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Mobile Syrup

SkipTheDishes expands alcohol delivery to Saskatchewan

Food delivery app SkipTheDishes announced on October 12th that it is extending its alcohol delivery service to Saskatchewan, allowing residents to order from more than 60 alcohol vendors and restaurant partners across the province.

“We’re thrilled to continue our expansion of alcohol delivery across Canada with the launch in Saskatchewan,” said Steve Puchala, senior vice president of growth & restaurant success at SkipTheDishes.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in the category since we began offering this service to our customers, and we’re proud to provide this additional revenue opportunity for our restaurant partners across the province.”

According to Skip, the couriers who deliver the alcohol must be Smart Serve-certified and serve alcohol to only customers aged 19 and over. Further, couriers are required to confirm that a customer’s ID matches the name on their Skip profile. Lastly, if the person who placed the order appears too intoxicated, can not provide a valid ID, or is buying alcohol for a minor, the delivery will be cancelled.

Customers in Saskatchewan can order alcohol between 4pm CST and 11pm CST.

Via: SaskToday

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Mobile Syrup

Google plans annual update cadence for Wear OS

Google is back in the smartwatch game, but understandably people are still skeptical, given the company’s penchant for killing off projects (pour one out for Stadia).

However, Google has been hitting the streets to tell people it’s committed to Wear OS. The company’s senior vice president of hardware, Rick Osterloh, told The Verge in an interview that Google had long-term plans for the Pixel Watch. And earlier this week, the company confirmed to Wired that it was planning an annual update cadence for Wear OS.

Google’s director of product management for Wear OS, Björn Kilburn, told Wired in a virtual interview that:

“Our goal is, from a platform perspective, for us to release a new version of Wear generally every year in a similar fashion to mobile, partly because we need to support mobile. If new functionalities added in Android are critical for watches and hearables, then we’ve got to find a way to get it into the watch.”

In other words, those with Wear OS devices can expect yearly updates just like smartphone owners get yearly Android updates. There will also be quarterly updates with “new experiences” through the year, just like with Android.

Moreover, Kilburn said that Wear OS 3 would move towards a smartphone-like update model where manufacturers are responsible for pushing over-the-air updates to wearables. That may come as bad news for some, given it risks fragmenting the Wear OS ecosystem much like Android smartphones. On the other hand, it may enable wearable makers to extend support — Wired notes that Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 will get four years of updates. Google’s Pixel Watch, on the other hand, will get three years of software updates.

Finally, Kilburn said that Google was “absolutely committed” to Wear OS, pointing to the number of refreshed apps, the company’s collaboration with Samsung, and the Pixel Watch as evidence.

If you’re interested in reading the rest of Kilburn’s thoughts about Wear OS, the Pixel Watch, and more, check out the full interview here.

Source: Wired

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Mobile Syrup

The Pixel 7 Pro’s display seems to be drawing too much power

Google’s Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are now available for purchase, and though our reviews are live, we’ve only been using the devices for roughly a week, so there’s still a lot to learn about them.

And right on schedule, the first Pixel 7 Pro concern has appeared courtesy of XDA Developers. Like us, the publication quickly realized that the handset’s battery life isn’t the best, and XDA might have discovered why.

The team’s Pixel 7 Pro reviewer (@AdamConwayIE) noticed that the display seemed to draw a disproportionate amount of power when set at high brightness levels. Following that, a display test revealed that the Pixel 7 Pro draws roughly 3.5W to 4W at around 600 nits, depending on what else you’re doing with the phone. Worse, it can consume up to 6W at the Pixel 7 Pro’s peak brightness of 1500 nits.

To put this in perspective, the Galaxy S22 Ultra only draws more than 4W when its brightness is at 1100 nits. This means the Pixel 7 Pro’s display consumes about 50 percent more power than the S22 Ultra. Even the Pixel 6 Pro hits 4W when is at 800 nits.

XDA even reached out to other publishers in different regions of the world, and they all seem to have experienced similar issues.

XDA estimates if you’re playing games on your device in a high-brightness mode, you could be drawing up to 18W of battery power.

The publication is unsure if this issue relates to software or hardware. If it’s software, Google could fix the problem with an update, but if it’s not, we’re all out of luck.

Until then, the best way of saving battery life is using a lower brightness level, which XDA says will put the consumption draw at an almost normal level. It’s worth noting that XDA says this isn’t a problem shared by the Pixel 7.

Source: XDA Developers

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Mobile Syrup

Signal will ditch plaintext SMS support soon

End-to-end encrypted messaging service Signal is dropping SMS support, the company announced in an October 12th blog post.

The company says it has reached a point where SMS support no longer makes sense for it, while Signal app-to-app messaging will continue to thrive.

Signal says the most critical reason for dropping SMS support is that “SMS messages are inherently insecure,” and that there’s no way for the company to make SMS as secure as its in-app messaging. “They [SMS] leak sensitive metadata and place your data in the hands of telecommunications companies. With privacy and security at the heart of what we do, letting a deeply insecure messaging protocol have a place in the Signal interface is inconsistent with our values and with what people expect when they open Signal,” says the company.

Additionally, the California-based company says that it has had instances where Signal users had assumed they were sending Signal messages, only to find out that they were using SMS, and racked up massive SMS bills. The company says ending support for SMS on its platform will prevent this from happening in the future.

Lastly, dropping support for SMS will allow the Signal team to focus on building other new features for in-app messaging, like the addition of usernames in the future.

Signal users would soon start seeing in-app notifications that guide them through the process of exporting their SMS messages to a different app, alongside recommendations to invite their friends and family over to Signal to take advantage of its app-to-app end-to-end encrypted messaging.

The company did not mention when support for SMS will end, though it did say that users will have “several months” to transition.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Signal 

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Mobile Syrup

Raptors’ Scottie Barnes tours Toronto with a Pixel 7 in new Google ad

Google Canada dropped an ad for the Pixel 7 featuring Toronto Raptors forward (and NBA Rookie of the Year) Scottie Barnes touring Toronto and showing off the company’s new smartphone.

Unsurprisingly, the Pixel 7’s camera chops are on full display as Barnes pauses to snap pictures throughout Toronto. The ad flips back and forth between showing Barnes’ perspective walking through the city and raising the phone to snap pictures, then cycling through those pictures.

There’s also a nod to Google’s Messages app around 12 seconds in, possibly a dig at Apple as Google continues its shame campaign over the iPhone maker’s refusal to add RCS support (one of the major complaints is that the lack of RCS causes images sent between Android and iOS devices to look significantly worse).

The ad shows recognizable aspects of Toronto, like the city’s red and white street cars, grungy subway, someone dressed for Caribana, the CN Tower and tons of Raptors fans.

Keen-eyed viewers might also notice the various placements for Bell throughout the ad, including a digitally altered Bell signal in the Pixel 7’s status bar (which happens to be on the wrong side of the phone) and a white car with lines sporting Bell’s signature blue. There’s even what appears to be an edited bus stop advertisement in the background of one of the photos (it could be real, but I’ve never seen a bus stop ad that clean in my life).

You can check out the ad on YouTube. Or, if you’re curious to learn more about Google’s new smartphones, check out our Pixel 7 review here, and Pixel 7 Pro review here. Alternatively, you can read the Pixel Watch review here.

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Mobile Syrup

Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch are now officially available in Canada

Today is finally the day. Google’s Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch are now available in Canada. Even though some people who pre-ordered the device got it a day or two early.

The Pixel 7 comes in ‘Obsidian,’ ‘Snow’ or ‘Lemongrass,’ while the Pixel 7 Pro comes in ‘Obsidian,’ ‘Snow,’ or ‘Hazel.’

The Pixel Watch comes in ‘Matte Black / Obsidian,’ ‘Polished Silver / Charcoal,’ ‘Polished Silver / Chalk,’ or ‘Champagne Gold / Hazel’ (the first colour refers to the stainless steel case colour, while the second is the band colour).

Below are all of the prices for Google’s new devices:

Pixel Watch bands start at $69.99, while the charger starts at $39.99.

If you want to learn more about carrier pricing, check out our carrier availability story. And if you don’t plan to buy the Pixel 7 Pro yourself, enter our contest for the chance to win Google’s latest flagship. 

Also, if you want to make an informed choice before buying any of these three devices, we have three reviews focused on Google’s new devices:

Pixel 7 review 
Pixel 7 Pro review 
Pixel Watch review 

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Mobile Syrup

Top tech deals post Amazon ‘Prime Early Access Sale’

Following the success of Amazon ‘Prime Early Access Sale,’ the retailer is continuing its effort to reduce cost and remove inventory of its partners.

Here are a few deals worth considering:

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.

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Mobile Syrup

Uber shares insights about Canadian partying habits

Uber Canada has shared a new nightlife index that highlights some of the wildest party cities in the nation.

The index takes into account data from Uber rides and Uber Eats orders to decipher which Canadian cities party the hardest, when they party, the top hangover foods across the country, and the most unexpected hangover food orders.

Ontarians appear to be partying the most, with five of the top 10 party cities based on the volume of rides between 10pm and 2pm being located in Ontario.

Check out the top 10 party cities in the nation below:

  1. London
  2. Toronto
  3. Kitchener-Waterloo
  4. Kingston
  5. Saskatoon
  6. Vancouver
  7. Winnipeg
  8. Regina
  9. Edmonton
  10. Ottawa

On average, the fourth quarter of 2021 was the most active, based on the volume of rides between 10pm and 2am. Check out the dates when Canadians were out and about late night below:

  1. Saturday, October 30th, 2021
  2. Saturday, December 11th, 2021
  3. Sunday, October 31st, 2021
  4. Saturday, December 4th, 2021
  5. Saturday, November 27th, 2021

Contrary to popular belief, junk food isn’t a remedy for hangovers, though that didn’t stop Canadians from ordering greasy delicacies during early Saturday and Sunday mornings:

  1. Burger
  2. Breakfast wrap
  3. Nuggets
  4. Chicken sandwich
  5. Hashbrown

On the other hand, most unexpected hangover foods ordered through Uber Eats in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday include:

  1. Coconut cake
  2. Potato salad
  3. Slushie
  4. Chili
  5. Strawberry cream cheese pie

Image credit: Shutterstock

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Mobile Syrup

Final Fantasy VII’s mobile battle royale is shutting down in January

Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier will shut down on January 11th, 2023, Square Enix has confirmed.

This will be just over one year after the free-to-play battle royale game launched on Android and iOS in November 2021.

“Despite all our efforts to bring you regular updates with fresh and exciting content, we haven’t been able to deliver the experience that we were hoping to, and that you all deserve, so we have made the extremely tough decision to end service for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier,” Square Enix wrote in a statement via the game’s official Twitter account.

The company adds that it will continue to provide updates for the game leading up to its closure. However, Shinra Credits, the game’s in-app currency that can be purchased with real money, have been removed from the in-game shop. Therefore, only previously purchased Shinra Credits can be used until service ends.

Square Enix attempted to make The First Soldier stand out through multiplayer combat that mixed traditional guns with character classes, spells, monsters and locations from Final Fantasy VII. That said, the battle royale market is incredibly saturated, even on mobile, due to juggernauts like Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends and Call of Duty. 

While The First Soldier is coming to an end, the Final Fantasy VII series is pushing along at full speed. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, a remaster of the PSP prequel to the original FFVII, will launch on consoles and PC on December 13th. Additionally, Ever Crisis, a mobile retelling of the entire Final Fantasy VII series, is set to hit mobile sometime later this year. And, of course, there’s the highly anticipated sequel to Final Fantasy VII Remake, titled Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which will release on PS5 sometime “next winter.”

Source: Square Enix

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Mobile Syrup

Valve rolls out overhauled Steam Mobile app to everyone on Android and iOS

Valve has launched its revamped Steam Mobile app on Android and iOS.

The company was beta testing the updated app earlier this year, but this marks the official wide release.

To start, the app sports a redesign that streamlines navigation, making it easier to manage your Steam account. From the app, you can download games to your PC, browse Steam and make purchases and receive notifications about sales and friend requests.

Further, Valve says the app offers improved security by letting you simply scan a QR code to sign into your desktop or PC. The company adds that it’s looking into expanding this functionality to Steam Deck.

You can see the updated app in action in this brief video:

In other Valve news, the company recently announced that its popular Steam Deck handheld is now available for outright purchase — no reservation process required.

Source: Valve