Disclosure: I tested this device for PlanHub and wrote the linked article.

The compact design and reassuring hinge are what stood out most during my first few days. The inner display is excellent, although the crease remains noticeable on darker backgrounds and can still be felt under a finger. The camera produces attractive colours, but the 30x zoom is clearly more limited.

Full review with pictures: planhub.ca/blog/en/pixel-11-pro-fold-review/

After a few days with the new Pixel 11 Pro Fold, one thing becomes clear: Google is no longer merely trying to prove that it can build a foldable phone. This model feels like a mature product, with a more compact design, a reassuring hinge and software that finally makes better use of the form factor.

I have not spent enough time with it to deliver a definitive verdict, particularly on battery life, nighttime photography or long-term durability. Here is what stood out during my first few days, including what won me over and the limitations I have already encountered.

The full review : planhub.ca/blog/en/pixel-11-pro-fold-review/

The CRTC has rejected a request from Ztar Mobile Canada to regain access to Rogers' phone-number porting system, potentially closing one of the last paths for former SpeakOut, Good2Go Mobile and Ztar Mobile customers who failed to move their numbers before the old service was disconnected.

Ztar historically operated those prepaid brands using Rogers' network. Rogers first notified Ztar in late 2024 that their resale agreement would end, and after several extensions finally disconnected Ztar from its network on December 11, 2025. Rogers temporarily kept Ztar's porting-system access available until January 22, 2026.

Ztar later asked the CRTC to force Rogers to restore that access, arguing that as many as 30,000 to 40,000 disconnected numbers could still be affected. Without the old porting pathway, customers who didn't migrate in time may no longer be able to transfer or recover the number they previously used.

The CRTC rejected that request. It found that Rogers gave Ztar sufficient notice, fulfilled its contractual obligations and followed Canada's existing number-porting rules, which generally require a phone number to remain active when a customer initiates a transfer.

There is an important complication: some of those disconnected numbers may already have returned to Rogers' inventory or been reassigned. Rogers also told the CRTC that the vast majority had seen no calls, texts or data activity during the 90 days before disconnection, so the Commission concluded that preserving tens of thousands of numbers indefinitely would create its own problems.

The decision does not mean current SpeakOut customers are being disconnected. SpeakOut has moved to an upgraded network and continues to offer migration for eligible customers. This ruling primarily affects people who remained on the former Rogers-based service and did not successfully migrate or port their number before the old connection disappeared.

Sources & more: CRTC 2026-211 / SpeakOut Wireless

TELUS has introduced a new Digital Content Safety Seal designed to help parents identify children's programming that has passed additional safety and production reviews.

The seal will initially apply only to eligible programming funded through TELUS STORYHIVE Kids TV. Approved shows will carry the designation on TELUS Optik TV, Stream+ and the STORYHIVE Kids TV YouTube channel.

Unlike a traditional age rating, TELUS says the review also considers how the program was produced. Creators working with children must pass vulnerable-sector checks, follow child-safety protocols and comply with STORYHIVE's code of conduct. Programs are also expected to provide educational value and age-appropriate storytelling.

Once production is complete, TELUS Digital reviews every second of the program for areas including content safety, privacy, broadcast standards and age appropriateness. Content involving violence, bullying, drugs, sexual material, risky behaviour or other material TELUS considers unsuitable for young audiences is prohibited.

There is an important limitation: this is not an industry-wide Canadian certification and it does not currently rate children's programming across Netflix, Disney+, YouTube or other broadcasters. It is a TELUS-created standard for its own STORYHIVE-funded children's content, and the final moderation is performed within the TELUS corporate group rather than by an outside certification body.

For parents, the practical value may therefore be less about replacing existing ratings and more about identifying programming that has passed an additional production-and-content review before appearing in TELUS' own kids catalogue.

Sources & more: TELUS / CNW / TELUS Wise – Safety Seal standards / STORYHIVE – Code of Conduct

Fizz is expanding further into physical retail through a new partnership with EB Games Canada, launching an exclusive starter pack today at 140 participating stores.

The pack costs $25 and is aimed at new Fizz customers activating their first wireless plan. It includes a $75 credit toward the first bill, a one-time 100GB data bonus valid for 12 months, immediate access to Level 2 of Fizz's loyalty program, plus both a physical SIM card and an eSIM. Fizz says the total package represents more than $100 in value.

This isn't a traditional carrier-store setup. Customers buy the kit at EB Games, but still customize their plan and complete the activation themselves online. Fizz remains a fully digital carrier without in-store account activation or customer service.

There is also an important geographic limitation. Although EB Games operates nationally, Fizz mobile subscriptions are currently available only in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia, and customers still need to live within an eligible Fizz subscription area.

Fizz already sells regular SIM cards through retailers including Circle K, Couche-Tard and Jean Coutu. The EB Games deal goes considerably further by turning the retail package itself into a customer-acquisition offer, clearly targeting gamers and younger wireless customers rather than simply providing another place to buy a SIM.

Sources & more: Fizz / CNW

TL;DR in my opinion it feels like less phone for the money, thermals are a problem, one handed use is subpar compared to the 7, internet browsing is not a great experience and the speakers have relatively poor sound quality. Also turns out the form factor just isnt for me.

A little background on me; I have been using foldables since the fold 3. I also used the original pixel fold. The pixel fold was interesting to me because of the form factor, but it suffered from first gen problems i.e. big internal bezels, not opening flat, poor app optimization. However, even after moving on from that phone, I always missed it because of the form factor. It felt more like a gadget than a phone, and that made it fun. So, when I saw the fold 8, of course I was intrigued all over again.

First of all, I was coming from, and am switching back to, the fold 7. And before anyone says anything, yes, I went to best buy three separate times to hold the fold 8 in hand before committing to pre ordering it. But that is just proof that using a phone in your daily life is different than messing with it in store for 20 minutes.

Id also like to say, the fold 8 is a fantastic phone. The build quality, the hinge and the battery life are all great. And it will be the ideal phone for a lot of people. However, if youre like me, it is not the ideal phone for you and here's why.

1. To me, it feels like less phone. And to be fair, this was a concern when I initially held it for the first time. Obviously its smaller than the fold 7 and the 8 ultra, but it really did feel like I was getting less phone for the money. And honestly, I think that comes down to the fold 7 and/or 8 ultra being capable of performing the tasks that I do on a daily basis just as well, but also offering more screen real estate when needed and a better camera experience.

2. The heat issue is a real thing. I know this has been going around, and there is truth to it. Every time I wirelessly charged my fold 8 in my car, it got very hot to the touch. Not just warm, but hot. Which also dimmed the screen for about 10 minutes until it cooled down.

3. The lack of one handed use on the cover screen bothered me more than I expected. I did not realize how much I used my fold 7 one handed until I got the fold 8. Is it the biggest deal in the world? Of course not, but just something I prefer on the 7.

4. Internet browsing on the fold 8 inner screen is objectively worse than on the 7/8 ultra. The wider aspect ratio seems like it would be nice for browsing the internet, but because the phone is so short, youre not getting a whole lot at once, and a lot of websites have large images that do not play well with the wider aspect ratio. Also, Google image results are so small on the fold 8. Now, do keep in mind you can always rotate the phone when browsing the internet and it is a better experience, in fact I really liked using the fold 8 in portrait mode. However, a key selling point of the fold 8 for me was not having to rotate the phone for videos, but if im rotating it every time I use the internet, that equates to even more rotating. That could just be a personal thing for me, but again the point of this is to give my opinion and to help those that may share my opinion before buying. (Also this was a similar issue on the pixel fold)

5. App optimization is actually mostly good, and thats thanks to samsungs experience with foldables and their software features theough OneUI. However, there will be some that even when you go through labs to force aspect ratios, they still won't play nice. My main experience with this was Snapchat. It wss unusable on the inner screen because it didnt know how to react the the aspect ratio.

6. The speakers. While they do seem to be louder, the sound quality is noticeably worse. More tinny and less bass than the 7. Also the one sided thing when open is there. That wasn't as much of an issue for me as the sound quality itself.

Lastly, I would like to say, the battery life has been great on the fold 8, and that was my number one and literally only complaint about my fold 7. The fold 8 gets noticeably better battery life. Im talking I was at 6 hours of screen on time and still had 45% battery left. Very impressive. I considered getting the fold 8 ultra instead after sending the fold 8 back but I think the fold 7 is still s great phone so I'll wait to see what the 9 ultra has to offer.

Toronto Fire Services says the city has already recorded 81 fires involving lithium-ion batteries this year, equivalent to roughly one incident every 2.8 days.

As of August 12, those fires had resulted in one death and 15 injuries. Toronto Fire Chief Jim Jessop says the number of incidents has increased about 200% since 2022 and describes lithium-ion batteries as the city's fastest-growing fire safety risk.

But officials are not saying that all lithium-ion batteries are inherently unsafe. Toronto Fire says properly used certified batteries are generally safe. The recurring concern is unregulated, uncertified, damaged or modified batteries, particularly those used in e-bikes and other micromobility devices.

The issue became especially visible after Toronto firefighters responded to four battery-related fires within roughly 24 hours. Jessop says investigations frequently point to uncertified batteries in micromobility devices and argues that Canada needs stronger standards governing what can be imported and sold.

Mayor Olivia Chow is now calling on the federal and Ontario governments to tighten battery regulations and update fire and building rules. Toronto City Council had already directed the Fire Chief earlier this year to push for provincial lithium-ion battery safety standards and provide input to Health Canada on new federal regulations.

For consumers, the takeaway isn't to avoid rechargeable devices. Toronto recommends using certified manufacturer-approved batteries and chargers, never modifying battery packs, stopping use if a battery becomes unusually hot, swollen, discoloured or develops an unusual smell, and disposing of damaged batteries through proper hazardous-waste channels.

Sources & more: CityNews Toronto / City of Toronto / blogTO

A 404 Media investigation has traced a large shipment of rare and out-of-print books to an Amazon facility in Las Vegas that reportedly scans physical books for AI training data.

The investigation started after a bookseller received an unusually large order of roughly 1,000 books. With the seller's cooperation, 404 Media placed an AirTag inside one of the books and followed the shipment across the U.S. until it reached Amazon's LAS8 warehouse in Las Vegas.

Inside that warehouse is an operation known as VGT3. According to Amazon employees cited by 404 Media, workers receive large quantities of printed books, cut off their bindings so the pages can be scanned quickly, and destroy the physical copies in the process.

Amazon did not deny purchasing the books. In a statement to 404 Media, the company said it buys books through commercial channels to help develop and improve products and services used by customers. The company did not publicly detail which AI models or products are trained on the scanned material.

Why go after old physical books at all? They contain professionally edited human writing that may never have been digitized or indexed online, and older titles are guaranteed to predate the current flood of AI-generated text. That makes them unusually valuable as training material for large language models.

The legal question is complicated. A U.S. federal court previously ruled in the Anthropic case that training AI on lawfully purchased and digitized books can qualify as fair use, although separate copyright issues arose from pirated copies. The cultural question is different: some of the physical books being scanned may be rare or difficult to replace once their bindings are destroyed.

Sources & more: 404 Media / TechCrunch / Reuters – AI training and book copyright

Public Mobile is changing how customers reach a support agent, replacing its long-running Community-based ticket and private-message system with a new platform called Public Mobile Expert Messaging.

The rollout started August 11 and is happening in phases. The new experience is already available nationwide through Self Serve, while Public Mobile is gradually enabling it through chats started on publicmobile.ca. The company says Expert Messaging will be fully launched on August 24.

The biggest change is where customer support conversations happen. Today, customers can still end up communicating with the CS_Agent account through Community private messages. Once the rollout is complete, that profile will be disabled and customers will no longer be able to contact Public Mobile support directly from the Community.

Expert Messaging still isn't live chat. Customers begin with Public Mobile's chatbot, which is also being upgraded with a generative messaging experience. If the chatbot can't resolve the issue, it transfers the details to a Customer Support Agent. Customers can then leave the conversation and receive an SMS or email when the agent replies.

Public Mobile says the dedicated messaging platform should be more stable than the current Community-based system and keep the entire support process inside one interface. The Community itself isn't disappearing and will still be available for customer-to-customer help.

The transition may be a meaningful improvement for a carrier that operates without traditional phone-based customer service, but it will depend heavily on how quickly agents respond and how well the new chatbot hands complex problems to humans.

Sources & more: Public Mobile – Announcement / Public Mobile – Get Help

A new Best Buy Canada study suggests second-life electronics are becoming mainstream: 63% of Canadians say they purchased refurbished, open-box or traded-in technology in the past year.

There is an important distinction in that number. The 63% figure combines three different categories , refurbished products, open-box items and trade-ins ,so it should not be read as saying that nearly two-thirds of Canadians specifically bought refurbished devices.

Younger Canadians are leading the shift. Best Buy says 71% of Gen Z purchased some form of recirculated technology in the past year, compared with 65% of millennials and Gen X and 55% of boomers. Saving money was the biggest reason across generations, while environmental impact ranked particularly high among Gen Z and millennials.

For refurbished products specifically, wireless devices were the most popular category, followed by laptops, computers, tablets and game consoles. Best Buy says refurbished electronics typically save around 40% compared with original retail pricing, while open-box products average around 28% savings.

The survey also points to a stronger back-to-school angle. Quebec and Ontario respondents were the most price-conscious in Canada, and 84% of parents said they had either traded in technology or considered doing so when replacing a device.

The numbers come from a Best Buy Canada survey of 1,500 adult members of the Angus Reid Forum conducted July 17–21, 2026. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of that size would carry a margin of error of ±2.53 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Sources & more: Best Buy Canada / Business Wire

Hello Everyone!

Noticed on my bill today that Bell is planning a $6 increase from October.

I told my GF who doesn’t pay attention to small hidden details, her plan was different from mine and she is also going to be increased $6.

Wanted to shout it out for the rest of us who may not always read the fine print stuff, plan your changes ahead!

Any recommendations for plans w/ 5G speeds at ~$35/month or less? TIA

Apple is reportedly negotiating multi-year licensing deals with news publishers to give Siri AI access to current news and information, as the company prepares to launch its redesigned assistant later this year.

What makes the proposal unusual is how publishers could be paid. Rather than offering only a fixed licensing fee for broad access to their content, Apple has discussed a variable compensation model where participating publishers would receive money when their reporting is actually used by Siri.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has discussed a possible nine-figure budget for these payments. The exact publishers involved, individual deal values and payment formula have not been disclosed, and Apple declined to comment on the negotiations.

The deals would fit directly into Apple's new Siri strategy. Apple has already confirmed that Siri AI will be able to search the web for up-to-date information and generate answers using broad world knowledge. The new assistant is scheduled to enter beta later this year for users on supported devices set to English.

For publishers, the trade-off could be significant. AI assistants can answer news questions without requiring users to visit the original article, potentially reducing referral traffic. A pay-per-use model could compensate publishers for that usage, although we still don't know whether Siri will prominently link back to sources or how much each use would actually be worth.

There is also no confirmation that Canadian news organizations are among the publishers Apple has approached. Until agreements are announced, this remains a reported negotiation rather than a finalized Apple program.

Sources & more: The Wall Street Journal / Apple – Siri AI / TechCrunch

Google has released Gemini 3.7 Flash only three weeks after launching Gemini 3.6 Flash, positioning the new model as its primary workhorse for coding, software engineering and long-running AI agents.

The biggest gains are in coding. Google reports a 65.3% score on DeepSWE v1.1, up from 49.0% for Gemini 3.6 Flash. On FrontierCode 1.1, which focuses on production-ready code, the model improves from 34.4% to 43.6%. WebDev Arena also moves from 1538 to 1588 Elo.

Independent testing is encouraging as well. Artificial Analysis gives Gemini 3.7 Flash High a score of 56 on its Intelligence Index, four points above 3.6 Flash. It measured output speeds around 340 tokens per second and says the model sits on its Intelligence-vs-Time Pareto frontier.

Google is also pricing the launch aggressively. Through December 31, Gemini 3.7 Flash costs $0.75 USD per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens. On January 1, 2027, that doubles to the standard $1.50 / $7.50 rate. The model retains a one-million-token context window and supports text, images, audio and video as inputs.

This isn't only an API release. Google is moving Gemini Spark, its 24/7 personal agent for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, to 3.7 Flash immediately. Spark can work across services such as Gmail, Drive, Docs and Calendar to perform longer multi-step workflows.

The rapid replacement of a three-week-old model may be the bigger story here. Google appears to be treating its Flash line less like an annual product generation and more like continuously updated infrastructure, with coding and agent performance improving on a much shorter release cycle.

Sources & more: Google – Gemini 3.7 Flash / Artificial Analysis – Gemini 3.7 Flash / Google DeepMind – Gemini 3.7 Flash model card

Rogers is opening its satellite-to-mobile network at no charge to all existing Rogers wireless customers across British Columbia as the province continues to deal with widespread wildfires and a provincial state of emergency.

The temporary activation applies not only to individual customers, but also to Rogers business and government wireless accounts. Rogers says the service is being rolled out province-wide and will remain available during B.C.'s state of provincial emergency.

Rogers Satellite can connect compatible phones when regular cellular coverage is unavailable, including if a tower loses service because of wildfire damage or a power outage. It supports text messaging and text-to-911, while compatible devices can also use selected satellite-ready apps including WhatsApp, Messenger and Google Maps.

There are some important limitations. Satellite connectivity generally requires the user to be outdoors with a view of the sky, and functionality depends on the phone and software version. Rogers is not promising that normal cellular voice calls or every mobile app will work over satellite.

The move is also effectively a province-wide emergency test of direct-to-device satellite connectivity. Rogers says it wants to study how residents, communities and emergency services use the technology during natural disasters. Outside this emergency offer, Rogers Satellite normally costs up to $15 per month for customers who don't already have it included with an eligible plan.

Rogers is separately crediting Internet, TV and home-phone services for customers evacuated from their homes and will match new donations to the Canadian Red Cross B.C. Wildfires Appeal up to $100,000.

Sources & more: Rogers – B.C. wildfire satellite activation / Rogers Satellite / EmergencyInfoBC

Canada's phone-locking fight just took a major turn. The CRTC has officially launched Telecom Notice of Consultation 2026-210, opening a new public proceeding over device unlocking and carrier compliance with the Wireless Code.

But the biggest immediate change is already in effect: the CRTC has temporarily suspended part of the rule requiring phones to be sold unlocked. Any Canadian wireless provider can now sell a device in a locked state, provided it is automatically unlocked within two business days of purchase. Customers must also be able to request an immediate unlock at no charge.

That is very different from the 60-day model being pursued by TELUS and already used by Bell. The CRTC is specifically requiring Bell to show cause why its practice of locking devices for 60 days from April 23, 2025 through August 14, 2026 should not be considered a violation of the Wireless Code.

If the CRTC ultimately finds Bell in violation, the Commission says it will also consider enforcement measures. Under the Telecommunications Act, a corporation can face an administrative monetary penalty of up to $10 million for a violation, with additional potential liability for directors or officers involved.

TELUS's separate application for permission to introduce a 60-day lock has not been approved. Instead, the CRTC is asking TELUS to confirm by August 21 whether it still wants to pursue that application in light of today's new proceeding and temporary industry-wide rules.

Public interventions in CRTC 2026-210 are due September 14, with replies due September 24. The temporary two-business-day locking regime will remain in place until the CRTC reaches a decision in its broader proceeding to harmonize Canada's consumer protection codes.

Sources & more: CRTC 2026-210 / CRTC staff letter on TELUS's 60-day application / CRTC Wireless Code