Morning Highlights

• OpenAI releases the GPT-5.1-Codex-Max model
• Google announces the Nano Banana Pro model
• WeChat Desktop gets a practical upgrade
• Qualcomm unveils its Snapdragon control panel
• Kodak’s brand licensee teases the Snapic A1 film camera
• CCTV exposes gas stations using modified pumps and cheating software to steal fuel and evade taxes
• Apple Music reveals its Artists of the Year
• Pixel 10 now supports peer-to-peer transfer with Apple devices
• HarmonyOS Galaxy Connect app launches on the App Store
• Rumors worth a glance only

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OpenAI Releases the GPT-5.1-Codex-Max Model

On November 19, OpenAI published a blog post announcing GPT-5.1-Codex-Max, an agent-based programming model featuring major improvements in long-range reasoning, efficiency, and real-time interaction. Tests show that GPT-5.1-Codex-Max achieves 77.9% accuracy on SWE-Bench Verified, which evaluates real-world software problem-solving capabilities; 58.1% on Terminal-Bench 2.0; and a score of 2439 on the LiveCodeBench Pro coding Elo benchmark.

One of the core upgrades in GPT-5.1-Codex-Max is a mechanism called Compaction. When approaching the context window limit, it intelligently retains crucial content while discarding minor details, enabling the model to process millions of tokens continuously without performance degradation. In internal testing, the model successfully completed complex tasks that ran for over 24 hours, including multi-step code refactoring and autonomous debugging. This technology also boosts token efficiency by roughly 30%, reducing both cost and latency.

GPT-5.1-Codex-Max has already been integrated into several OpenAI-developed Codex environments, including the official command-line tool (Codex CLI), internal code-review tools, and multiple interactive programming environments. Source

Google announces the Nano Banana Pro model

Google has announced Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image), a model built upon Gemini 3 Pro and a major upgrade following the original Nano Banana. The new model offers stronger reasoning abilities, real-time knowledge integration, more accurate text rendering, and richer creative editing tools—allowing abstract ideas, notes, data, or sketches to be transformed more intuitively into images, infographics, or design prototypes.

Google states that with Gemini 3 Pro’s deep understanding and world knowledge, Nano Banana Pro not only produces more realistic and contextually complete visuals, but can also use Search Grounding to obtain real-time facts and up-to-date information. For example, Nano Banana Pro can automatically gather weather reports, recipes, plant information, and more from the web, and convert them into visualized infographics—ideal for education, popular science, business presentations, and everyday content creation.

In text rendering, Nano Banana Pro supports in-image text generation and layout capabilities. It can produce multilingual, highly readable, detail-rich fonts and paragraphs for posters, titles, packaging designs, infographics, and more, while supporting various font styles, textures, and calligraphic expressions—resulting in more accurate localized outputs.

In terms of consistency and creative composition, Nano Banana Pro can blend up to 14 input images while maintaining identity consistency for up to 5 people. It also enhances local editing and creative control, enabling adjustments to lighting (such as day–night switching), focus, depth of field, composition, camera angles, or even applying complex color grading. Source

WeChat Desktop gets a practical upgrade

WeChat for Windows and Mac released version 4.1.5 on November 20. The update introduces a scrolling screenshot feature, allowing users to scroll downward after initiating a screenshot to generate a long capture. In file management, selecting a file received in WeChat now offers a new “Download to…” option, letting users save files directly to a specified directory instead of being restricted to the default path. Users can also disable “Automatically download files under 20 MB” in settings to prevent small files from being saved automatically to a fixed location.

In addition, the Windows version now adds an emoji button in the message forwarding interface, allowing users to insert emojis directly into the note field and send them together with text. Source

Qualcomm Releases Snapdragon Control Panel

Qualcomm has introduced the Snapdragon Control Panel, which can automatically detect PC games installed on Snapdragon X Elite devices and provide optimization suggestions based on the system configuration. Its overall operation is similar to AMD and Nvidia GPU control panels, supporting settings such as frame-rate limits, anti-aliasing modes, and texture filtering. Players can also update their Adreno GPU drivers with a single click to achieve more stable performance. Qualcomm states that it has repaired and optimized over 100 games since last year and will continue releasing updates.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Qualcomm are jointly enhancing system-level gaming capabilities. The Microsoft Prism emulator now supports the x86 AVX instruction set—an important dependency for many games and creative applications. Qualcomm’s previously released Snapdragon X2 Elite chip supports AVX2 emulation, and older Snapdragon X devices will receive related updates in the coming weeks. The new Xbox app now allows ARM64-native compatible games to be installed directly on Windows on Arm devices, and the full PC Game Pass library is now playable locally, not limited to cloud gaming.

Regarding multiplayer game compatibility, Qualcomm is working with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to Windows on Arm devices with full kernel-level anti-cheat support. Qualcomm is also collaborating with Tencent ACE, Roblox Hyperion, Denuvo, InProtect GameGuard, Uncheater, and BattleEye to expand compatibility for more mainstream multiplayer titles. Source

Kodak’s brand licensee teases the Snapic A1 film camera

kodakfilm.reto has released a new teaser video, hinting at the upcoming launch of the Snapic A1 film camera. The video shows a minimalist black design equipped with a 25mm three-element glass lens, balancing compact size with image quality. The camera body features a small display for basic shooting information and operation controls. The Snapic A1 will support automatic exposure (AE) and offer multiple adjustable shooting parameters, giving users a more convenient experience while preserving the characteristic texture of film. The official release date and price have not yet been announced. Source

CCTV exposes gas stations using modified pumps and cheating software to steal fuel and evade taxes

According to a November 19 report from CCTV’s Focus Report, some gas stations have been stealing fuel by tampering with fuel pump motherboards and installing cheating software. During surprise inspections, regulators discovered that these gas stations kept two identical-looking computers—one of which contained software used to configure fuel-theft parameters. The theft ratio typically ranged from 2% to 5%. For example, when paying for 60 liters, consumers would receive at least 1.2 liters less.
In addition, some stations were also involved in large-scale tax evasion. One station’s paper records showed a July revenue of 770,000 yuan, but an encrypted ledger found on a USB drive revealed real sales reaching 8.5 million yuan—concealing nearly 8 million yuan of revenue.
In May this year, police cracked down on a cheating software operation known as “Leyou,” arresting individuals involved in its development, sales, and use. Over 360 sets of the software had been sold across 21 provinces and cities nationwide. Source

Apple Music reveals its Artists of the Year

Apple Music has announced Tyler, the Creator as its Artist of the Year for 2025, stating that his October 2024 release Chromakopia is his most personally expressive work to date, and it set new Apple Music records for first-day and first-week streams. While on the Chromakopia tour, he also created and released Don’t Tap the Glass, which topped the Apple Music charts in more than 55 countries on its release day.

Apple Music notes that from November 2024 to October 2025, Tyler reached career highs in global streams, listener numbers, and total listening time—surpassing 4.5 billion minutes. He also earned five Grammy nominations for Chromakopia and Don’t Tap the Glass. Source

Pixel 10 now supports peer-to-peer transfer with Apple devices

Google has announced that the Pixel 10 now supports direct peer-to-peer file transfers with iPhone, iPad, and macOS devices via Quick Share—without routing through servers and without relying on Apple’s technical support. Users simply need to enable “Everyone” visibility (limited to 10 minutes if desired) on an Apple device, after which it becomes discoverable by the Pixel. The transfer interface appears identical to a standard AirDrop request. Transfers in the opposite direction also work, as long as the Pixel is set to receive. Google emphasizes that the entire feature is independently implemented and has passed internal privacy reviews as well as penetration testing by third-party security firm NetSPI.

For now, this capability is exclusive to the latest Pixel 10 series, though Google says support will expand in the future. Apple has not yet provided a response. Source

HarmonyOS Galaxy Connect app launches on the App Store

On November 21, the HarmonyOS Star River Connect app officially launched on the Apple App Store. The app currently allows Huawei devices running HarmonyOS 6.0 and iPhone/iPad to transfer contacts, photos, videos, and files between each other, and includes features such as device search, device information display, and transfer history. Huawei previously announced at the HarmonyOS 6 special event that the system would support cross-device transfer experiences with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, so this app is also expected to expand to macOS. Source

Rumors worth a glance only

• According to reports, Samsung originally planned to develop a glass-substrate micro-OLED display technology for Apple, known as G-VR, aimed at reducing production costs for the rumored Vision Air headset. Unlike costly silicon-based micro-OLED, G-VR uses a glass substrate, simplifying manufacturing and lowering costs, potentially allowing Vision Air to be positioned as a more affordable product compared to the high-end Vision Pro. However, new information suggests Apple has shelved the plan and may even ask Samsung to halt G-VR development entirely. While reports do not specify why Vision Air may be canceled, industry analysts believe Apple could be redirecting resources toward its smart glasses project. According to supply chain sources, Apple’s first smart glasses are expected to debut in 2026, although the initial version will not feature full AR display capabilities. A version with true AR display is expected to arrive in 2027. Source
• According to GalaxyClub, Samsung is developing a smart glasses device under the codename “Haean,” model SM-O200P. Unlike the SM-I series used for Galaxy XR headsets, this naming suggests that Samsung intends smart glasses to be a distinct product line rather than a continuation of its XR series. The device will reportedly use photochromic lenses that automatically darken in bright environments to reduce glare, then return to transparent indoors—improving usability for outdoor and everyday wear scenarios. The glasses are expected to include a built-in camera for imaging or visual assistance, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for working alongside a phone or other devices. However, the device will not include independent cellular data capabilities and will instead rely on paired devices for network access. Source