Author: Mobile Syrup

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Mobile Syrup

TikTok adds support for 10-minute videos, gives creators an alternative to YouTube

Russia, Kazan May 28 2019: Tik Tok application icon on Apple iPhone X screen close-up. Tik Tok icon. tik tok application. Tiktok Social media network

TikTok, the platform that rose to popularity because of its short-video model, is now allowing users to upload up to 10-minute long videos after experimenting with three-minute videos back in December 2020.

“We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience,” said a TikTok spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.

“Last year, we introduced longer videos, giving our community more time to create and be entertained on TikTok. Today, we’re excited to start rolling out the ability to upload videos that are up to 10 minutes, which we hope would unleash even more creative possibilities for our creators around the world.”

By adding support for longer videos, TikTok just dealt the Uno reverse card to the likes of YouTube, which has recently incorporated short videos (YouTube Shorts) to its platform to capitalize on the trend.

While it will take a lot of effort and time for TikTok to gain a long-form audience as big as YouTube, it definitely is a step in the right direction and proves that the controversy-ridden platform isn’t just a fad.

The move should help creators who focused on in-depth content and earlier had to split their content into multiple short videos and also serve as an alternative to YouTube.

According to TikTok, the feature is currently rolling out, and will be widely available over the weeks ahead. Users who get access to the feature will get a notification from the app, similar to the one below:

Via: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Tim Horton’s Roll Up To Win promotion is back with $100 million in prizes

Tim Hortons discontinued its ‘Roll Up The Rim’ cups back in early 2020 due to COVID-19-related concerns. Now, the coffee chain is back with its promotion and has over $100 million in prizes to give away.

The limited-time promotion starts March 7th and runs until April 3rd. According to Tim Hortons, customers will get one roll for each eligible item purchased, which includes almost all hot and cold beverages, breakfast sandwiches and breakfast wraps.

“Roll Up To Win is one of our most loved and anticipated programs of the year for Tims guests and we can’t wait to kick things off on March 7,” said Hope Bagozzi, chief marketing officer for Tim Hortons, in a recent statement. “With the addition of new bonus Rolls for mobile orders and over $100 million in prizes available to be won, we’re giving guests more reasons than ever before to play Roll Up To Win — and once again, every Roll wins!”

It’s worth noting that you need to scan the Tims app or your physical Tims Rewards card before you pay for your order. After that, log into the Tims app and head to the ‘Roll Up To Win’ promotion banner to view the digital roll(s) you have accumulated.

Additionally, you also need to be enrolled in the Tims Rewards program, which currently offers 70 points for simply signing up.

Check out the prizes to be won below:

  • 2022 Volkswagen Taos Highline vehicle — 15 to be won
  • 6-Night Vacation at Hilton hotels — 10 to be won
  • 2-Night Weekend Getaway with Hilton – 150 to be won
  • 7-Night CanaDream RV Vacation — 10 to be won
  • Parks Canada Family/Group Discovery Pass ­– 750 to be won
  • Samsung Crystal UHD 4K Smart TV — 100 to be won
  • Samsung Galaxy S22 Smartphone — 100 to be won
  • Microsoft Surface Pro 8 — 20 to be won
  • 1-Month subscription to Xbox Game Pass for PC — 150,000 to be won
  • $1,000 American Express Prepaid Card — 234 to be won
  • Free Movies for a Year with Cineplex — 50 to be won
  • Free Cineplex Store Digital Rental Code — 70,000 to be won
  • $10 off a Home Premiere Rental Code on Cineplex® Store — 20,000 to be won
  • $5,000 Home Hardware eGift Card — 10 to be won
  • $100 Home Hardware eGift Card — 1,000 to be won
  • The Bay $100 eGift Card — 50 to be won
  • The Bay $10 Promotional eGift Card — 100,000 to be won
  • JOURNIE Rewards Fuel for a Year card — 10 to be won
  • 7¢/L discount on your next 50L of fuel with JOURNIE Rewards — 250,000 to be won
  • 5¢/L discount on your next 100L of fuel with JOURNIE Rewards — 250,000 to be won
  • $20 Uber Eats Digital Gift Card — 20,000 to be won
  • SN NOW 3-month sports streaming subscription — 100,000 to be won
  • Special Edition Tim Hortons x Chilly Moose 12L Harbour Bucket — 250 to be won
  • Special Edition Tim Hortons x Chilly Moose 55L Ice Box — 50 to be won
  • 25 percent Off ChillyMoose.ca Digital Promo Code — 250,000 to be won
  • $10 Crave Digital Promo Code — 100,000 to be won
  • PKG Carry Goods Travel Essentials Bundle — 300 to be won
  • $40 Off the Tim Hortons collection at PKGshop.ca Discount Code — 100,000 to be won
  • 50 percent Off the Tim Hortons collection at PKGshop.ca Discount Code — 200,000 to be won
  • Skullcandy Grind True Wireless Earbuds — 1,500 to be won
  • 40 percent Off Skullcandy.ca Digital Promo Code — 4,000,000 to be won
  • 1-Year subscription to The Athletic — 1,000 to be won
  • 3-Month subscription to The Athletic — 300,000 to be won
  • $25 Tim Card — 45,000 to be won
  • Coffee Prizes — more than 9.8 million to be won
  • Donut Prizes — more than 4.2 million to be won
  • Double or Triple Points on your next MO&P Order — 20,000,000 to be won
  • Tims Rewards points prizes — more than 21.7 million prizes to be won

Find more information about the promotion here.

Image credit: Tim Hortons

Source: Tim Hortons

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Mobile Syrup

Here are the games hitting PlayStation Now in March 2022

PlayStation has revealed the new batch of games coming to its PlayStation Now streaming service in March.

As previously confirmed, Shadow Warrior 3 is debuting on PlayStation Now on March 1st, the same day it releases for standalone purchase on PlayStation and other platforms. The game will be available through PS Now until July 4th.

Meanwhile, the other three titles joining the PS Now catalogue on March 1st are Chicken Police: Paint It Red, Crysis Remastered and Relicta.

PlayStation Now is available on PS4, PS5 and PC at a cost of $12.99/month, $34.99/three months or $79.99/12 months.

Find out what hit PlayStation Now in February here.

Image credit: Crytek

Source: PlayStation

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Mobile Syrup

This rare ‘Pikachu’ Pokémon card sold for over $1 million CAD

A rare Pokémon card has been sold for a record-breaking amount.

On February 23rd, the Japanese promo card ‘Pikachu Illustrator Holo’ was auctioned for $900,000 USD (about $1.14 million CAD).

The reason? The card, featuring artwork of Pikachu holding art supplies as drawn by original designer Atsuko Nishida, is extremely rare. According to Dicebreaker, only 41 of these cards have ever been made, with 39 of them originally being offered as rewards for readers of the Japanese CoroCoro Comic between 1997 and 1998.

For context, the previous record sale for this same card was $375,000 USD (about $475,000 CAD) in February 2020.

If you have any Pokémon cards from the ’90s, you might want to get them graded.

Image credit: The Pokémon Company

Via: Polygon

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Mobile Syrup

Bell adds Google Distributed Cloud Edge to its network

POZNAN, POL – JAN 30, 2020: Laptop computer displaying logo of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google

Bell will deploy Google’s Distributed Cloud Edge in its network.

Google’s application brings its cloud infrastructure to the area where data is shared and consumed.

“Bell is building a network of the future that will scale up to embrace the demands of 5G-enabled applications, and additionally enable us to offer these capabilities to innovative 3rd party application providers who want to tap into 5G network,” Petri Lyytikainen, Bell’s VP of Network, said in a statement.

The partnership will allow Bell to efficiently run at a higher capacity, innovate new business opportunities, and deploy networks, such as 5G, in a variety of ways.

“By successfully deploying Google Distributed Cloud Edge in their networks, Bell is able to reimagine its infrastructure management while serving differentiated network experiences to both public and enterprise customers,” Amol Phadke, managing director of telecom industry solutions at Google Cloud, said.

Bell and Google originally launched their partnership in 2021 to incorporate Bell’s 5G network with Google’s multiple areas of expertise, including data analytics and artificial intelligence.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Bell

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Mobile Syrup

Koodo replaces $58/15GB promo and $52/8GB plans

Koodo has stopped offering its $52/month 8GB and $58/month 15GB plans to customers.

Those plans have been replaced with a $55/month 10 GB plan and a $60/month 15GB plan.

As earlier reported by MobileSyrup, the Telus flanker brand said it will discontinue the pricing on February 27th. While the $58/month 15GB was labelled as a promotional offer on the website, originally a 10GB plan with a 5GB data bonus, the $52/month 8GB wasn’t labelled as such.

Top: Koodo plans as of February 28th, 2022. Bottom: Koodo plans as of February 25th, 2022.

Both Fido and Virgin Plus have also replaced their $52/8GB and $58/15GB plans with $55/8GB and $60/15GB plans, respectively.

Koodo’s $58/month 15GB promotional plan has been available to customers periodically since January 22nd.

Koodo’s plans can be viewed here.

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Mobile Syrup

Playground Games brings Sign Language accessibility features to Forza Horizon 5

Playground Games has added American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) to Forza Horizon 5‘s in-game cinematics.

According to the developer, the update includes actors from the deaf and hard of hearing community signing sections of the critically acclaimed racing title’s story through roughly 150 cutscenes.

The scenes include jumping into challenges, getting ready for races and encountering other players across Mexico.

The feature was created with the help of Cameron Akitt, an avid gamer who grew up hard of hearing.

“We should be able to access the same story beats and narrative components. Otherwise, we’re only getting half the picture and not getting the full experience. Including sign language is about enabling more deaf and hard of hearing people to have ownership over their gaming experience,” said Akitt in a recent blog post.

When the feature is turned on, a native ASL/BSL speaker appears on-screen during these scenes and signs the story to the player (see the example in the above video). Over the last few years, there’s been a significant push to make gaming more accessible, with Microsoft releasing its Xbox Adaptive Controller and major titles like The Last of Us Part II offering features like text narration, customizable colour and contrast, a screen magnifier and more.

Playground Games took home the award for ‘Innovation in Accessibility” at The Game Awards 2021 and two ‘Can I Play That?’ awards at the ‘Accessibility Awards.’ For more on Forza Horizon 5, check out our in-depth look at the game.

The feature is set to make its way to Forza Horizon 5 on March 1st. The game is available on Xbox consoles and PC.

Image credit: Xbox 

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Mobile Syrup

Samsung officially kills off its popular Galaxy Note line

I feel like we’ve been reporting this story for years at this point, but it’s finally official — Samsung has officially ended the use of ‘Galaxy Note’ branding.

In a statement to reporters at Mobile World Congress 2022 (MWC) (via Dailian), Samsung smartphone head Roh Taeo-moon said that the “Galaxy Note will come out as Ultra” going forward, referencing the recently released Galaxy S22 Ultra.

In several ways, the S22 Ultra is just a Note device with another name. It features a squared-off design than the S22 and S22+, and unlike last year’s S21 Ultra, it also includes a storage enclosure for its S Pen stylus. The last official Note device was 2020’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

With Samsung’s attention shifting away from slab-styled smartphones to the foldable space with its innovative ‘Z’ line, it makes sense for the South Korean tech giant to consolidate its branding efforts.

Over the years, the Note line built a substantial fan base of smartphone users who prefer larger devices and appreciated the precision a stylus offers. Though I’ve always liked the Note series — I once called the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 my favourite smartphone ever — I’ve never found its S Pen very useful.

Still, those who were worried Samsung might kill off the stylus following the release of the S22 Ultra no longer have a cause for concern as it looks like the S Pen is sticking around in its high-end ‘S’ series flagship device for the foreseeable future.

Source: The Verge Via: Dailian

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Mobile Syrup

OnePlus 10 Pro coming to Canada in March, possible foldable in late 2022

OnePlus has finally shared that the OnePlus 10 Pro is officially coming to North America near the end of March.

The company still hasn’t given out the exact release date, but sometime in the next 30 days, we can expect the OnePlus 10 Pro flagship. We already know a lot about the phone since it’s been out in China for months; you can read our previous coverage here. I’d also like to point out that OnePlus is milking its phone launch way too much. The phone is already out. Why are we playing these games where the company is hiding the release date less than 30 days out?

OnePlus confirmed that the OnePlus 10 Pro will ship with OxygenOS 12.1 out of the box when it arrives this spring. This is kind of a good thing since OxygenOS 12 has been a fairly buggy disaster for the company so far. OnePlus actually promised in 2021 that its 2022 flagship phones would be running a unified Android 13 profile at launch, so take all these new promises with a heavy grain of salt.

Plus, the company has struggled to even get OxygenOS 12 out on all of its phones. Even the Nord CE 2 5G, which was announced a few weeks ago, doesn’t run Android 12 yet. Beyond that, users aren’t super happy with the direction the operating system’s design has taken either.

During a briefing, OnePlus pledged to remedy that with a stock-like Android experience in Android 13. Still, I’d be hesitant to get excited about this unless you plan to buy a OnePlus 10 Pro. If the updates release at the same cadence as Android 12, it’s going to take a long time to come to older devices. For instance, the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro flagships from 2020 only just got their first beta build of Android 12 a few days ago, months after the OnePlus 9 series.

During a call, the company also shared that it sold 11 million phones in 2021, which is a new record for the brand. What’s more exciting, though, is that OnePlus plans to release a device with 150-watt fast charging in Q2 2022 and a foldable possibly at the end of the year or early 2023. OnePlus’ parent company Oppo released a folding phone called the Find N in late 2021, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the OnePlus foldable followed similar design fundamentals.

Overall, OnePlus has made many promises regarding its software and hardware, but I wouldn’t trust these claims until we get our hands on the devices and run the software. OnePlus has been growing over the last few years, but its software support and hardware have been severely lacking since its more public merger with Oppo. It appears the company has noticed this reputation hit, and is working to remedy the situation, but it will need to make sure the next software update is clean and applies to more than one phone at a time to really keep users happy.

The company also announced it will push into new markets this year with intentions to move into Mexico and Latin America.

Stay tuned to MobileSyrup over the next few weeks for our review of the OnePlus 10 Pro.

Image credit: OnePlus 

Via: Android Authority

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Mobile Syrup

Bell, Rogers, Telus, and Shaw remove Russian network RT from channel lineups

Moscow, Russia – March 1, 2015. Buses broadcaster Russia Today near March of the opposition. March to the memory of Boris Nemtsov, Russian opposition leader who was assassinated on the eve of

Russian state-funded channel RT is no longer available to Bell, Rogers, Telus, and Shaw customers.

The move came after Minister of Heritage Pablo Rodriguez said the government is considering options to get the network off the air.

According to the Globe and Mail, the channel was no longer available to Bell customers as of Sunday. Rogers and Telus told the publication the removal of the channel will take effect Monday on their networks.

Shaw confirmed the same through a tweet on Sunday night, stating channel subscribers will receive a credit to use on their next bill.

The changes come days after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, causing thousands of residents to desperately flee.

The move is crucial Ihor Michalchyshyn said. The chief executive of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress told the Globe and Mail Russia is using the network to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Globe and Mail