Author: Leigh Geary
With the latest and greatest Android OS now appearing on many Galaxy SII handsets we have to ask the question – do you like the new version? I know many of us are creatures of habit, so change isn’t always good. I’ve seen several people getting annoyed at …
Fancy a microSD card with more capacity? For £9.99 you can get this Play.com one with free delivery chucked in too. But stop – wait a second there young trigger-happy-traveller. If you stick the discount code “MEMORY20” in you can get it for just £7.99. Ooo… get in, …
Snapdragon have put out this promotional video showing one phone travelling around the world. It did the trip in one charge and filmed various wacky bits in between as you can see below. Now…. battery life is always a pain point for smartphone users, so initially we were …
Been to Google recently? You may have spotted this new link on the top bar which appears even when you’re not logged into the Googleplex. When clicked it’ll take you straight into the Android Market Play Store and is effectively a big advert for the Android OS. Linl …
Stands. They’re always a touchy subject here at Coolsmartphone. There’s usually a couple of things you have to put up with when you’re looking for one. For a start there’s a selection of stands and base units which you may have to carefully select to suit your specific …
So, following our earlier story, Microsoft are now trying to make amends with Sahas Katta. He won a “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge with his Android-powered Galaxy Nexus. Microsoft are trying to make amends by offering up a laptop and phone. Many on Twitter have already congratulated Microsoft, …
Old news this really, but people have seen it elsewhere and have nudged us about it. We heard that Voda were to take the HTC One X and One S back in February and they’ve now appeared on the Vodafone website. The One X looks to be coming …
In Barcelona we saw Microsoft doing the “Smoked by” challenge daily. The rather minimalist stand had this white-board showing the winners and losers. The winners bagged some cash and the losers probably thought that Windows Phone was better. Is it? Well, that’s personal preference, but the whole “challenge” …
No, the “Driving Mode” on the Galaxy SII will NOT magically steer your car to work whilst you have a doze in the back seat. What it can do is read out notifications and calls that arrive while you drive. Oh, I’m a poet and didn’t know it. …
Now, my lovely, intelligent, handsome readers. Come close. If you’re after a QWERTY-based Android device then the Motorola Pro Plus is definitely worth a try. We reviewed it some time back and now have a very special deal for anyone looking to buy. Our friends at ur-mobile.com already …
Back in January Sky announced that their on-demand TV service “Sky Anytime+” would be opened up and available via any ISP. The exact date was a little foggy, but we’re now seeing it live. The service has been available through Sky broadband for a while now, but as …
Got Dropbox? Not got Dropbox? Either way, give this a try to get yourself 23GB of space, or 23GB additional space if you are an existing user (valid for 2 years). We’ve just given it a spin but haven’t got the confirmation mail as yet. Let us know …
Mobile World Congress always shows us just how the mobile OS’s are performing in the marketplace. We saw for ourselves that the Google Android stand was full of people and the Windows Phone stand was perhaps a little more subdued. Sure, it goes without saying that Windows Phone …
We first heard about the “Angry Birds Space” a couple of weeks ago and there was a notable omission in the supported OS’s. Our exact words at the time were.. Set your alarm for March 22nd people… Oh .. and if you’ve got a Windows Phone… Ermmm… Look! …
Sony Mobile, now that they’ve dropped the “Ericsson” part, have launched a new marketing campaign for their new Xperia device. It’s not, as you may expect, a flashy campaign with random shots of people running through the rain and showing how “connected” they are with their family, social …
Over in America, HTC have just announced that the HTC Vivid will be one of the first handsets to get Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and the updated HTC Sense. HTC tell us… Consumers (will be) able to begin upgrading their devices via download today. One of the …
Had enough of leaked Galaxy SIII images? Well tough, because we’ve got another one for you. This one, though, is definitely tweaking our interest. The image seems to have come from Weber Shandwick, who do the PR stuff for Samsung. In addition, GSM Helpdesk Netherlands seem to have …
Want to win a Freetalk HD camera and headset? This is a great prize for video calls and its courtesy of our friends at Skype. The kit costs around £60 and we’ve got three of these excellent webcam and headset packs to give away. Skype, of course, is …
Got the Galaxy SII on Orange? Is it branded? Don’t fancy putting a ROM on it yourself? Well, if you tick all those boxes then you’ll have to wait a little bit longer for your Ice Cream Sandwich update. A Twitter update from Orange gives no firm date …
You may have heard or read about Mike Daisey visiting Foxconn in Shenzhen. The original broadcast, which we wrote about earlier, made fantastic listening. It was featured in”This American Life” and got broadcast all over America. Mike told us about the working conditions, the dangerous chemicals being used …
Adverts. Nobody really likes them, especially those foreign ones that get badly re-dubbed in English. On your mobile they can, according to a report picked up by the BBC, suck a lot more battery life too. By running constantly in the background and offering “helpful offers and reminders” …
Back in February last year Symbian had a 12.4% share of the smartphone market here in the UK. Now, according to figures by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, this has now dropped to 2.4%. The 10% drop means that Windows Phone 7 has now … just…. overtaken the Symbian OS. …
Another Nokia Lumia device ? Yes indeed, if this shot is to be believed anyways. The Nokia Lumua 719c looks to be another entry-level device but we don’t have a great deal of info at the moment… Link – baidu.com Credit – MyNokiaBlog
Deep down inside the current Galaxy SII there’s a Samsung Exynos chip. In the SII, and again you should probably stick this into the “SII Rumour File”, there’s a newer Exynos chip which has better battery life and quad-core processing capability. Yes, we KNOW that the SIII is …
If you want to build excitement, renders and leaked photos should do it. Today there’s another shot of the SIII, and the “is it or isn’t it”-games continue. This Reddit rumour mentions a 12 megapixel shooter, 2250mAh battery and it’s only 8mm thick. Salt anyone? The pessimist in …
Want to know more about the Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Galaxy S2? A powerpoint slide, which has been converted to a PDF here, gives info on what to expect if you’ve not upgraded yours already. It’s not just the UI that’s changed, there’s stacks more, so …
Did you see the Australian GP toys weekend? What? No, its not an Australian Doctor, we’re talking about the F1 racing, and you can watch now on the Sky Sports TV app. Link – Sky Sports TV
OK. The title pretty much sums things up here. If you’re looking to get the Sony Xperia S on the T-Mobile network, click over there now to get it for £36 a month, and no up-front payment. If you’d like a bit more info before signing up check …
Now, don’t get us wrong, we know that the USB port on your laptop or PC isn’t the most ideal place to put your phone if you need a quick battery charge. It will, at best, provide a “trickle charge” but isn’t as good as the usual wall …
Google. An amazing company. Amazing products, an amazing experience. However, their customer service has always been a massive fail. I’ve seen websites vanish from Google after getting removed from search listings and, for over 10 years now, we’ve tried unsuccessfully to get into Google News, every time with …
If you bought The Sun this Saturday then you might have seen one of the SEVEN massive Nokia Lumia advertisements. There’s an advert for the Android-powered Galaxy in there too, but its mostly Windows Phone all the way. Link – Phones 4U
We like Giffgaff. They’ve done things a little differently and built up quite a following. Today, though, has not been a good day. A major service outage hit the network – one that took almost 8 hours to fix. Calls, texts and data failed completely around mid-morning today …
Browsing around the Android Market Google Play last night, I couldn’t help but notice this Solar Charger app. It’s had hundreds of thousands of downloads and converts your screen into a solar panel. Magic eh? Well yes. It’s actually more of a trick really. The app doesn’t actually …
T-Mobile have joined many other networks in announcing availability for the slightly different iPad 3 new iPad. It should be arriving in stores today, with T-Mobile promoting the fact that their joint Everything Everywhere network and “advanced 3.5G rollout” can offer much improved coverage and speeds. You can …
We get a few press releases and research results posted through our door here at Coolsmartphone towers. This one flashed up on our radar and well, we figured it was worth telling you about. The Geek Squad asked 1,837 people about their mobile phone usage and found that …
It’s been a good few months since we looked at the Orange Signal Boost technology. Now it’s available in more and more handsets on Orange and solves that “in building coverage problem” you may have experienced. During my completely unscientific research, I’ve found that networks using the 900MHz …
Fancy getting yourself the original Galaxy Note on Three? They’ll be offering up the device on Pay As You Go for £499 or on contracts like the Essential 500 for £32 a month (with 5000 texts, 500 minutes and 250MB of data). The Galaxy Note, which we reviewed …
O2 have confirmed via Twitter that they will be offering up the HTC One X from April 5th – just 4 weeks from today. There’s no news on pricing or plans just yet though. We do, however, have some HTC One X deals on O2 if you’re interested. …
Everything Everywhere have been given the green light by Ofcom to, in principle, use some of their 1800MHz spectrum to roll out LTE. T-Mobile and Orange already use 1800MHz for their existing 2G networks, but have enough “room” to roll out 4G LTE ahead of other networks, who …
We seem to be finding a good selection of cheap Windows Phones lately. Now it’s the turn of the HTC Radar, which has been reduced to £199 on eBuyer. The Radar has 8GB of storage on board, a 3.8″ screen, 5 megapixel camera and 1GHz CPU. Link – …
