Author: Leigh Geary
OK. This isn’t a VW Scirocco. It’s a Nokia 8 Sirocco. No “C”. This is all-new and, as an extra treat, if you get one you’ll qualify for a free Google Home Mini. If you get a Nokia 6 or a Nokia 7 Plus then you get a …
Word up. It’s Thursday. Nearly the end of the week already and yes, the sun is out here in the UK. Here in the Coolsmartphone office we’re still recovering from Prince Harry’s stag do but the Honor press team have been banging down our door since dawn. Their …
Right, quick one this because I’ve not had a cup of tea yet and I’m not really firing on all cylinders. If you’re looking for an 18-rated shooting game that’s free, try Hitman Sniper. It was 79p (which wasn’t really a lot in the first place), but it …
Right you, I’m going to speak right down the camera to you. This weekend I got chatting to my mates’ wife. She’s started running and, because I do the odd bit of cycling, we started discussing Strava. The app, as you’ll know if you’re a runner or cyclist, …
We would like to thank the following people for their help and support in keeping us online. So far this week we’ve had donations from … Deborah Stringer Alistair Dent Mark Harper Bobby Wallace We’re really can’t quite put into words how appreciative we are. As we’ve done …
So today Marc Allera from BT announced something pretty special. The major plus point, for us at least, was buried in the words “convergence” and “aggregation”. What this basically means is that you’ll be able to get up to 314Mbps ultrafast broadband by 2022. How? Well, BT will …
Available exclusively with EE, Samsung have just announced an additional colour for their S9 handsets. You can already get the Midnight Black, Coral Blue and Lilac Purple, however there’s now a gold one too. In addition, a Titanium Grey model will be available exclusively to Carphone Warehouse and …
In all honesty we just couldn’t afford the train fare to London for this one as we’re prioritising the costs of our servers (we’re running a donation drive right now if you can help) and we’re properly gutted about it. Why? Well, Honor have been rocking the smartphone …
Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past few years, you may be aware of our podcast. We cover the recent news and gossip plus, if I’m honest, there’s more of an irreverent look at the launches and the latest gadgets for our smartphones. We’ve recorded and …
I always open up these reviews by telling you just how many speakers I get to review. There’s many. A lot look like this. It’ll be about 15 or 16cm wide and will sit in your bag quite nicely. You can then play your tunes for hours on …
Got yourself an Honor 7X? We got our hands on the thing late last year but now it’s just received the updated EMUI 8.0 user interface. This delivers the face unlock functionality too. Honor din’t just go ahead and deploy this – they’ve actually got hold of 561 …
Right now on Banggood.com the Leagoo S9 is on a presale offer for less than £100. Wait a minute though. The Leagoo S9? Wha? I know. Not a well-known brand, but check out the specs. It’s got a 5.85″ HD+ 19:9 screen (1512 x 720) and run Android …
We were in China live for the launch of the Meizu 15 and we even got to unbox it too, but what about that camera setup on the back? The Meizu 15 has a 20 megapixel and 12 megapixel dual-camera arrangement with 3x lossless zoom. Meizu aren’t afraid …
Money isn’t our friend at the moment. Our donation drive isn’t, I’ll be honest, going that well. We’ve only received £4.63, and that was from Bobby Wallace (thanks Bobby, we love you fella!) If you’ve got cash, and you don’t want to spend it on keeping us online, …
Whether you’re after a SIM-only or a contract deal, Tesco Mobile have just got in touch to let us know about their latest offers. It starts with the iPhone 6 on a 36-month Anytime Upgrade Flex contract. That, at £18.49 per month (and no upfront fee), will get …
Headphones. We get so many. To try and differentiate is always tricky and there’s so many companies producing them. So, when I got this set I was thinking they’d be another set of fairly mid-range headphones. “Kygo”, I thought, “Isn’t that the dance music guy?” Indeed he is. …
Want to get the new Motorola Moto G6? Well, there’s only one place to go folks because it’s exclusive to Vodafone until the end of this month. Bag one with 1GB of data, unlimited texts and unlimited minutes for a mere £24 per month. The G6, which we …
OK, so you know I was on another cycling adventure recently. As it was all for charity and I had to prove that we’d actually done the thing, I took a phone so that I could record the activity on Strava. Now, as I’ve done this before I …
My job involves a lot of sitting down. Sometimes I get up for coffee, but then the snack machine starts looking at me and I end up with a chocolate bar too. A few years back I ran up the stairs and was a bit surprised to be …
Ok, I will be honest with you on this one. As I’m in the middle of preparing for yet another mad cycle ride, I have run out of time to publish the review on this one. However, because this camera has impressed me so much I wanted to …
Well, where do I start here? We saw the LG G7 ThinQ back in February at Mobile World Congress. It was all a bit weird, because they displayed it around the back of the stand, supposedly to invite-only people, but then didn’t stop said people taking lots of …
In your car there’s a magical port. It sits under your dashboard usually and you’ll find that the AA man will plug his laptop into it. I remember once I broke down and had to call them out. It was in a car I was renting and his …
Most leaked handset in history? Yep, it’s certainly getting that way. Over the weekend we found more details of the battery and screen on the LG G7, now we’re getting more on the audio side of things. We saw the thing in Barcelona in February but then there …
I’m reviewing a toothbrush today. Yep, a toothbrush. I’m sure we all know the benefits of using an electrical one. They clean better and your brushing will be timed so that you don’t over-do it. With a manual brush you can often go too far or not far …
Sega OutRun was an epic game. No denying it. I’m old enough to remember the original, but then another one, cunningly named Sega OutRun 2, was released in 2003. It looked like this… Now, if you want to experience OutRun in your own home you could, if you’ve …
Just in case you missed it, the LG G7 made a rather unscheduled appearance at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year. There was rumours that it wasn’t the finished product, but then it became clear that it actually was. Very strange. Now we’re just days away from …
When I was a kid, “sports” was something you did in PE (Physical Education) at school. There we would be, standing in a freezing cold field, wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and shorts. The PE teacher, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, …
I did like the Huawei P smart. It’s properly cheap but properly good. Go on, read my review right here. Now, this phone is less than £200 but it’s got Android 8.0, a 5.65″ 1080×2160 pixel 18:9 screen, an octa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage with a …
An alarm clock just wakes you up. Right? Well yes, yes it does, but gone are the days of some badly-made alarm clock waking you up with some white-noise. Now we’ve got alarm-clock radios that’ll receive crystal-clear DAB stations and will accept music from your phone, so you …
I’ll tell it like it is with the Windows Phone platform. It’s the same with any OS I write about. The moment that Microsoft effectively bribed developers to write apps for their handests and the huge difference in the choice of apps compared to Android and iOS meant …
Oppo did a bit of a launch over the weekend too. This is their new F7, a handset with a massive 6.23″ screen (2280 x 1080) in a 19:9 aspect ratio. There’s a rear 16 megapixel shooter with an f/1.8 aperture.. However… It’s not all about that back …
A hotel room? A review unit? Matteo Doni? Mix up those ingredients and there’s a tasty video in the making. The Meizu 15 launched just yesterday and we were on hand to give it the maximum amount of coverage direct from China. The Meizu 15 has a 5.46″ …
We’re live from Wuzhen in China this weekend. It’s the launch of the Meizu 15. It’s got the best camera technology in a Meizu and it’s the first Meizu handset to run on a Qualcomm chipset. There’s also going to be a Meizu 15 Plus, which has the …
Whats this? Our very own Matteo? In China on business? Yes indeed, but wait a minute, he’s had something arrive. It’s an invite, but this isn’t some dull piece of paper. This is a very posh, plush and official-looking box. Inside there’s something quite special, and there’s even an …
How do you get your news? For the majority of people reading this, we very much doubt that it’ll be via a newspaper alone. Now people are getting their news updates instantly via smartphone, and the 16 to 34-year-old audience range is proving the most difficult for traditional …
So, Dan wrote about this just a short while ago but the PR people promised me a free biscuit if I mentioned it again. The Nokia 7 plus, a smartphone which promises a two day battery life, is coming to the UK. It’s £349.99 and will be available …
Yes, the A8, not the S8. The Galaxy A8 is a new mid-range device which fits into that uncomfortable “it’s a bit like an S8 but I bought the cheaper version” slot. It’s a tad heavier than the Galaxy S8, but still has the 18.5:9 screen and glass …
OK, so you’re probably going to have to watch the numerous potholes that are about at the moment. Riding one of these things on a road could be eventful for all the wrong reasons if you don’t have your wits about you. I’ve reported a cluster of around 6 …
Way back when this site first started, we had a monstrous downloads section where you could grab MP3 files to plonk onto your phone. In the early 2000’s (yes, we’ve been around a while), it was fairly unusual to have a phone which could get free ringtones. Most …
We’ve covered the various dangers of social media. Sure, it can be fun, but it can also be addictive and sometimes a little dangerous. No amount of web filtering or content matching is going to stop people approaching you online or chucking abuse your way. Instagram is one …
