Author: Leigh Geary

Vodafone to range the Sony Xperia XZ3

During IFA we took a look at the Sony Xperia XZ3. It has a 6″ 2880 x 1440 OLED screen, a 19 megapixel Exmor RS MotionEye camera at the back, a 13 megapixel up-front and an S-Force speaker. Powered by a 3,330mAh battery, it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon …

VOXI offers smartphones with 0% interest

Paying for a phone can be done in a few different ways. You either pay it all in one go, start a contract or you sign up to a finance agreement. The last two are pretty similar, but traditionally people have just walked into a store and signed …

Samsung unveil the Galaxy A7

Whilst the Note9 and Galaxy S9 continues to take the limelight, the Galaxy A-range offers a cheaper alternative. The company have just announced their latest wallet-friendly model – the Samsung Galaxy A7. It comes with a 6″ Full HD (1080×2220) Super AMOLED screen and a triple camera arrangement …

Vodafone beams footballer across England using 5G

The CTO at Vodafone UK, Scott Petty, wanted to show us what 5G can really do last week. The new tech will definitely make everything faster, but how will it benefit our lives otherwise? Well, with the aid of England and Manchester City Women’s Football Captain Steph Houghton, …

Smartphone penetration continues to grow

A new survey, published today by Deloitte, has revealed that smartphone penetration has grown even further during 2018. After questioning some 4,000 smartphone users, they’ve found that there’s growth across all age groups, with the 55-75 category seeing the most growth. This age range has increased from 40% …

Smart bike lighting. Get Blinkers

Cycling at any time can be a bit risky. I do tend to bore my family about the charity bike rides I do, but the more you cycle, the more you realise that you have to share the road and everybody should take a bit of time. As …

Gladius Mini – For when you want an underwater drone

I’ve just been watching the utterly disastrous Donald Trump saying how Hurricane Florence has been one of the wettest from the standpoint of water. He also, amazingly, tells the world that the Hurricane was “not good”. Wow. So, after I’d finished laughing at the utter fool, I received …

Tesco Mobile launches a new type of contract

This isn’t a mobile plan or tariff, instead Tesco Mobile have developed a contract or agreement that you can download here for your family. It sets out an agreement on mobile usage rules within the house. Families can print it out, then talk about it and fill it …

Are you one of the millions of people paying too much for your phone?

Now Citizens Advice have waded into the age-old problem of contract customers paying far too much. It happens if you’ve chosen a deal which bundles your minutes, texts and data in with the cost of the phone. Whilst paying one bundled monthly fee may seem simple, many don’t …

Pure Elan IR5 – Review

At home I get about 70-odd digital radio stations. I’m quite lucky. Here in the UK there’s now a big range of DAB stations alongside the FM and MW / LW / SW stations. However, this particular radio is a bit different. It’s an internet radio, a Bluetooth …

Virgin Mobile SIM-only 100GB offer

Quick one. Virgin Mobile, who use the EE masts, have put their 100GB SIM-only offer back online. It’s now down to just £20 per month, so if you’ve got a phone already and you want a stack load of data this is excellent. You get 5000 minutes and …

BT Price up the Apple iPhone XS and XS Max

Yes, it’s definitely Apple day today here at Coolsmartphone. We’re detailing some of the plans available and the networks offering them. The next cab off the rank is BT Mobile, and BT, of course, sit on the EE network.. which BT owns. I know, a tad confusing. Let’s …

iPhone XS and XS Max – Three pricing

So, you’ve read my rather barbed comments about the iPhone XS and the XS Max, but you still want to hand over your cash. That’s cool. How about you give it to Three? They’ve got the iPhone XS up for £54 on a 4GB plan or £59 with …

iPhone XS and XS Max Vodafone pricing

Yes, I know that pre-orders went live on Friday, but real life took over and I had to fit some blinds. Apologies folks. After our big iPhone XS and iPhone XS coverage you should know everything you need to know. However, if you want to get it from …

iPhone XS and XS Max on Virgin Mobile – Pricing

Virgin Mobile sit on the EE network, so you’re going to be getting a lot of the benefits as a normal EE customer would. Great network, great speeds, great coverage. Now, you can get those new iPhones on the network too. There’s pre-order pages for both devices and …

giffgaff iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max pricing

So, you’ve seen our coverage and you want to know more about where to get the new iPhone handsets. We’ve already looked at offer from EE but now giffgaff have thrown their hat into the ring with pricing on the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max. I …

Where’s the place you don’t get a signal ?

Ok everyone. I’m going to ask you a question. Name me one place where you regularly have signal problems. Not a geographic spot, but a place. Yes, it’s a train. Trains are a pain in the backside. On journeys to London it’s fairly usual to hear someone say, …

Hands on with the new Huawei Mate 20 lite

Want to see more of the Huawei Mate 20 lite? It was announced at IFA and is the first look at the new Mate 20 Series from the company. The handset is fairly cheap at £379, and is powered by a Huawei Kirin 710 octa-core + i7 microprocessor …

Less than £100 – The Xiaomi Redmi 6 3GB / 32GB

It’s available in blue, it’s SIM-free, it comes with a 5.45″ 1440×720 pixel screen and it’s powered by a Helio P22 CPU Mediatek CPU. There’s 32GB of internal storage plus a microSD card and 3GB of RAM. It also runs Android 8.1. The Xiaomi Redmi 6 is selling …

The quest for a new phone. Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 anyone?

Remember back in February when we were running around the halls of Mobile World Congress? Remember us filming the Mi Mix 2? Well, it did look rather nice indeed. It was nearly £335 at the time though… Now, just a few months down the line, you can pick …

Xiaomi Pocophone F1 available for £246.19

Head over to a site called Toby Deals and you’ll find the Xiaomi Pocophone F1 6GB/64GB version for £252.19. Whack the code “WELCOME6″ in and the price will drop down to £246.19. If you need a bit more storage internally (this has a microSD card slot / dual …

iClever IC-GK03 Wireless keyboard and mouse – Review

OK, please don’t tell iClever, but I’ve had this (and I’ve used it) for a number of weeks now. Even though it’s been right in front of me, I totally forgot to do the review. At least it means that I know all about it though, which is …

At least I’ve got one skill

When I was a kid, we used to go on holiday in a camper van. We didn’t have gadgets, smartphones or iPads. We sat there, in the British weather, playing cards and actually talking to each other. In the dark, with the wind blowing against the awning, we’d …

giffgaff deliver freebies with P20 purchases

Whenever I write “giffgaff” on my phone it seems to change it to “guffguff”. Personally I think they’re missing a trick there. Anyhow, Network of the Year for three consecutive years (according to uSwitch) has some great deals on if you’re looking to bag the excellent P20 or …

Inbox by Gmail. It’s being killed off.

I quite like Inbox. I’ve got it installed on my phone right now and I appreciate the exciting and additional features. I installed it because Gmail, whether on the t’internet or on your phone, has remained pretty samey for quite a while. Recently though, I’ve noticed that Gmail …

Apple announce some expensive phones that you will buy

Apologies in advance. I’m wearing my “sarcasm” hat writing this story. Want an even bigger screen? Want a phone with a name that sounds a bit like a sporty car? Want to be pushed, without thinking about it, away from the iPhone 8 and those “regular” iPhone models …

Samsung Sound+ HW-MS650 Wireless Smart Soundbar – Review

I am not an audiophile by any means – I don’t have a finely tuned ear, and I couldn’t tell you what a chord was if it slapped me in the face! However, I do like to listen to music, and anything that makes that easier and better is appealing …

EE switches off more 3G as 4G takes over

The 2100MHz 3G frequency has been in use by all the UK operators for a long time. Now EE are refarming the spectrum so that it’ll power 4G instead. This effectively means that EE will have five “carriers” of the 4G signal – more than any other UK …

A scary new world of holographic companions. It’s here now.

Before I say anything, watch this video. Soak it in. Look at the grin on the face of the guy.. It’s more than a little creepy, however this virtual lady seems to be proving quite popular. They call it / her, the “Gatebox” in the PR email. “She’ll …

Another cheap deal on a 128GB microSD card

Hello there. We’re back. Apologies for the outage today. We’ve been unable to meet the costs of hosting this ever-expanding website this month, but thankfully readers such as Rob Deacon, James McCrudden, Andrew Smith, Dave Jones and Paul Caley added their donations and now we’re back. I could …

A totally solar-powered server. The conclusion.

I’ll be straight with you. I’ve had a long career in IT. I’ve done some proper geeky things in my time, including having an old server in my garage running VMware. That means that I can run a stack of machines, test things out and generally be a …

Add walkie-talkie capability to your iPhone

This one hasn’t even gone fully live on Indigogo as yet but, from what I can see, this is a case, an extra battery for your iPhone and a walkie-talkie, all in one. Cheap data, better coverage and apps like WhatsApp, which has an inbuilt audio recording / …

The Nokia 5.1 comes back to the UK

Four years ago I was writing about the end of Nokia and how much I remembered my trust Nokia 5.1. I always called it the 5.1, but it was also known as the Nokia 2110 and it’s something I wrote about again just a month ago. Now, for …