from people's dreams.
Most of that is invented for the screen, with neither the name Chase Sikorski or the app being real.
In Pressler's piece, she does go into a few mentions of a boyfriend, but he is left anonymous. The only details Pressler goes into are that he was a regular on the TED-Talks circuit, and had been profiled in The New Yorker.
During the series, Sikorski agrees to sit down with Kent to talk on the condition he would remain anonymous and be known only as 'The Futurist'. It remains unknown whether Sorokin's real boyfriend spoke with Pressler.
How did Julia Garner become the Soho Grifter?
Garner, whose breakout role in Ozark as the scheming Ruth Langmore has earned her plenty of plaudits, had her pick of roles, but she was actually second choice to play Anna Delvey.
Rhimes’ first pick was Madeline Brewer, who you might know from her roles as Janine in The Handmaid’s Tale or Tricia Miller in Orange Is The New Black. However, scheduling conflicts caused Brewer to drop out and the role went to Garner.
The actress took her research extremely seriously, to the extent that she spent time with Sorokin in prison.
“You can’t dislike the person you’re playing for eight, nine months”, she revealed to t he Wall Street Journal , “That’s going to come across on the screen, and the performance isn’t going to be as good. She had her reasons why she did all the things she did.
Garner has stated in interviews that she wanted to nail Sorokin’s accent, which shifts constantly between Germanic intonations and a strange Southern US drawl. It was especially difficult for Garner as she was portraying Langmore in Ozark at the same time.
She told Town and Country : “I really made sure that the script supervisor had an eye on my accent during that period of time. Playing those two parts at the same time was probably the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life. Those are not easy women.”
Apparently, it all comes down to how you use your tongue, with Garner adding: “Anna’s tongue is kind of flat. It almost feels heavy and fat. I completely had to change how I moved my tongue in three weeks.”
While Garner’s accent has drawn some criticism from viewers, she revealed that she’d already run it past Sorokin herself, adding: “She’s like, ‘Please, let me hear it. It got very meta.”
You can judge for yourself in the trailer below:
Who else is in the cast for Inventing Anna?
What’s the release date for Inventing Anna?
The show starts on Netflix on February 11. It’ll go out in nine parts, all available to binge-watch on the streamer on day one, should you wish to.
Are there any Anna Sorokin documentaries?
Sorokin’s lavish habits and serious taste for fraud were profiled as part of HBO Max’s documentary series, Generation Hustle.
Sorokin sat alongside the likes of WeWork founder Adam Neumann and was given her own hour-long standalone episode, Anna Delvey Takes Manhattan.
Rachel DeLoache Williams, Sorokin’s lawyer Todd Spodek, restauranteur Richie Notar, stylist Sergio Corvacho, DJ Elle Dee and creative director Marc Kremers were all interviewed and recounted their experiences with Sorokin.
Williams also wrote about her experiences in detail in her book, My Friend Anna: The True Story of a Fake Heiress, which is out now.
That book has been optioned by HBO and is being developed for TV by Lena Dunham.
The BBC also profiled Sorokin’s story in depth on its Fake Heiress podcast.