Author: Leigh Geary
Here it is then, the new Galaxy Note9. Yes, no space between “Note” and “9”. That’s going to trip us up for months to come. First, that “all day battery” has been confirmed. This will be a 4,000mAh unit which will let you work and play all day …
Alright, so you watched our live coverage and now you want one. I guess you’re going to have to go to one of the big four major networks, right? Well, no actually. Sky Mobile, who use O2 masts, are going to have both the Note 9 and the …
Are you ready for another big Samsung launch event? Watch the action unfold live by tuning in to the stream below from 4PM BST. We are all expecting to see the Galaxy Note 9, with perhaps 6GB of RAM and a much longer battery life. We are also …
The simple SIM only network from Three (covered earlier here) has a straightforward offering. There’s three packages – either a 2GB one for £7.50 per month, a 4GB one for £10 or an 8GB for £15. All have unlimited calls and unlimited texts. You just need to find …
A few years ago we had cavity wall insulation put into the walls. It makes sense really – keeping the heat in during the winter and ensuring that your home is nice and cool during the summer months. I know lately, with the UK going through a prolonged …
Hello 2018. We’ve got something for you. It’s a phone from 1996. Back then touch-screens were a fantasy. You had a numeric keypad and a tiny screen. On the Nokia 8110 the numeric keypad was tucked behind a sliding panel, and the phone was shaped a little bit …
A few days ago I took a look at Huawei Desktop Mode. It’s part of EMUI 8.0 and it’s available on the Mate 10 Series handset I’ve got at the moment. It gives you a larger desktop experience which is almost like my Chromebook, but everything is powered by …
Updated 08/08/2018 It’s safe to say that we get a fair amount of Bluetooth speakers sent to us here at Coolsmartphone. Whether waterproof, rugged or portable they all have one fairly similar thing in common. The sound. Sure, you can turn them up and they’ll make a noise, …
This rather clever, unassuming and stylish slab comes to us from FuseChicken. This is the bamboo one, but you can get it in leather too, and the thing screams “premium”. It’s $44.95 in the USA and we found it for £48.95 here in the UK. Yes, that’s a …
As you can see by the photos here, this is a wall charger. It’s a pretty substantial size too, measuring in at 7.16 x 5.69 x 2.95 cm. It costs £29.99 and has a USB-C output. Into that you can plug the supplied 2 metre-long cable. So, just …
Whilst browsing around YouTube last night I had yet another “Fortnite for Android” video pop up. It’s this one below, and if you watch it on YouTube itself you’ll notice that the comments hidden. It’s yet another classic stitch-up. The video promotes a website where you side-load an …
OK, so this is how the story goes. I was reading the excellent review of the Huawei P20 that Dan had written. Garry had written an equally brilliant P20 Pro review and I was keen to learn more about this whole “Huawei Desktop Mode” thing. So, I had …
I started off with a Spectrum 48k. That’s how I walked into the world of geek. Then, after I’d worn down the keys by playing “Daley Thompson’s Decathlon” I managed to save and got an Amiga 500. Just look at it. 512KB of RAM (yes, KB, not MB!) …
I remember when mobile phones first started being a “thing”. I was at college and got this, the Nokia 5.1. It was also known as the Nokia 2110. Strangely the 5.1 name has now re-appeared on the Nokia site, albeit under a completely new design.. and no pull-out …
Hello you beautiful Coolsmartphone reader you. Now, I know that spending £40-£60 per month for a phone and a contract seems like “situation normal” now, but what if you’ve got yourself a second-hand or reconditioned phone and you just want a low-cost monthly plan? Well, over at HotUKDeals …
A giffgaff survey recently found that less than 1 in 4 students have any mobile phone insurance. Not only that, but 17% of female students had suffered a smashed screen and not had it repaired for over a year. As we head towards a new term, it’s shocking …
Online scammers and criminals are always waiting for the right moment to pounce. To trap you into revealing your personal data. Into sharing something you shouldn’t. The increasing use of mobile devices paves the way for mobile phone scams, and those scammers can cost their targets more than …
The network for the under 30’s has added, for a limited time, triple data. This comes on top of their endless social data, plus endless calls, texts and picture messages plus endless roaming in Europe. There’s no contracts – you just choose how much data you need for …
Whether you’re voting for a new US President or you’re deciding to be part of the EU, in 2016 something new happened. Social media giants allowed a “Wild West” to be created in the digital world. Unregulated and targeted adverts to be pushed hard into the psyche of …
Come. Come here. Get close to the screen. I need to tell you a secret. If you’re using a mobile phone right now, and you’re on a contract, listen up. I’m guessing that you’re probably paying £40, £50, maybe more per month. Right? Why are you doing that? …
The battle for battery life isn’t a very complex one. You either leave your GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi on all the time, with background apps ticking along, or you start cleverly shutting stuff down to conserve battery life. A lot of manufacturers have added on board systems to …
It was a throwaway remark. A passing comment on Twitter. Last night I did a quick speed test and got 365Mbps down. Insane. However, I got a few questions about how it was achieved, so here goes. The speed was the result of me combining my Vodafone 4G …
If you’ve swapped your phone recently, or you’ve perhaps added an SD card and it’s in the SIM tray, you’ll no doubt have had the “hunt for the pin thing”. Sure, if you’ve got a spanky new phone you may still have the “SIM tool”. However, if the …
We’ve now taken delivery of our mobile phone booster. It’s a big day but also a strange one. As I type, we’re sitting in a barn in a field. There’s nothing but cows and sheep all around me yet we’ve got 1Gbps fibre connectivity. The fibre optic cables …
Despite some recent criticism, Facebook now has more than 900 million users. Twitter has over 500 million, LinkedIn more than 161 million, Google+ almost 400 million, and Instagram with over 80 million. These figures aren’t just numbers, but are concrete proof that social media really is stealing the …
On Friday I spent a good ten minutes running around to try and find a VGA cable. The reason? A client informed me, just before I headed out of the door, that their projector only had a VGA input. This, in 2018, seemed a little strange. In my …
As you may have read here on Coolsmartphone recently, Google Android was given a huge fine by the EU after exploiting their control over the Android OS. They were, it seems, reducing the appearance of rivals. However, with another huge fine being pushed through the door, people are …
OK, let’s be honest. After all, it’s an open secret really. People don’t really purchase those Android TV boxes just so they can watch local media, do they? Sure, they can install TV and on-demand TV apps from the likes of BBC, Netflix, NOW TV and others. That’ll …
So, this is a bit mental, but believe me, it’ll be worth it. Today, in Soho, Huawei have setup a popup store. However, things are a bit .. different in this particular store. They’re offering the rather excellent Huawei P20 Pro. It’s the one we raved about in …
Huawei have a bit of a problem, but it’s a nice problem. First, their Huawei phones are doing really rather well. Likewise, the Huawei sub-brand, Honor, is doing well too. The Honor 10 flagship phone sold three million units within the first three months of being on sale. …
In the soft squishy bits of my brain – the bits that have been impacted by alcohol the most – I vaguely remember similar products in the past, but this Chipolo solution is stylish and just easy to setup. Basically it’s a small “doo-hickey” which connects to your …
Before I started writing this, I headed to my own fridge for a healthy snack. This is what I found inside. Cadbury seems to have exploded in there. It’s mad. The problem is, I think, that when we head to the local supermarket, it’s when we’re hungry. So …
We’ve seen quite a few devices from Vodafone lately which aren’t phones. Whilst some of these gadgets are definitely aimed at businesses (automotive tracking, smart cameras and the like), we’ve felt a definite push for gadgets that you could use at home too. Three years ago we took …
I’m kinda lucky at home. I’ve got 300Mbps broadband from Virgin Media, but although it’s marketed as “fibre broadband” it – and many other “superfast fibre” connections – actually aren’t delivered via fibre all the way. Instead, the last bit, from the local street cabinet to your house, …
Next month there’s going to be some gifts for Honor 10 owners. Two major upgrades will begin rolling out from August 3rd which add GPU Turbo and Automatic Image Stabilisation (AIS). First up, some info on GPU Turbo. It’s a groundbreaking hardware-software integration and graphics processing technology which …
Fancy a big fat stack of data per month? Fancy using EE masts and getting the full 4G beans? Fancy only spending £18 per month for all that? Buy before the end of July and you’ll get 5000 minutes, unlimited texts and all that data on this SIM-only …
Just the other day I mentioned my quest to get a mobile repeater. The reason, as you will have seen from a few of my most recent posts, is because the signal in the area I’m now currently based is a poor and I really need a mobile …
This morning I wrote a story about WiFi Calling. It’s something which is now becoming fairly familiar with users of compatible handsets and means that you can make and receive calls whilst on the Underground in London, in the local Tesco or in the office when there’s no …
The BBC is today reporting that the Android OS is to be the subject of yet more fines from the European Commission. It’s another massive fine for the company after Google was hit with a £2.1 billion fine for their shopping comparison process. Today the EU have found Google …
A couple of nights ago I got home and noticed that my normally-strong Vodafone signal was down to either zero or 1 bars. I checked their coverage and “known issues” map online but that said that everything was fine. Then, just to ensure that I wasn’t going bonkers, …
