Xiaomi Redmi K50 series reportedly launching in February 2022

As per new reports, Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi's K50 series is tentatively scheduled to go official towards the end of February 2022.

Xiaomi sub-brand's Redmi K50 series will consist of four models, likely named K50, K50 Pro, K50 Pro , and K50 Gaming. (REUTERS)

As per new reports, Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi's K50 series is tentatively scheduled to go official towards the end of February 2022. As per GSM Arena, that's hardly a surprise since the K40 series was unveiled during the same period this year.

According to the source, like the K40 lineup, the Redmi K50 series will consist of four models, likely named K50, K50 Pro, K50 Pro , and K50 Gaming.

The Redmi K50 Pro is expected to be powered by the newly announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, whereas the K50 Pro will have the Snapdragon 870 chip at the helm.

The vanilla K50 and K50 Gaming, on the other hand, are expected to come with the Dimensity 7000 and Dimensity 9000, respectively.

The Redmi K50 series phones are also said to run MIUI 13 out of the box and bring back the in-display fingerprint scanners.

As per GSM Arena, the Redmi K50 Gaming is rumoured to feature a 64MP primary camera and ship with a 5,000 mAh battery, while the K50 Pro is said to sport a 108MP primary camera joined by a periscope telephoto unit.

There have also been rumours of the Redmi K50 series coming with 100W charging and IP68 dust and water resistance, but do not expect these features on all four models. 

Qualcomm leans into cameras, gaming with new flagship smartphone chip 

(Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc on Tuesday released its new top-tier smartphone chip aimed at premium-priced Android phones with features like sharper photos and graphics than handsets using chips from rivals.

The San Diego, California-based company is the biggest supplier of the chips at the heart of many Android phones, competing against rivals such as Taiwan's MediaTek Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which uses Qualcomm chips in some of its phones but self-supplies chips for some models.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip released Tuesday will have similar computing cores to rivals like MediaTek, which this month announced a chip aimed at premium phones. But almost every other part of the chip are custom designed by Qualcomm, including those playing a role in the visual quality of photos and graphics-intensive apps like games.

Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of mobile, compute and infrastructure for Qualcomm, said the company has been crafting software that will let handset makers tap deeper into those parts of the chip.

"It's not just saying, I've got the biggest CPU and I can hit a benchmark that lasts one minute," Katouzian told Reuters in an interview. "We have all these capabilities, and it's really about the user experience. That's going to make a difference."

Qualcomm said that more than a dozen phone makers - including Xiaomi Corp, Sony Group Corp and Honor, the brand spun out of Huawei Technologies Group Ltd - have signed up to use the new chips and that phones featuring it will be on the market before the end of the year.