Earlier this week, Fido rolled out a $50/40GB plan, and now the Rogers flanker brand is back with discounts on smartphones. We’ve highlighted some of the better offers below:
If you’re looking for a solid pair of wireless earbuds at a discount, the Google Store’s deal on the Pixel Buds Pro is pretty stellar.
Right now, the high-end wireless earbuds are on sale for $199.99, $60 off their regular price of $259.99. Google ran a similar offer on the Pixel Buds Pro during Black Friday.
Google’s Pixel buds Pro are available in ‘Charcoal,’ ‘Fog,’ and ‘Lemongrass.’ In Brad Bennett’s MobileSyurpreview of the Pixel Buds Pro, he praised their great sound, solid battery life and excellent mic.
Along with this offer, Google also slashed the price of all of its smartphones, including $300 off the Pixel 7 Pro, bringing the device’s cost down to $879.
Looking for holiday deals on Google Pixel devices and accessories? Look down below as the company has discounted its newest smartphone, watch, earbuds and accessories.
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Over the past year, I’ve become more interested in virtual, augmented and mixed reality, how the technology affects our world, and what we can learn from it. Virtual reality can make games far more immersive than a typical gaming experience. That’s why the first title from new virtual reality studio Cyndicate caught my eye.
Cyndicate develops narrative game experiences with VR in mind. To create this content in the best way possible, the studio’s team comes from different areas of the film and gaming industry. For example, Dave Senior Jr. worked on TV series like Canadian-made Orphan Black and Ubisoft games like Far Cry 5, Far Cry New Dawn, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2 and Watch Dogs Legion. On the other hand, Cynthia Preston has an impressive IMDB with an extensive background in movies and TV shows like Murdoch Mysteries, American Gods and Mute, where she met Senior Jr. (who also worked on Mute). Though Preston won’t be acting in the VR experiences, her knowledge of film brings a perspective regarding how characters will speak, what they say and more. Finally, Caitlin Garvey has taken on various roles at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Cyndicate started with Garvey’s The Chrysalis Protocol — a dark and gritty story with a Black Mirror vibe — that was a top ten finalist for the Penguin House Canada Student Award for Fiction in 2021. Garvey was put in touch with Preston through a family friend, who was very excited about his writing and wanted to create a film, which Senior Jr. redirected into a virtual reality game experience. After speaking with various people in the industry, they decided that Garvey’s idea wasn’t perfect for a VR experience, so they came up with another concept. This idea was Lost Legacy VR, an action-adventure narrative designed with fans of Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones and Uncharted in mind. However, the project eventually featured a space theme and became S.T.A.R.S VR Delta Lift Off.
Delta Lift Off is a first-person space-focused virtual reality title and Cyndicate’s first release. The game offers a narrative experience where you pilot a spacecraft and navigate to a lunar outpost. You have Houston in your ear, and you navigate through a realistic space capsule launch. Cyndicate says that it worked hand-in-hand with the Space Force Association, a non-profit organization partnered directly with the United States Space Force and space professionals.
With the help of this organization, S.T.A.R.S Delta Lift Off aims to put you in the seat of an astronaut and give you an authentic experience of what a space capsule might look like 10 years into the future, complete with an AI called Luna.
It won’t be an exact one-to-one representation, as requested by the Space Force Association, but it aims to be a real holistic space experience, the team explained during an interview with MobileSyrup. Cyndicate says it’s working with astrophysicists, mathematic consultants and other scientists. Because of its realistic nature, anyone with even just a passive interest in space can just put on the headset and enjoy the experience. However, it’s also a game, so if you’re in it for the challenge and have knowledge of physics, Delta Lift Off has that in-store as well.
Senior Jr. says that Santa Monica’sGod of Waris the gold standard in cinematic storytelling due to its emphasis on telling a story without any interruptions (2018’s God of War and its sequel God of War: Ragnarok feature no loading screens), and that’s Cyndicate’s goal as well.
The team is working to ensure the game offers roughly an hour-long experience. However, it’s broken up into acts just in case you don’t want to wear a virtual reality headset for a long period.
Overall, Cyndicate’s first project, Delta Lift Off, will be fairly linear. Of course, there will be gameplay elements that involve failure conditions, where you’ll have to try again. Following the initial launch of Delta Lift Off, Cyndicate plans to launch seven to eight more S.T.A.R.S missions. The plan is to make these missions more and more complex with NPCs as your companions and crew mates, but Delta Lift Off is the main focus, where Cyndicate really wants to make you feel like the player is the star of the story.
Garvey says that dialogue choices are something they’ll consider looking at down the road. Additionally, Cyndicate’s Lost Legacy will offer more narrative pathways with replayability.
This first title will be available through the Oculus Store and Steam VR and is compatible with various virtual reality headsets.
Delta Lift Off isn’t ready for lift-off just yet, but you can join the waitlist, here.
In the Android 13 QPR2 beta 1, Google is adding several tweaks help adapt the Pixel launcher to tablet and foldable-sized displays.
This update seems to primarily emphasize the tablet-focused taskbar, and was first spotted by Mishaal Rahman from Esper.
It’s described as a transient taskbar, according to lines in the code. This means that rather than being visible at all times, you can swipe down to hide the feature, or the bar can automatically disappear after a short time. To make it visible again, you simply swipe up.
You can also access the taskbar while in the recents overview screen.
Google is testing a redesigned taskbar in Android 13 QPR2 Beta 1. They're calling this the “transient taskbar”. pic.twitter.com/H0sTZHuSsz
The feature isn’t finished yet, but the swipe-up gesture can make it difficult to access the home page as that’s also a swipe-up gesture. You also need to have the display density settings higher than 600. It’s worth noting that it looks like the feature might also come to smaller devices as well.
With Google working on features like the transient taskbar, hopefully, it means we’ll see a foldable Pixel in 2023. That said, it’s more likely designed for the Pixel Tablet that’s already confirmed to release next year.
Smart phone with TIK TOK logo, which is a popular social network on the internet.
TikTok is testing a new YouTube-like horizontal full-screen mode.
Select users around the world have access to a “full screen” button on videos. Clicking the button launches the video horizontally.
This isn’t the first YouTube-like feature TikTok has tested. The social media platform now allows users to upload videos as long as 10 minutes, attracting YouTubers who have the freedom to post longer videos.
YouTube has also changed its platform, attracting creators who are used to TikTok’s original platform of short-form videos. The company added shorts, its version of short-form video, to its partner program in September.
Dell Canada has select products available at a discounted price for its Boxing Week promotion, alongside specific coupon codes for up to $100 off on laptops, computers and monitors as part of its ‘Days of Deals’ promotion.
In an update on Twitter, the Tesla Twitter account and its CEO Elon Musk announced that Steam support has now been added to new Tesla vehicles as part of a holiday update, via ArsTechnica.
Tesla vehicles’ central console can now access Steam and its huge catalogue of PC titles, though the functionality is currently limited to high-end Model S and Model X vehicles released in 2022. These vehicles include 16GB of onboard RAM that allows Steam and games to run efficiently on the platform, though according to Musk, older Tesla models would gain the functionality in the future.
You can play Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and 1000s of other games in your *car* with an epic sound system!! https://t.co/F25Qu6HJ63
It’s worth noting that Steam support doesn’t mean that you can play any game available on Steam in the vehicle. Only games that have been verified by Valve for the Steam Deck handheld would work in the vehicle.
Users can play games with a wireless Bluetooth controller, or with a mouse and keyboard, though, as always, the games would only work when the vehicle is parked.
As part of the holiday update, Tesla vehicles now also support Apple Music, a new ‘Dog Mode,’ and Mahjong to ‘Tesla Arcade.’ Read more about it here.
Apple’s highest-end wearable, the 2022-launched Apple Watch Ultra, is currently on sale at Amazon.
Only the GPS+cellular model in 49mm with the Black/Grey Trail Loop in M/L size is discounted.
The watch, which normally costs $1,099, is currently available for $949.99, marking a 14 percent discount on the four-month-old watch.
The Apple Watch Ultra sports the biggest battery in an Apple Watch yet. It can last up to 60 hours on a single charge, while offering several power-intensive features like Emergency SOS, crash detection ECG, temperature sensing and more.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.