Author: Leigh Geary
My brain works in strange ways. Last night, as is usual, I put my phone into “Airplane mode” before going to sleep. It’s a little habit I’ve fallen into because, deep down, I don’t trust that “silent mode” won’t silent my morning alarm too. So, I put it …
Back in the day, when we used to have nightclubs and you’d go outside to meet other people instead of “swiping” them, I always wanted to be the DJ. The nearest I got was doing the lights in a local nightclub, and I made the mistake of leaving …
At Christmas my nephew had a drone. Just a few days later it seemingly latched onto another signal and, whilst he was flying it across a large local park, it decided to fly in one particular direction – never to be seen again. Part of me can understand …
OK, you know the deal. You get a call from a withheld number and you ignore it. It could be one of the many PPI calls, it could be one of those ambulance-chasing claims companies. It could, however, be a call from your doctor or a call from …
With Mobile World Congress happening next month, the very last thing we expected to see was a new handset from HTC in early January. That, though, is what we have – the Desire 650. There’s a bit of a backstory to this one. It appeared on the Taiwanese …
Before I mention the iD Mobile plans, I know that Sky are now running their mobile network too (which sits on O2) and they’re very eager to be mentioned here. For Sky customers, it might be worth checking out (head to sky.com/mobile). Sky keep emailing me to let …
Right, first up I should mention that this phone doesn’t have Band 20 on LTE, so no 800MHz 4G. Oh, and it also doesn’t have NFC, so no “tap to pay” magic. However, what it does have is a 2.1GHz Helio X20 deca-core CPU with a Mali T880 …
OK, not quite free. You’ll have to pay postage. However, if you want a personal skin on your Sky remote control or your phone, just put FREESKIN in during the checkout process on the Wrappz website. Apple, HTC, Google, Nokia and other skins are available so you should …
Yes, bike lights. Welcome to the never-ending list of stuff that we’re reviewing here on Coolsmartphone. I’m hoping that we’ll have some sports cars in next. These are LED lights. Back when I was a kid I’d have a huge battery in each of my bike lights and …
In a way I’m not overly happy that a service like this exists, or has to exist. The NHS here in the UK is crumbling. There’s many reasons for it, and we could argue about them all day, but fact is – it’s broken. We’re now in a …
Over the last few days I’ve been faffing about with the voice-controlled Amazon Echo Dot. It’s got an invisible lady inside called “Alexa” which will do your bidding. The device itself is a magical disc-shaped unit which will wake up and then answer your questions. It’ll also play …
Over three years ago now we reviewed these Hyundai sunglasses. They had a “hidden” camera up front which meant that you could secretly record “stuff”. I tried it on a summers evening whilst cycling and the results were a little low-quality and bumpy. However, fast forward to CES …
Think your microSD card is big enough? Think again. Over in Las Vegas, SanDisk have just revealed their new 256GB Ultra microSD card. It boasts transfer speeds of up to 95MB/s and you can have the additional storage it provides presented as preferred or adoptable storage on Android. …
I think I’ve started to reach an age where I don’t always recognise some of the celebrities in magazines and on TV. Especially on “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here” where they now seem to run a full intro detailing why a person is apparently “famous”. …
It seems that there’s no love lost between Cyanogen Inc and CyanogenMod. The CyanogenMod.org website is now dead. It comes just hours after this blog post from the developers behind it. When the CyanogenMod team announced that they were going to fork the source code yesterday we simply …
Well, we didn’t want this to come (especially so late on Christmas Eve when we’re all full of mince pies) but it has. Following our earlier news that Cyanogen OS is to be retired, it now looks like CyanogenMod in its current form is toast too. However, there’s …
Have a quick look on the “Whois” for this site and you’ll see the following … Creation Date: 2003-02-14 08:44:29 Yes, in February it’ll have been 14 years since I bought the coolsmartphone.com domain name. Now, while I’m having a quick trip down memory lane, does anyone remember …
Amazon have dished out a bit of a Christmas treat. The new Top Gear Grand Tour can now be watched for free! Well, the first episode at least. The critically acclaimed Clarkson, Hammond and May show is available to view here, but you have to be quite quick. …
Yes, I’ve been sent a wallet to review. A wallet.It’s a wallet. For your money and your bank cards. The end. Yes, I should perhaps tell you a bit more about it because, as we all know, if you want to know what wallet to buy, come to …
Having a security camera on your house can be a good and bad thing. Sure, you can keep an eye on things, but it’s also a sign that you want to keep something protected, and thieves might target your house because it’s got cameras hanging off it. So …
Yes, the crazy festive season hasn’t even finished and already the next crazy festive season is already gearing up, with Boxing Day sales kicking off online and on emails already. Vodafone have mailed to tell us about their biggest-ever winter sale, which starts today and finishes at the …
Yesterday we mentioned the new high-speed internet which has arrived in Hebron, courtesy of Three UK. The network gave away free “Home-Fi” routers to residents so that they could at last get the fast broadband they’ve long needed. We didn’t know at the time what make the routers …
You may have noticed a bit of a “theme” developing on Coolsmartphone this week, and it’s all to do with movie watching. Yes, you can watch TV and sports events too, but there’s a definite battle going on for your eyeballs right now. If you pay for cable …
So. I’m not totally sure where to begin with this one. I’ll sum it up in one sentence if I can. It’s a camera that you stick fairly low down on your wall that will let you video call your dog. Yeah. Not only that, but if you …
No, I’d never heard of Hebron before writing this either. It’s in Northumberland and there’s less than a couple of hundred houses in the entire parish. However, despite BT digging stuff up and putting a nice green street cabinet for “Superfast Broadband”, residents are still stuck in the …
So, we were going to do a really big feature about the top tech toys for this festive season. We ended up adding lots of festive features for you over the last few weeks instead. Anyhow, the guys from Mobile Phones Direct have put together a Top 50 …
Filling an entire news item with conjecture and rumour about an upcoming launch? Well, I’ve seen it quite a bit across the web today. Many are trying to decide what exactly the new “HTC U” or “HTC for U” launch, which we’ve just received an invite for, actually …
Back in the “old days” we used to have photos on film. We then sent them off to get processed and we’d get them back on nice paper and we’d put them into albums. Now, we have smartphones and we have our photos stored either in a “cloud” …
Have you already spent your entire mortgage payment on the festive season? If so, and you’re perhaps on the lookout for a gift to yourself, go to this PayPal page to save £2 on any Google Play purchase. To use, just pay for something in Google Play with …
Unless you’re trying to use the M6 Toll, a lot of places will now let you pay for stuff using your phone. With 1 in 5 payments now made via contactless, it seems to be the future. Transactions of up to £30 can be “tapped” and won’t need …
This looks to be the “next big thing” on mobile. Today Super Mario Run will finally launch for iOS devices and, although it looks a bit like the traditional Super Mario Bros, this is an “autorunner”, so the clever little plumber moves forward at all times. That means …
Let’s break this down shall we? Imagine taking a fairly powerful Android phone, removing the screen and replacing the navigation system with an Xbox-style controller, then outputting the video to your TV. That’s basically what you have here. Inside is a quad core CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GB of …
Our smartphones are like our own personal assistants. They help remind us of the things we usually forget. They help us record beautiful memories we experience every single day. And of course, they help us get in touch and stay connected with our loved ones. Your smartphone helps …
These guys at a great little startup from here in the UK. Their product came after a trip to a farm and a little boy became lost. Staff at the farm were searching for the parents, and the parents were searching for their son. Colleen, the founder of …
It’s the season to be jolly, but not everyone gets to be at home with their family. If you’re in a different country, whether it be because of work, holiday or you just don’t like your family very much, you’ll probably be huddled around a WiFi access point …
If you’re on a Pay As You Go deal and have a certain slice of data per month, you kinda need to use it. It’s a little like those old-fashioned cameras that used to take film – you’d take 30 shots of your holiday and then you’d have …
Using Android Pay could result in a nice gift this festive season. Just use your phone to pay for something and you’ll be in with a chance of winning one of 100,000 prizes. Get a cracker every time you use Android Pay “through Dec 31”, which apparently is how …
If you’ve got a hankering for a flip-phone with “proper” numeric keys, the Doro 6520 could be on your shopping list. Now, in a new partnership with Three UK, Doro have got handsets on every UK network. Doro used to be known for selling phones aimed at the …
In my day job I have and still do work with Microsoft Operating Systems. It’s been a love / hate relationship over the years but now, when I get home, I don’t want anything more to do with it. Turning on a laptop, getting the endless updates and …
About 14 years ago I started reviewing phones. Now I’m reviewing Christmas tree decorations and, if I’m honest, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Either way, it’s the time to get festive. If you’ve just been up to the loft and grabbed your decorations …
