Stories by Austin Blake

Apple has released its annual holiday ad, and it's not as good as the videos from the past. The new spot, called “A Critter Carol,” features a group of handmade woodland puppets who find a lost iPhone 17 Pro, film themselves singing a friendship song, and return the phone to its owner. The short is...

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip was officially detailed today, and OnePlus confirmed it will be the first company to ship it inside an upcoming device, the OnePlus 15R. The chip marks a big leap over the previous generation, with a 36 percent CPU jump, an 11 percent GPU boost, and far stronger on-device...

The federal government says Nokia’s new Ottawa expansion will create more than 300 jobs as part of a $40-million publicly funded research and development push. But not everyone is convinced this is a win for Canada. At a groundbreaking event in Kanata yesterday, several cabinet ministers highlighted Nokia’s plan to expand its lab facilities and...

Telus has tweaked its Black Friday plans, reducing the price of its entry plan while also debuting an unlimited 5G+ offering. Here are the Telus plans right now after autopay (bank pre-authorized payments) for bring your own device customers: $60/100GB (was $70) $75/200GB Canada-US $105 Unlimited data 5G+ (new); 50GB mobile hotspot data $105/250GB Global...

Freedom Mobile is quietly reaching out to former customers with a Black Friday “winback” offer that undercuts most of the deals we’ve seen so far. 'Winback' plans are sweetheart deals that aim to lure back former customers. Usually they are sent by email, text or phone. The carrier is discounting its $39 Canada-U.S.-Mexico plan down...

A fresh set of goalie masks is showing up across the NHL this season, and many of them were created in a surprisingly modern way yet again: on an iPad Pro. Several goalies are working directly with mask artists to sketch, revise, and finalize their designs using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Pro. The...

Anthropic has released its newest flagship model, Claude Opus 4.5, calling it the company’s most capable system yet and positioning it as the “best model in the world” for coding, agents, and computer-based tasks. The launch arrives at a time when competition between AI labs, such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and others has...

Ahead of Black Friday, Bell has just cut the price of its smartwatch plans by 33%. Bell’s website has been updated to note smartwatch plans now cost $10/month for new activations. Previously, this was priced at $15 per month. The plan gives you unlimited non-shareable data for both NumberShare plans and standalone plans. These smartwatch...

OnePlus isn’t done yet with its fall product lineup, as it is gearing up to launch two new devices in North America next month: the OnePlus 15R smartphone and the OnePlus Pad Go 2 tablet. Both products will officially debut on December 17, 2025, in Canada and the United States. The OnePlus 15R is the...

Telus customers in B.C. and Alberta can now file claims in a long-running class action over the company’s old call set-up billing practices. Claims first opened in June of this year, but the December 6, 2025 deadline is coming up fast, and vouchers will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. The settlement was...

Bell's Lucky Mobile and Rogers' Chatr have kicked off a full-on early Black Friday battle, each trying to outdo the other with bigger data buckets at the lowest possible prices. The two budget carriers often shadow each other, but this year’s Black Friday updates show Lucky pushing harder while Chatr trims and reshapes its lineup....

Telus’ flanker brand Koodo is starting to warm up its plans for Black Friday, lowering prices and adding more data to select plans, while its Bell-owned rival Virgin Plus is doing the same. Here’s what we’re seeing today from Koodo, with prices dropping $5 and data increasing for its two entry Canada-wide plans: $40/50GB (was...