Author: Mobile Syrup

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Mobile Syrup

How to stream Ryan Reynolds’ new Christmas movie, ‘Spirited,’ in Canada

In case you missed it, beloved Canadian icon Ryan Reynolds has a new Christmas movie coming out called Spirited.

A twist of A Christmas Carol, Spirited finds Clint Briggs (Reynolds) visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell), who helps the spirit to reexamine his own past. The film was directed by Sean Anders (Daddy’s Home), co-stars Octavia Spencer and Sunita Mani and features original music from Oscar winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land).

In Canada and the rest of the world, Spirited will begin streaming exclusively on Apple TV+ on November 18th. This is particularly notable since it’s Reynolds’ first project with Apple following lead roles in Netflix’s 6 Underground, Red Notice and The Adam Project.

An Apple TV+ subscription costs $8.99/month.

Image credit: Apple

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Mobile Syrup

SaskTel adding $100 million to Rural Fibre Initiative

SaskTel is adding millions to an initiative that connects Saskatchewan residents with a secure fibre connection.

The Rural Fibre Initiative focuses on closing the digital divide by connecting residents with SaskTel’s infiNET Service. It delivers internet speeds close to 1Gbps and supports cloud services, video streaming, and smart technologies.

The $100 million investment will connect 80 towns and villages. SaskTel has already connected dozens of communities across the province under the initiative, including Kindersley and Balgonie.

Once completed, SaskTel will have invested $200 million to connect 110,000 residents and businesses in 130 rural communities.

“Once we’ve completed these phases of the Rural Fibre Initiative, our infiNET network, which is already the largest fibre optic broadband network in the province, will reach approximately 80 percent of all Saskatchewan households,” Doug Burnett, SaskTel’s president and CEO, said.

Image credit: SaskTel

Source: SaskTel

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Mobile Syrup

PlayStation 5 DualSense controller $30 off in Canada for Black Friday 2022

The PlayStation 5’s DualSense controller will be up to $30 off at a variety of Canadian retailers for Black Friday 2022.

At GameStop, the standard $89.99 black and white DualSense controllers, as well as the $94.99 ‘Red,’ ‘Blue,’ ‘Pink,’ ‘Purple’ and ‘Grey Camo’ variants, will all cost $64.99 at GameStop starting November 17th.

At Walmart, the special coloured variants will be $30 off as well on November 17th.

Best Buy is also promising that the DualSense will go on sale on the 17th, although the specific savings weren’t quantified.

We’ll update this story should other retailers confirm that they’re offering the DualSense at this rare low price.

Besides being the controller for the ever-popular PS5, the DualSense is notable for having unique features like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

For a round-up of all of our Black Friday deals, follow this link. You can find all of the top deals at Canadian retailers here.

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Mobile Syrup

Google Chrome is testing Material You colour theming

Chrome is the latest product from Google to adopt the company’s trendy ‘Material You’ theming engine. However, since the design rules for Material You are half-baked, I can foresee some issues arising with this in the future.

To test out the new feature, you need to get Google’s beta browser, Chrome Canary. This browser is essentially the same as standard Chrome, but it gets new features first for beta testing. You also need to ensure you’re on Canary version 110 or newer.

From there, you need to input chrome://flags/ into your search bar to get into the secret Google settings panel. Once it loads, search for ‘Customize Chrome Color Extraction’ and enable it.

The first major limitation of this browser extension is that it takes its colour choice from the wallpaper you set on your new page screen on Chrome. I’d have rather it take the colour from the wallpaper on my computer, similar to how it works on Android phones. It also only seems to work with stock Google wallpapers. Any custom uploads don’t seem to change colours in my testing.

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This is where things get a little convoluted since there are no well-defined rules for how Material You should work. I was hoping that Google would attach the Material You-themed colours from your phone to the rest of your Google products. Ideally, this would establish a colour profile for each member of your family, and when they interacted with things like Google TVs and smart displays, those devices would adopt that colour to unify and personalize that person’s software and hardware.

However, Google seems to be taking more of a nearsighted approach to implementing the feature. I can see this as being strange for people running Chrome OS in the near future if Material You gets rolled out there with more consistency. Are we expected to have both Chrome and Chrome OS adopt different colours based on separate aspects of the ecosystem?

As Google builds towards the Pixel ecosystem with the launch of the Pixel Watch and Buds, the company needs to spend more time thinking about how to connect all of its devices, not how to fracture them.

Via: Android Police 

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Mobile Syrup

Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with new camera, gaming and audio features

At Qualcomm’s annual Snapdragon Summit, the company unveiled its latest chipset technology, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. This new chip will be available in new flagship Android devices throughout the year, including Canada’s version of Samsung’s S23 series.

However, Qualcomm is working with companies like Asus, Motorola, OnePlus and ZTE, so the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be featured in several more devices by the end of the year.

Qualcomm says that Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s upgraded Hexagon Processor offers its most advanced Qualcomm AI Engine ever, with features like multi-language translation and transcription, advanced AI Cinematic video and its Sensing Hub, which offers dual-AI processors for the first time, with new experiences like direct-to-app voice assistance to control your favourite apps. Further, you should expect 4.35x faster AI performance and Micro Tile Inferencing.

With the 8 Gen 2, you should expect better camera performance in devices sporting the chip. The 8 Gen 2 is also compatible with 200-megapixel photo capture, which is rumoured to be coming to the upcoming S23 Ultra. Further, expect 8K HDR video capture in 10-bit HDR.

This is also the first Snapdragon platform with AI-powred Always Sensing Camera. The Always-Sensing Camera offers features like allowing the camera to scan QR codes with the phone being turned off, and a new privacy option which kills notifications if it notices a secondary person looking at your phone. Qualcomm says this Always-Sensing Camera technology is entirely on-device and in its Sensing Hub. The company also added a second AI processor to the chip that increased AI performance by 2x and features 50 percent more memory.

Away from the camera, the Sensing Hub will also support experiences that enable custom wake words, and additional features from the Qualcomm AI Stack, including AI Studio, to allow developers to create even better next-gen AI apps.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports Unreal Engine 5 and Metahuman framework for realistic human characters. It also features Vulkan 1.3 API that supports Ray Tracing. With its Ray Tracing capabilities, the 8 Gen 2 can bring lifelike lighting effects like shadows, reflections and illumination to your games. The Adreno GPU offers up to 25 percent faster performance with up to 45 percent better power efficiency. Kryo CPU improves performance by up to 35 percent, while new micro-architecture allows up to 40 percent more power efficiency.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also brings HDR Vivid, a China-based standard in addition to HDR 10, HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision.

The 8 Gen 2 sports Snapdragon X70 5G Modem RF System, the world’s first and only mobile platform with a dedicated 5G AI processor. Additionally, it works with Wi-Fi 7 due to its Fast Connect 7800 Mobile Connectivity System. Also, expect blazing speeds of up to 5.8Gbps, which is more than double than Wi-Fi 6. It features 5G Dual-SIM Dual-Active, which lets you simultaneously use two 5G SIM cards, alongside enhanced Face Unlock for its security.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 supports spatial audio with dynamic head tracking for ultra-immersive gaming and multimedia experiences. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 supports 48kHz lossless music streaming technology and the lowest-ever latency at 48ms for better gaming.

Image credit: Qualcomm

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Mobile Syrup

Get a $200-$250 Best Buy Gift Card if you finance a Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 or 7 Pro

Best Buy Canada is currently offering free gift cards when you purchase a Google Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro with financing from Fido and Rogers.

Check out the deals available below:

It’s worth noting that the price mentioned above is just for the device, and you’ll have to pay the monthly data plan charge on top of the device price. A credit check may be required, and the plan can only be activated in-store.

For a round-up of all of our Black Friday deals, follow this link. You can find all of the top deals at Canadian retailers 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.

Source: Best Buy

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Mobile Syrup

Here are The Game Awards 2022 nominees you can play on Xbox Game Pass

One of the nice things about awards shows is they give more visibility to projects you might have missed.

To that point, the full list of nominees for The Game Awards 2022 was revealed earlier this week, and it featured a slew of games both big and small. Naturally, then, you might want to check some of them out.

Thankfully, quite a few of them are actually available on Xbox Game Pass, making them easier and more affordable to try across Xbox consoles, PC and mobile. A couple of them are even Canadian.

See below for the full list:

Game of the Year

  • A Plague Tale: Requiem

Best Debut Indie

  • Norco
  • Tunic (Halifax’s Andrew Shouldice)
  • Vampire Survivors

Best Narrative

  • Immortality
  • A Plague Tale: Requiem

Best Art Direction

  • A Plague Tale: Requiem

Best Score and Music

  • Metal: Hellsinger
  • A Plague Tale: Requiem

Best Performance

  • Immortality (Manon Gage)
  • A Plague Tale: Requiem (Charlotte McBurney)

Best Multiplayer

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Montreal’s Tribute Games)

Innovation in Accessibility

  • As Dusk Falls
  • Return to Monkey Island

Best Action

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

Best Action/Adventure

  • A Plague Tale: Requiem
  • Tunic

Best Indie

  • Tunic

Games for Impact

  • Citizen Sleeper
  • A Memoir Blue
  • As Dusk Falls

Best Strategy

  • Total War: Warhammer III
  • Two Point Campus

Best Game Direction

  • Immortality

Xbox Game Pass for Console and PC each cost $11.99/month. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both of these as well as Xbox Cloud Gaming (mobile streaming), EA Play and Xbox Live Gold, costs $16.99/month.

The Game Awards will be held live on December 8th. You can vote for your favourite games here.

Via: Aaron Greenberg

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Mobile Syrup

How to watch the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup in Canada

The 2022 FIFA World Cup is taking place in Qatar, with the event kicking off on Sunday, November 20th, and Canada playing its first game on Wednesday, November 23rd.

A total of 32 international teams will battle it out over the course of 29 days, where one team will come out on top as the 2022 FIFA World Cup winner.

Qatar opens the competition on Sunday by going up against Ecuador, whereas the number one-ranked Brazil plays its first game against Serbia on Thursday, November 24th.

The defending World Cup champions France play their first game against Australia on Tuesday, November 22nd, while the number two ranked Belgium is facing off Canada on Wednesday, November 23rd.

2021’s Euro Cup winners Italy could not qualify for the World Cup, and hence, players like Giorgio Chiellini, Marco Verratti, Lorenzo Insigne, Leonardo Bonucci and Federico Chiesa wouldn’t be gracing the big stage.

Two Canadian media outlets have been given broadcast rights to the tournament, CTV and its sports specialty channel TSN. CTV-owned RDS will stream the event in French.

Here is an in-depth guide on how you can watch the 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup in Canada:

Cable

All 2022 FIFA World Cup games will be available to watch on one of TSN’s five channels. Most cable service providers, including Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco, Vidéotron and more, have TSN in their channel catalogue.

Similarly, if your cable provider is Vidéotron, Bell, Telus, SunWire, TekSavvy or Cogeco, you should have access to RDS for coverage of all games in French.

Online Streaming (with cable)

If you have a cable connection that gives you access to the five TSN channels, you can use your cable credentials to log in to the TSN website and watch the games live. You can also login to the TSN app with your cable credentials. You can check if your cable provider allows you to access TSN online here.

TSN’s app is available on Android and iOS.

Similarly, you can sign into the RDS website with your cable credentials to live stream the 32 nations battle it out with commentary in French.

The RDS app can be downloaded on Android and iOS.

Online streaming (without cable)

The 2022 Men’s FIFA World Cup is also available on-demand through TSN Direct, TSN’s subscription program.

The subscriptions are as follows:

  • Monthly Pass: Gives you access to TSN for a month from the date of subscription. The plan is billed monthly, and automatically renews every month. The plan costs $19.99 + tax.
  • Four-month Pass: Gives you access to TSN for four months from the date of subscription. The plan is prepaid, and is billed as a one-time payment for four months. Automatically renews every four months. The plan costs $49.96 + tax for the four months.
  • Annual Pass: Gives you access to TSN for a year from the date of subscription. The plan is prepaid, and is billed as a one-time payment for the year. Automatically renews annually. The plan costs $119.90 + tax for the full year. Click here to subscribe to TSN Direct.

Similarly, if you want to stream the World Cup on-demand in French, you can head to the RSD website and subscribe to RDS Direct. The subscription duration and pricing for RDS Direct is the exact same as TSN Direct. Click here to subscribe to RDS Direct.

Canada’s World Cup squad

Goalkeepers

  • Milan Borjan
  • James Pantemis
  • Dayne St. Clair

Defenders

  • Sam Adekugbe
  • Derek Cornelius
  • Steven Vitoria
  • Joel Waterman
  • Alistair Johnston
  • Richie Laryea
  • Kamal Miller

Midfielders

  • Stephen Eustaquio
  • Liam Fraser
  • Jonathan Osorio
  • Samuel Piette
  • David Wotherspoon
  • Atiba Hutchinson
  • Mark-Anthony Kaye
  • Ismael Kone

Forwards

  • Tajon Buchanan
  • Lucas Cavallini
  • Junior Hoillett
  • Cyle Larin
  • Jonathan David
  • Alphonso Davies
  • Liam Miller
  • Ike Ugbo

2022 FIFA World Cup schedule

November 20th

  • Qatar vs. Ecuador at 11am

November 21st

  • England vs. Iran at 8am
  • Senegal vs. Netherlands at 11am
  • United States vs. Wales at 2pm

November 22nd

  • Argentina vs. Saudi Arabia at 5am
  • Denmark vs. Tunisia at 8am
  • Mexico vs. Poland at 11am
  • France vs. Australia at 2pm

November 23rd

  • Morocco vs. Croatia at 5am
  • Germany vs. Japan at 8am
  • Spain vs. Costa Rica at 11am
  • Belgium vs. Canada at 2pm

November 24th

  • Switzerland vs. Cameroon at 5am
  • Uruguay vs. Korea Republic at 8am
  • Portugal vs. Ghana at 11am
  • Brazil vs. Serbia at 2pm

November 25th

  • Wales vs. Iran at 5am
  • Qatar vs. Senegal at 8am
  • Netherlands vs. Ecuador at 11am
  • England vs. United States at 2pm

November 26th

  • Tunisia vs. Australia at 5am
  • Poland vs Saudi Arabia at 8am
  • France vs. Denmark at 11am
  • Argentina vs. Mexico at 2pm

November 27th

  • Japan vs. Costa Rica at 5am
  • Belgium vs. Morocco at 8am
  • Croatia vs. Canada at 11am
  • Spain vs. Germany at 2pm

November 28th

  • Cameroon vs. Serbia at 5am
  • Korea Republic vs. Ghana at 8am
  • Brazil vs. Switzerland at 11am
  • Portugal vs. Uruguay at 2pm

November 29th

  • Netherlands vs. Qatar at 10am
  • Ecuador vs. Senegal at 10am
  • Wales vs. England at 2pm
  • Iran vs. United States at 2pm

November 30th

  • Australia vs. Denmark at 10am
  • Tunisia vs. France at 10am
  • Poland vs. Argentina at 2pm
  • Saudi Arabia vs. Mexico at 2pm

December 1st

  • Croatia vs. Belgium at 10am
  • Canada vs. Morocco at 10am
  • Japan vs. Spain at 2pm
  • Costa Rica vs. Germany at 2pm

December 2nd

  • Ghana vs. Uruguay at 10am
  • Korea Republic vs Portugal at 10am
  • Serbia vs. Switzerland at 2pm
  • Cameroon vs. Brazil at 2pm

The following matches, including the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals, are TBD. Check out the full schedule here.

Image credit: FIFA

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Mobile Syrup

Here are GameStop’s best Black Friday deals

Right on cue, video game retailer GameStop has dropped all of its Black Friday sales, offering notable discounts on games like The Last of Us Part I, Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West and more.

Below are all of the offers:

  • DualSense controller — $64.99 (save $30)
  • Elden Ring — $49.99 (save $30)
  • Gran Turismo 7 — $49.99 PS5/$39.99 PS4 (save up to $40)
  • Gotham Knights — $59.99 (save $30)
  • The Last of Us Part 1 — $59.99 (save $30)
  • The Last of Us Part II — $14.99 (save $35)
  • NBA 2K22 — $49.99 (save $40)
  • PGA Tour 2K23 — $59.99 (save $30)
  • Plague Tale Requiem — $59.99 (save $20)
  • The Quarry — $59.99 (save $20)
  • Xbox Series X controller — $59.99 (save $15)

You can find all of GameStop’s deals at this link.

GameStop’s Black Friday sale runs from November 18th – 28th.

For a round-up of all of our Black Friday deals, follow this link. You can find all of the top deals at Canadian retailers here.

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Mobile Syrup

Public Mobile refigures old offer for Black Friday deal

Public Mobile’s Black Friday offer is an old deal with new branding.

The company is offering 12GB of bonus data every month for the next year for Black Friday.

The deal only applies to new users who activate 4G plans valued at $40/month or higher. However, the fine print shows the 12GB data offer started on October 22nd.

Customers need code 12MONTHS12GB to activate the offer.

What does seem new, however, is Public Mobile’s discounts on all of its 4G plans:

  • 5GB FOR $40/month (was $44.50)
  • 8GB for $50/month (was $55)
  • 10GB for $55/month (was $60)
  • 15GB for $60/month (was $65)
  • 25GB for $80/month (was $85)
  • 40GB for $90/month (was $95)

For a round-up of all of our Black Friday deals, follow this link. You can find all of the top deals at Canadian retailers here.