Author: Leigh Geary

HTC Desire 10 lined up for launch on Tuesday

What are you doing on Tuesday morning? Well, we’re going to be at a swanky launch party in the West End of London. We’ll be eating canapés, drinking free champagne, meeting the….. ..wait. Ah no. It’s another one of those “web” launches from HTC. Gah.. what happen to …

SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone and iPad – Review

Your iPhone can connect to the iCloud to backup, but what if you want to backup your photos yourself? What if you want to put files ont your own personal USB stick? Or you want to quickly transfer them? Well, heres the SanDisk iXpand Flash Drive – and …

The smartphone – A vital piece of evidence after a fatal accident

In the last few hours lorry driver Danny Warby has been given a six year sentence for crashing into an off duty police officer’s car. The collision killed Det Con Sharon Garrett, aged 48, and caused a five-vehicle crash. A police investigation revealed that Mr Warby was speeding …

Turrah Lumia. Nice seein’ ya.

Get yourself a drink Lumia fans. Turn the lights down. This is the end, my only friend, the end… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4 News from WinBeta and elsewhere seems to confirm it. The Lumia range is dead. An anonymous employee states that Microsoft is about to “end sales” of the range …

So, you want to listen to music AND charge your iPhone 7?

I pointed it out after the announcement but, if I’m being honest, it’s not going to be a massive deal-breaker for most iPhone owners. See, I can understand to some degree because Apple give you just a single USB-C port in the MacBook Pro. It looks neat, it …

iPhone 7 pre-orders live today. Get the best cashback deal

We don’t normally do this, but some guy from TopCashback has gone through the various places that you can purchase the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to see which one offers the best cash-back deal. It’s pre-order day today and we’ve seen several network websites go …

Upgrade your iPhone 6s to an iPhone 7 for a LOT LESS

The iPhone 7 pricing is quite high. We all know that. Some have tried to blame Brexit for the £599 price-tag (that’s the 32GB one, the 128GB version is £699 and the 256GB handset is £799). So how can you upgrade for a lot less? Well, my friends, …

Is the iPhone Upgrade Programme really worth it?

OK, so we had the slight misfire with the Galaxy Note7, but we’ve still got the Galaxy 7 edge and the Galaxy 7 out there and, as you’ll no doubt be aware, the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus have hit the scene too. There’s other devices …

The Apple iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, the Apple Watch 2 – All the details

The launch was another theatrical masterpiece. From the moment you saw James Corden bopping along with Tim Cook to the eventual iPhone 7 announcement, you could virtually taste the excitement. The audience had been whipped up into a hot quivering mess with a Nike Apple Watch, Super Mario …

Apple iPhone Event – Watch live

Yes, it’s that time. 6PM UK time, 7PM European. The iPhone 7, the iPhone 7 Plus and everything in-between. We’ve already got a very good idea about what will be announced in the next few minutes, but you can sit back, relax and watch the event below. Don’t …

EE update “Add to Plan” accessory offering

If, for example, a phone was to be released that would make it slightly more difficult to use wired headphones, you might want to consider Bluetooth ones. Trouble is, some of these can be a bit pricey. Also, even if you want a good set of wired ones, …

aLLreLi USB Voice Recorder – Review

Out of the box this looks no different to any other USB stick. It’s got a little cap on to cover the USB port itself and there’s a very tiny switch on the other end. Turn it on and it’ll start recording. Turn it off and it’ll stop, …

iKlips DUO+ helps expand your iPhone storage

We’ve got something similar on test at the moment, but this is the new iKlips DUO+. Coming soon, it’s basically a flash drive for your iPhone. On one end, a Lightning connector, and at the other a USB. You plug it into the bottom of your phone, transfer …

TP-Link TL-PBG6700 Vivid Series Power Bank – Review

I know what you need. What you need is another power bank. People, if I’m honest, don’t know what to call these things. Not really. Are they power banks? Are they portable chargers? Should we just call them batteries? Portable batteries? Here TP-Link calls it a Power Bank, …

Want to look like you’ve got an Apple iPhone 7 Plus?

We love our Twitter followers. Sure, we love our good ‘ole website visitors too, I mean you guys float our boat, but our merry band of Twitter followers have a special place in our heart. As an example, @philme40 sent us a tweet about the as-yet-unannounced iPhone 7 …

VPN made simpler – Hide My Ass

I won’t beat around the bush. If you’re doing anything that you’d like to be kept a bit secret from your ISP then you need a VPN. Whether it be streaming, torrents or something in-between, online privacy is something you need to be looking at. However, it’s always …

The Apple iPhone 7 – Time for some honesty

It’s just a couple of days to go until the launch of the iPhone 7. Sorry, but I’m going to say it like it is. Perhaps it’s the years of coverage I’ve done. Perhaps it’s the fact that all the modern smartphones look fairly similar from a distance …

Lumsing 13400mAh Portable Charger – Review

I’ve got another portable battery for review. This time it’s the Lumsig Grand Series A1 Plus charger. This costs £18.99 from Amazon or $23.99 on Amazon US. It’s available in this silver shade along with black and gold. Inside is a rather chunky 13,400mAh battery. I say chunky …

Three to block adverts on your mobile? “No way” says EU

Just to bring you up to speed on this one, Three wanted to block the adverts that keep most websites alive. It’s a tricky subject and one which has various conflicting arguments. Mobile networks, when they first came to be, handled mobile calls. It was the most important …

TP-Link Neffos line expanded with the X1 and X1 Max

Mention TP-Link and you might think of networking kit link the AC1900 WiFi range extender we took a look at recently. They sell network switches, routers, mobile hotspots and – although you may not know it – smartphones too. They’ve now announced an extension to their Neffos series …

Samsung Galaxy Note7 – Sales stopped, free replacements ahead

You’ll have seen it on all the big news websites today and you’ll have read it first on Coolsmartphone yesterday. As we mentioned, stores are no longer selling the Galaxy Note7 following safety concerns and multiple reports of exploding or hot and melting handsets. Today Samsung has pushed …

More on the Huawei nova and nova plus

Yesterday you hopefully saw our coverage of the Huawei launch at IFA. There’s two phones – the Huawei nova above and Huawei nova plus, below.. Huawei continues to impress us here at Coolsmartphone and these new nova handsets look rather lovely in their aluminum unibody design. The nova, …

Moto G Play now available on Vodafone

The Motorola Moto G4 Play is a handset you can buy right now on the Motorola website. £129.98 gets you a 5″ 720p HD screen (1280×720), Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with 16GB of on-board storage and a microSD card slot. Whilst the 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core CPU and …

Galaxy Note 7 shipments halted. Handsets pulled from sale

Following reports of exploding handsets, Samsung has taken the decision to delay shipments of their newest handset for “quality assurance inspections”. Fingers are being pointed at the battery, with phones reportedly catching fire during or after charging. However, Samsung are obviously going to be doing further investigation into …

Sony at IFA – Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact announced

Sony. Remember them? Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but they don’t seem to be grabbing enough of the limelight in terms of phones. Today at IFA they’ve announced a couple of news phones, including the first flagship of their X series – the Xperia XZ. First, though, let’s …

HTC One A9s announced at IFA – A tweaked, lower priced A9.

We liked the HTC One A9 and gave it a glowing review. However, one thing I did point out at the time was the cost of the thing. My closing comments were… HTC are back. Just a shame about the price for the spec we’re getting in Europe …

iPhone 7 Cases begin to appear. No 3.5mm audio port in sight

People call me an Android fanboy, but the launch of yet another iPhone is always going up be a big ticket event. The launch is taking place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on Wednesday, September 7, at 10AM local time, which is 6PM BST. …

T505 LED Headlamp – Review

Strap yourself in people, because we’re going to be reviewing a headlamp. Nope, not a headlight on your car – but one that you strap to your head for seeing in the dark. This is a pretty big one – it has a 8cm diameter on the lamp …

iClever BoostSound BTS-04 Wireless Speaker – Review

I always start reviews like this by saying, “There’s lots of Bluetooth speakers to choose from”. You’ll find them in electronics shops and supermarkets and it’s very hard to know which ones are good. Here, we’ve got another one from iClever. This will set you back (at the …

Acer – Live from IFA

Can’t make it to IFA? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. Today it’s Acer’s Global Press Conference and you can watch proceedings live below.. Matteo is in the event right now and will be giving you the full run-down on events inside the Acer launch very soon indeed.

EU says, “Hey Apple. That’ll be £11bn in back taxes.”

It’s a company which is big and, like many others, is “careful” about how taxes are paid. By “careful” we of course mean that they try to avoid paying any if they can. A lot of large companies do this and a lot will offer the same defence …

iClever BoostRun BTH06 Bluetooth Headphones – Review

Perhaps it’s just me. I’m not sure, but I’ve reviewed quite a number of Bluetooth headphones over my time and they usually fall into two distinct categories. Category one is usually the sort that go flat after just an hour, but the sound and the bass response is …

Using your phone on holiday. Top tips.

Honestly. I’m no good at the Search Engine Optimisation business. I’m writing this during the last few days of August. It’s when most of you guys are returning from holiday but here, here I am writing an article on how to prepare for a holiday. That’s a bit …

EE to deliver 6 months of Apple Music for free

OK, a little warning before I start. This article features Kevin Bacon in tight fitting Lycra. Sorry in advance if you’re eating your breakfast. It’s all because EE are giving new and upgrading pay monthly iOS and Android customers a whole six months of access to  in Apple …

WhatsApp will now share your data with Facebook.

It’s a move that we could almost feel coming after the application became free. Facebook will now be able to see phone numbers from WhatsApp to allow “better friend suggestions”. Not only that, but they want to let third parties send you “marketing texts” through WhatsApp instead of …