There’s not much about the Samsung Galaxy S22 range that hasn’t been leaked at this point, and we’re largely down to small details such as screen brightness. But we now even have a good idea of what that might be for the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus, alongside some other interesting details.
Leaker Ishan Agarwal has shared some renders and specs for the phone, in partnership with 91Mobiles , claiming among other things that the S22 Plus will support 45W fast charging.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of the Galaxy S22 range getting that much charging power (up from 25W on the Samsung Galaxy S21 range), but recent leaks suggested it would just be the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra that got this upgrade, so it will be good news if the Galaxy S22 Plus does as well.
Agarwal also claims that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus will have a maximum screen brightness of 1,750 nits. That’s up from 1,300 nits on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus , and would even have the 1,500 nits of the Galaxy S21 Ultra beat.
Other specs leaked here include a claim that the Galaxy S22 Plus will have an Exynos 2200 chipset in the UK, that it will have a 50MP main camera, a 4,500mAh battery (all of which has been rumored previously), and that it will weigh 195g, with the standard Galaxy S22 being 167g and the Galaxy S22 Ultra being 228g.
The renders (which are supposedly official) meanwhile don’t show us much that we haven’t seen before, with the design being very similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus.
In other Samsung news, leaker SuperRoader , who claims to be a former Samsung employee, has said that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra will come in a version with 1TB of storage. That would be a first for the range but is something that’s leaked previously . However, from the wording of the Tweet it sounds like this model might land a little later than others.
In replies, SuperRoader added that there will also be a model of the S22 Ultra with 16GB of RAM (which again we’ve heard before), and doubled down on his earlier claims that all countries will get the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset .
Since he’s specifically talking about the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra here, it’s possible that he thinks some other models could get the Exynos 2200, but previously he’d said none of them would – which is at odds with the leak above from Ishan Agarwal.
So since there’s disagreement on the chipset, we’d be cautious about fully believing any claims there. As for the rest of these leaks, while it’s worth taking them with a pinch of salt, there aren’t any red flags.
Analysis: 45W is good, but not great
Of all these leaks, the most interesting is arguably the suggestion that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus will have 45W charging. If it does, then there’s a chance the standard Samsung Galaxy S22 will as well (along with the S22 Ultra, which is already rumored to), and that’s a big upgrade on the 25W of their predecessors.
But it’s still not really competitive with most of Samsung’s key rivals. The OnePlus 10 Pro for example offers 80W charging, and the Xiaomi 12 Pro has 120W charging.
Then again, 45W could end up being a good balance. That’s still very fast, and there’s a risk of increased battery degradation with faster charging.
The real reason Samsung might not be in a hurry to catch up though is that its very biggest rival – Apple – only offers speeds of up to 27W in the iPhone 13 range, and we’d be surprised if the iPhone 14 range reached 45W.
Via PhoneArena
Garmin Fenix 7 too expensive? Check out the super light Suunto 5 Peak instead
If your pockets aren't deep enough for the new Garmin Fenix 7 , the Suunto 5 Peak is an alternative that's well worth considering. The 5 Peak is an updated version of 2019's Suunto 5 , with a streamlined design that's 41% lighter than its predecessor.
There are also some new training tools at your disposal, including a 'burner' feature that estimates grams of fat and carbohydrates used during your workout.
The Suunto 5 Peak has a modest price tag of $321 / £259 / AU$495 (less than half the price of the base-spec Fenix 7), and is available to pre-order now from Suunto with shipping due to start on February 1.
Unlike many running watches in this price bracket, the Suunto 5 Peak allows you to create your own routes, or find ones nearby based on heatmaps in the Suunto app. These heatmaps are presented in 3D, so you can easily see the elevation when preparing for your next run or ride.
For multi-day events, Suunto has also developed a new Tour mode that provides up to four days of continuous GPS tracking.
Depth perception
It's not all good news, though – It's interesting to note that while the original Suunto 5 was water resistant to 50 meters, the Peak is only rated to 30 meters. Typically watches with this rating aren't recommended for swimming, but the Suunto 5 Peak has a full set of tools for tracking pool and open water workouts.
There's still no touchscreen, and the watch's lens is still made of polyamide rather than Gorilla Glass or sapphire crystal, so it may be more susceptible to scratches than a typical watch from Garmin or Polar (a problem we experienced when testing the original Suunto 5).
We're hoping to put the new Suunto to the test soon to see how it compares to other watches in this price band, and to its predecessor.
Fable 4: everything we know so far
Fable 4 - officially simply called 'Fable' - is currently in development and there’s no doubt that it’s one of the most highly-anticipated Xbox exclusives there is.
Microsoft announced the game all the way back in 2020, confirming months of rumors that a new instalment in the fantasy RPG series is being developed for Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S and PC by Playground Games, the studio behind the Forza Horizon games. Since that announcement, however, we’ve heard very little about the game.
We haven't seen a new Fable game since 2010's Fable 3, so it's understandable that fans are eager to see where the series will go next. But it sounds like Fable 4 will be more of a reboot, like God of War (2018), than a sequel, with Playground Games set to give the franchise "a completely fresh start" according to Microsoft.
Right now, we don't know when we'll learn more about Fable 4 but, in the meantime, read on for everything we know about the game so far, including the details we've gleaned from its first (and only trailer) and rumors circling the highly-anticipated Xbox exclusive.
[Update: There's an Xbox showcase planned for June 2022. Could that be when we get our next Fable 4 update? Read on to find out more. ]
Fable 4: cut to the chase
No release date or release window has been set for Fable 4 yet. As the game skipped Microsoft's E3 2021 showcase, and we've not heard much in the way of firm details about its development, the earliest we'd expect to see it is 2023. At the very least, Phil Spencer has hinted during an IGN podcast that we'll get it before The Elder Scrolls 6 , though that game doesn't have a release date yet either and isn't expected to land sometime after Starfield's release in November 2022.
We do, however, know the platforms we can expect Fable 4 to land on. As an Xbox exclusive, Fable 4 will release for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC (sorry PlayStation fans) and will be available on Xbox Game Pass on day one. It's unclear if we'll see the new Fable arrive on Xbox One consoles like many other new Xbox releases - which have been released on both current and last-gen consoles - but we're not holding out hope as Microsoft hasn't confirmed an Xbox One release.
World premiere trailer Right now, only one Fable trailer has been released: the world premiere announcement trailer. The trailer doesn't reveal a whole lot, but does suggest that the game could be set well before the later entries in the series as we don't get as much of a sense of a Victorian-style industrial revolution as we did in Fable 3's setting. Instead, it appears that Fable 4 will have a medieval fantasy setting perhaps more like the original game, with the trailer showing a sword, fairies, overgrown toadstools and greedy toads. Check it out below:
Xbox Showcase in June
There may be no E3 taking place in 2022 but there will still be an Xbox and Bethesda showcase on June 12 at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, with news on “titles coming from Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda, and our partners around the world”.
A runtime for the show hasn’t been confirmed just yet and Xbox hasn’t revealed exactly which games will be featured at the show either but we sincerely hope that Fable 4 will be one of the games shown during the conference. As a highly-anticipated Xbox exclusive that we haven't heard all that much about in recent months, it certainly seems like the perfect time for an update.
In development for at least 4 years Fable 4 has been in development for longer than you might have expected. In a recent tweet, a developer at Playground Games who is working on the game celebrated “four years of working on Fable”.
That means the game’s been in development for at least four years and that development possibly started just a year after series creator, Lionhead Studios, was closed. Though we don’t know a huge amount about Fable at the moment, the idea that it’s been in the works for multiple years gives us some hope that we could learn more in the near future.
Fable 4's combat could feel like The Witcher A developer from CD Projekt RED (The Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077 ) will be working on the game's combat system. As reported by PCGamesN , gameplay designer Paweł Kapała is heading up the combat at Fable developer Playground Games, with his LinkedIn page confirming the role entails "designing and implementing combat in Fable."
In our opinion , the kind of sword-and-spells combat of The Witcher 3, one of the bestselling video games of all time, would be a perfect template for a Fable game, especially given how similar some of the in-game spells are.
You’ll probably see it before Elder Scrolls 6 Fable 4 might be a while away but it seems possible that you’ll get to play it before the Elder Scrolls 6, according to Phil Spencer.
Speaking during a recent IGN podcast , Spencer touched on the tone of Fable in comparison to Elder Scrolls and upcoming Xbox exclusive Avowed, saying, “Fable’s always been a little more light-hearted and a little more British, I think I could say, and I think Playground will keep it there,” adding, “Elder Scrolls 6 is further out, and when that comes out I think it's going to be incredible.”
Take confidence in Playground Games, says Phil Spencer Fable 4 is being created by Playground Games, the studio perhaps best known for its work on the Forza Horizon series but Phil Spencer wants fans to have confidence in the studio. Speaking on the Dropped Frames podcast (via VGC ), Spencer said:
“The only thing I can really say about Fable is, seeing the pedigree of the team and Playground, and where they set the bar for themselves in building a game—I think that showed with the Forza Horizon 5 preview that they had—I think people should just take confidence in that [studio director] Gavin [Raeburn] and the team there have that same level of focus on doing something amazing with an IP that we know is really important to a lot of Xbox fans, so we can’t wait to get to show more, but the team is just amazing.”
Forza Horizon 5’s weather system bodes well for Fable 4 Forza Horizon 5 has the series’ most dynamic and impressive weather system yet and, given developer Playground Games is also working on Fable 4, we’re pretty excited about how this technology could translate to an open world Albion. We think that by implementing those dynamic weather systems into the new Fable, Playground Games has the opportunity to give the new Fable its own stamp which neither previous developer Lionhead, or many other RPG developers, have been able to before. The idea of an Albion where each region has its own seasonal weather is an exciting one—it could reflect the passing of time more effectively and genuinely improve immersion and uniqueness to each part of the game’s map.
It could be years away As far as we can tell, Fable 4 is still in the early stages of development and it could be a while before we get the chance to play it. In fact, speaking on a VGC Off the Record podcast , industry reporter and head of GamesIndustry.biz Chris Dring said that the game’s release, along with other announced Xbox exclusives, could be many years down the line.
Based on conversations he’s had with employees at Xbox Game Studios, Dring said, “Those games that they announced - Everwild, Perfect Dark, Fable - are so far away. As in, there might even be a new Xbox (a mid-tier upgrade) by the time those games come out.
They are so far away, and no wonder Xbox is looking at investing and signing certain products at the minute, because they don’t have a lineup of big exclusives at all.”
Fable is set to use ForzaTech engine According to a previous job listing , which was for a Software Engineer at Turn10 Studios, Fable will be built using the ForzaTech engine, which powers the Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games. The listing states that the team is looking for a candidate who can enrich “the toolset to support an open-world action RPG – Fable” and also add new features like “ ray tracing to support the next console generation”.
A new team member There’s a new member on the development team for Fable: Steve Thornton. Thornton is coming aboard as Associate Chief Designer for the game and brings his experience working on titles like Halo Infinite, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and some LEGO titles to the table.
A new writer Anna Megill, the senior writer and narrative lead at Remedy Entertainment during the development of Control, is joining Playground Games as the lead writer for Fable.
Megill announced on Twitter that she’s leaving her current role at Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment to join Playground Games in 2021.
The team behind the game Shortly after Fable itself was revealed, we got some insight into the impressive team that’s working on the game thanks to VGC . We now know that there are a host of veteran game designers working on the Fable reboot, including the lead quest designer for the Borderlands series, a level designer for GTA V and GTA Online, and a whole load of writers who worked on Batman: Arkham Knight.
There have been rumors that Fable will go down the route of being an MMO but the experience of those working on the project certainly suggests it’s going to take a more open-world RPG approach, perhaps with an online multiplayer component. That said, we can’t really be sure until Playground Games and Microsoft reveal some more official details.
That wild pre-announcement rumor Before Fable 4 was even announced to the world, there was a 2019 video leak that claimed to give insight into the game's setting and story. The video disappeared from the internet but a Reddit thread with what it described remained and some of the details sound pretty wild. We're talking "Albion and Aurora destroyed by an asteroid, a new continent with time and interplanetary travel" wild.
Although it sounds pretty out there, it would create the opportunity for a setting reset for the Fable series, making it easier to take the series back to its medieval fantasy roots with some extremely different elements to still make it feel fresh. In the game's reveal trailer, brief as it was, we didn't get any obvious sense that the new game will be more advanced in time than Fable 3's Industrial Revolution setting.
Of course, this is a leak from an unverified source so until Playground Games or Microsoft start revealing solid details about Fable 4, we'd say take it with a big pinch of salt. You can read the full leak in the tweet below.
Fable 4 is likely an open-world game In January 2018, Eurogamer said that according to sources close to the project, a brand new high-budget Fable game was in the works. Now, we know that to be true.
This news came less than two years after the closure of Lionhead Studios, and the report correctly stated that Playground Games, best known for its work on the Forza Horizon series, will be the new developers for the series.
Eurogamer's sources said that a team of more than 200 will be working on Fable from the team’s new offices in Leamington Spa, though development was still in the very early stages.
Just what kind of Fable might Playground be working on? Well, the report said that the game is planned to be an open-world action RPG with a focus on character and story. That certainly tallies with everything we saw in the reveal trailer, with the final shot showing off a big world that looks ripe for exploration.
It would also make sense that Playground would bring its open world expertise from Forza Horizon into a game like this.
Either way, we can't wait to see what it's come up with. Fable has been dormant for far too long.