Author: Mobile Syrup

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Mobile Syrup

Sonos has refurbished speakers and soundbars 25 percent off

Sonos Canada has freshly restocked its refurbished store with a few speakers and soundbars, so if you missed the company’s Black Friday sale, now might be a good time to pick up a speaker or soundbar for 25 percent off.

Check out some of the refurbished devices available below:

Refurbished One SL – Shadow: $149 (regularly $199)

Refurbished Beam (Gen 1): $299 (regularly $399)

Refurbished Beam (Gen 1) – Shadow: $299 (regularly $399)

Refurbished Arc SL – Shadow: $629 (regularly $839)

Sonos says that all of its refurbished products go through thorough testing to guarantee new-like quality. The devices come with all of the same accessories and warranty as a new device would, alongside “mint condition packaging” and free shipping.

Check out the Sonos refurbished device page here.

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.

Image credit: Sonos

Source: Sonos Via: iPhoneinCanada

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Mobile Syrup

Public Mobile holiday gifts include 2GB of free data, 500 international minutes

Telus flanker brand Public Mobile is offering new and existing customers free holiday gifts like extra data and international minutes.

Public customers can claim a one-time free 2GB data bonus and 500 minutes of free international calling. Those who use the Public Points rewards system can claim an extra 1GB of free data. Public’s fineprint notes that the international calling add-on enables calling from Canada to the following countries: United States, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Venezuela.

Existing Public customers should keep an eye out for a text coming from Public detailing the rewards. To claim them, reply ‘YES2’ to the text before December 31st, 2022.

For new customers, Public says the free holiday rewards will be added to your account within one week of activating your SIM card.

The free rewards are one-time-only add-ons and will stay on customers’ accounts until fully used.

You can learn more about the rewards in this Public Mobile community post or on the Public Mobile website.

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Mobile Syrup

Here’s what Samsung’s One UI 5.0 can do in Canada

If you’re an owner of a Samsung Galaxy S or Z series device that launched earlier in 2022, you should have recently had the update to Android 13/ One UI 5.0.

Samsung Canada has shared a few of the features that are now available on your device.

Some of the highlights include a fresh new look and feel with a seamless user experience. Additionally, you can now trigger a sequence of actions on your device based on your activities and create customized settings for different parts of your day.

Further, One UI 5.0 features more intuitive notifications, making it easier to catch up on what’s most important at a glance and access more features just through the shade.

There are also now smart suggestions for Widgets based on usage patterns, smart suggestions now automatically suggest apps and actions that should improve the mobile experience.

You can control all devices connected to your smartphone in a new Connected devices menu, allowing you to access all features that work devices such as Quick Share, Smart View, and Samsung DeX.

Other features include the ability to customize albums in the Gallery app, stacking widgets on the Home screen, quickly opening apps in split screen, better lock screen customization, smoother animations, improved blur effects and simplified colour schemes, and more.

You can learn more about One UI 5.0 on Samsung Canada’s website.

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Mobile Syrup

The Mandalorian Season 3 to premiere on Disney+ in March 2023

Lucasfilm has confirmed that the highly anticipated third season of The Mandalorian will premiere on Disney+ on March 1st, 2023.

The announcement came via the series’ official social media channels alongside a picture of the titular bounty hunter and Grogu, AKA Baby Yoda.

While the second season of The Mandalorian ended in December 2020, Mando and Grogu appeared in the spin-off series The Book of Boba Fett, which ran from December 2021 to February 2022. The first trailer for Season 3 dropped in September:

In Season 3, Mando and Grogu travel to Mandalore to confront Bo-Katan and the Mandalorians. Pedro Pascal stars as The Mandalorian, while Carl Weathers (Greef), Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan) and Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon) are also set to return.

Ahsoka, another The Mandalorian spin-off, is also set to premiere sometime in 2023. The series follows Rosario Dawson’s eponymous former Jedi, who previously appeared in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, in a story that picks up where the animated series Star Wars: Rebels left off.

Image credit: Lucasfilm

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Mobile Syrup

Pending FDA approval, Neuralink human trials to begin within six months

At its Fall 2022 Show and Tell event that aired yesterday, November 30th, Elon Musk claimed that his neurotechnology company Neuralink expects to start human clinical trials within the next six months.

The company is developing a wireless brain chip interface that, once implanted, aims to help those physically disabled to communicate and move with more ease, with the overarching focus on helping users control a computer with nothing more than their brain activity.

This comes two years after the company installed brain-machine interface implants in pigs, and over a year and a half after the company showed off a video of a monkey playing Pong with its mind.

During the event, Musk said that the company has already submitted most of the necessary paperwork to initiate human trials to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with the goal to receive approval and begin trials in 2023. “”We want to be extremely careful and certain that it will work well before putting a  device into a human but we’ve submitted I think most of our paperwork to the FDA and we think probably in about six months we should be able to have our first Neuralink in a human,” said Musk.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time talks of Neuralink human trials are doing the rounds. Musk first hoped for human trials to begin in 2020. Subsequently, in February 2021, Musk said that Neuralink is awaiting FDA approval to initiate human trials, and that trials should begin at the end of the year (2021).

Now, the earliest the trials can start isn’t until 2023.

The first human trials will focus on two major human functions, vision and movement. The chip will aim to restore vision and re-enable the movement of certain muscles in people. “Even if someone has never had vision ever, like they were born blind, we believe we can still restore vision,” said Musk during the event. Further, “As miraculous as that may sound, we are confident that it is possible to restore full-body functionality to someone who has a severed spinal cord.”

Find the complete Fall 2022 Show and Tell event below:

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Neuralink

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Mobile Syrup

Hyped Twitter alternative Hive shutters servers to fix security issues

Following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, there was a rush of Twitter users seeking possible replacement apps. Suddenly there was a ton of buzz around apps like Mastodon, Hive, Post, and more. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before problems started with some of these up-and-coming Twitter killers.

In a post on Twitter, Hive Social announced it would temporarily turn off its servers to fix several security issues. German cyber group Zerforschung warned Hive and its users in a blog post detailing the security issues. Zerforschung says it “found a number of critical vulnerabilities” that it confidentially reported to Hive. The groups says the issues it found could allow an attack to access all of a user’s data, including private posts, private messages, shared media and even deleted messages. That included private email addresses and phone numbers entered during login.

Worse, Zerforschung says attackers could overwrite data such as posts owned by other users. In a video shared in Zerforschung’s blog post, the group demonstrates editing another account’s post to say something different.

According to a timeline released by Zerforschung, it began investigating Hive on November 23rd and completed its report on November 26th. The attempted to contact Hive several times but didn’t receive an acknowledgement from Hive until November 28th. Hive shared the tweet about shutting down its servers on November 30th — Zerforschung notes that its testing suggests one vulnerability may be fixed as of November 30th.

Source: Hive, Zerforschung 

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Mobile Syrup

First Pokémon Scarlet and Violet patch fixes ‘select bugs’

A new patch has been released for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, although it’s unclear if developer Game Freak has fixed any of the significant technical issues people are experiencing.

Season 1 of Ranked Battles is starting now, allowing you to enjoy Ranked Battles through the Battle Stadium. Game Freak also fixed an issue that caused the music to not play correctly during the battles with the Elite Four and the Top Champion in the Victory Road path.

Other “select bug fixes” have been made, but the patch notes aren’t specific about which ones have been addressed. Scarlet and Violet suffer from a slew of technical issues, including frame rate drops, crashes, clipping, pop-in and more.

Game Freak says, “we are aware that players may encounter issues that affect the games’ performance. Our goal is always to give players a positive experience with our games, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We take the feedback from players seriously and are working on improvements to the games.”

It’s unclear if this game is now actually worth purchasing. I’ll update my copy of the title and see what improvements have actually been made.

Source: Nintendo

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Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest returns in June 2023, right before E3

Summer Game Fest will officially return for its fourth year on June 8th, 2023.

Produced by Canada’s Geoff Keighley, the creator of The Game Awards, Summer Game Fest 2023 will feature a big live kickoff show on June 8th. Summer Game Fest, which was conceived in 2020 as an E3-esque event amid the COVID-19 pandemic, has previously been fully digital.

In 2023, though, Keighley will welcome industry and fans alike to the YouTube Theater at California’s Hollywood Park for “world premieres, live gameplay demos and announcements.” Tickets will go on sale in early 2023 and a livestream on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms will be available for those at home.

Notably, Summer Game Fest falls just days before E3 2023, which will be held in Los Angeles between June 13th and 16th. Keighley previously produced shows for E3 before opting to create Summer Game Fest, making his June event feel like a direct competitor to E3. It remains to be seen how publishers might divide — or share — reveals between both shows.

Besides Summer Game Fest returning in a new format, people are also looking to see how E3 fares next year. The convention skipped 2020 entirely before doing an all-digital event in 2021 that many deemed lacklustre. The trade show’s last in-person event was in 2019. Even before the pandemic, though, there was discussion surrounding E3’s relevance, especially as companies can easily hold their own Nintendo Direct-style virtual events to directly reach consumers.

E3’s organizer, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), aims to bring back the show in a big way through a new partnership with ReedPop, the organizer of such popular events as PAX, New York Comic Con and Star Wars Celebration. It remains to be seen what, exactly, ReedPop has in store for E3 2023, although it promises a mix of physical and digital programming for both media and fans.

In the meantime, Keighley will once again host The Game Awards in Los Angeles on December 8th, 2022.

Image credit: Summer Game Fest

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Mobile Syrup

What’s new on Xbox Game Pass on console, PC and mobile in early December 2022

Every month, Xbox brings new titles to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

Normally, these come in two waves and now, the company has revealed what’s coming to Game Pass in the first half of December. Note: ‘Cloud’ refers to a game that can be streamed via Xbox Cloud Gaming to a variety of devices, including Android and iOS.

Highlights this month include this year’s Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Justin Roiland’s High on Life and Montreal-based Manavoid Entertainment’s Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan.

See below for the full list:

  • Eastward (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 1st
  • The Walking Dead: The Final Season (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 1st
  • Totally Reliable Delivery Service (PC) — December 1st
  • Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 6th
  • Hello Neighbor 2 (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 6th
  • Chained Echoes (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 8th
  • Metal: Hellsinger (Xbox One) — December 8th (already on Game Pass for Xbox Series X/S, Cloud and PC)
  • High On Life (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 13th
  • Potion Craft (Console and PC) — December 13th
  • Hot Wheels Unleashed – Game of the Year Edition (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 15th
  • Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan (Cloud, Console and PC) — December 15th

Additionally, here’s what’s leaving Game Pass on December 15th:

  • Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Cloud, Console, and PC)
  • Breathedge (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Firewatch (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Lake (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Neoverse (Cloud and Console)
  • One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4 (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Race with Ryan (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (Cloud, Console and PC)
  • Rory McIlroy PGA Tour (Console) — EA Play
  • Transformers: Battlegrounds (Cloud, Console, and PC)

As always, Game Pass subscribers can take advantage of an exclusive 20 percent discount to purchase any game on the service and keep playing even after it leaves the catalogue.

Xbox Game Pass and Game Pass for PC each cost $11.99 CAD/month, while Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both versions of Game Pass, Xbox Cloud Gaming, EA Play and Xbox Live Gold, is priced at $16.99/month.

Find out what came to Game Pass last month here.

Image credit: Warner Bros.

Source: Xbox

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Steam will giveaway one Steam Deck per minute during The Game Awards

Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards takes place on Thursday, December 8th this year. You can watch the event live for a chance to win a new Steam Deck.

Valve is giving away a new Steam Deck to a random Steam user every minute of The Game Awards, and users in Canada can participate.

The Steam Decks being given away are the 512GB ones, which normally cost $819 and feature premium anti-glare etched glass. It also comes with an exclusive carrying case, an exclusive Steam Community profile bundle and an exclusive virtual keyboard theme.

It’s worth noting that the Steam Deck giveaway is only available for Steam customers who are in Canada, the US, the UK or EU, have a Steam account in good standing, and have made a Steam purchase between November 14, 2021, and November 14, 2022.

Register for the giveaway here. “You must register to enter the drawing and be watching The Game Awards on Steam to be eligible to win,” reads Steam’s page. “On December 8th when The Game Awards airs, every minute a random name will be drawn from the pool of registrants currently watching the show on Steam.”

The event can be streamed live at https://steam.tv. Winners of the giveaway would be announced in the live chat as the drawing takes place.

Full giveaway rules can be found here.

Learn more about the Steam Deck here.

Image credit: Steam

Source: Steam