Author: Leigh Geary

Running a business from home on your smartphone

I spoke to a friend recently who is already selling products from home. They make a little bit of additional cash but, with a smartphone doing nothing now than advertising their business to friends on Facebook, they wanted to know if there was any additional way of getting …

Google Opinion app delivers (a little bit) of free Google Play credit

Surprisingly, Google doesn’t quite know everything about you. Not yet anyway. Sure, your phone will be telling Google where you work, where you live, what you look like and perhaps those several cheeky trips to McDonald’s, but there’s probably a bit more detail they can get if, let’s …

Tesco Mobile proper sticks the boot into Three

Yesterday we detailed the move by Three to tweak their terms and conditions and allow mid-contract price hikes. Now Tesco Mobile, an MVNO running on O2, have given us their take on all this. Other networks have “amended” their terms and conditions to allow increases in line with …

TuneIn gets some Google Now action

Got TuneIn? Like using Google Now? Combine the two my good friend, because now you can simply speak to your phone and tell it what station you’d like to listen to. It’ll fire up the TuneIn app and start streaming the station in question. So, if you’re in …

HTC One ME announced in China

This puppy looks to be a plastic version of the One M9+ for the Chinese market. It’s got the same measurements of the M9+ (150.99 x 71.99 x 9.75 mm) but is obviously lighter (at 155 grams) due to the fantastic plastic construction. The specs also remain fairly …

Alcatel OneTouch PIXI 3 (4) now available on O2

It’s been just a couple of weeks since we told you about the cheap and cheerful PIXI 3. This is the PIXI 3 (4) version, which basically means you’re getting a 4″ 480×800 pixel screen at 233 PPI. The phone is also available with a slightly smaller 3.5″ …

Hey Three. Remember your promise?

In January last year Three were quick to jump on EE mid-contract price hikes that had just happened. We covered the news following the EE fall-out and Ofcom decided to put in new rules to stop it reoccurring. Three were quick to congratulate and stated that… No nasty …

Vodafone unwrap their Big Value Bundles

Contract customers can get the latest phones for a low monthly cost, but if you choose a SIM-only or Pay As You Go plan you can get a better deal. New Big Value Bundle deals from Vodafone all include unlimited texts, 4G access and substantial data allowances. Plus, …

Deal on the Bluboo X550

Those nice people from Gearbest keep sending the coupon codes over for you guys, so here’s another handset you might be interested in. This is the Bluboo X550, a 64-bit quad-core smartphone with a 5.5″ 720×1280 pixel screen and dual SIM capability. This has 2GB RAM, an 8 …

Hexo+ – A faster autonomous flying camera

A short while ago you may remember just how impressed we were about the Lily drone. It’s basically a very intelligent camera attached to a drone that knows where you are. You chuck it up in the air and it follows your adventures from on high. However, there …

Acer Liquid Jade Z Review

This thing is incredibly light and remind me obviously of the previous Acer Liquid Jade from some time back. It also kinda reminds me of the older iPod in the design, plus the fact that it’s painfully thin. The phone itself comes in at 110 grams. First impressions …

LG G4 up on 3UK too.

OK, OK, following our post mentioning the Vodafone pre-orders, you guys got in touch to point out that it’s on the Three website too. Prices start at £37 per month with the phone free and 4G is available for no extra cost. Three also has an exclusive on …

Update – LG G4 now available on Vodafone

If you read about our afternoon with the LG G4 and you’re looking to get it on Vodafone, here’s some good news. The network will be carrying the new handset and will have a network exclusive on the red leather version pictured above. To be honest, I’ve had …

The 100MB data challenge

First, a bit of detail about how all this came about. Phones. I get a lot of them to review. I borrow them then send them back, but with different sizes of SIM cards and some handsets offering dual-SIM functionality, it can result in me using Pay As …

Insane? Money no object? No taste? Get yourself a 3D selfie!

For a moment early this morning I honestly thought I’d dreamt this. Perhaps it was part of a drunken vision. No. Wait… it’s a real thing. Oh dear me. Where do I start with this? Well, let’s say you’ve just taken a really good selfie and you don’t …

Apple publish official workaround for text message bug

Earlier this week we reported on the fact that you could reset an iPhone and generally annoy the owner by sending them a simple text message. The workaround, as we mentioned then, is to get Siri to respond to the text, or you can turn off message notifications. …

Crash an iPhone with a text message

Fancy totally upsetting your iPhone friends? Well, send them a text. It seems that if that text has a certain Arabic character sequence in it then it’ll totally ruin their day. Good huh? Well maybe. Something like this… لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗 ..will totally crash their …

IDC publishes another load of analyst prediction guff

Here is the smartphone market share according to IDC. Have a look at that purple line. That’s Windows Phone. As you can see, for 3 years, it’s not really moved a great deal. I’m not going to say anything more about that. I wish Windows Phone was more …

Huawei Watch priced up. You got £300 spare?

We had a play with some of the Huawei smartwatches at Mobile World Congress and they’re looked really rather good. What was of concern though, was the possible price of their new Huawei Watch. MobileFun appear to have slid it into their website for a cool £300 here …

Learning to print the perfect picture

My main concerns, when snapping photos on my phone, is whether the photo is going to be backed up and just where it’ll be backed up to. Usually I store everything on an ever-filling storage card as I snap pictures randomly through the day. Those pictures, for the …

Octa-core for less than £100

Here in Merry olde England it’s a Bank Holiday weekend. This, by law, means that everyone must either… a) Buy lots of items for the garden (perhaps even a barbeque even though it’s not warm enough). b) Go to the pub “for a quick half”, only to emerge …

HTC One M9 – Production slowing?

There’s a possibility, according to Digitimes, that HTC are about to cut their orders for components used in the new HTC One M9. Orders are being reduced by up to 30% “due to lower-than-expected sales for the model”, but HTC have not confirmed this. According to “sources”, the …

A £20 smartphone. The Pixi 3 from Alcatel OneTouch

If you’re scared by words such as “petite” and “entry level” then you need to stop reading now. This is aimed squarely at those feature-phone customers who just want a cheap and cheerful handset that’ll make calls and perhaps do the odd bit of browsing on the rather …

LG G Flex2 – Review

So this is the bendy version of the LG G3. At least, it is in my head anyway, because as a big LG G3 user, the LG G Flex2 looks initially nothing more than a kinky version of the G3. However, inside the G Flex2 there are some …

Oppo R7 and R7 Plus Launched

The Oppo R7 has just been announced at a big company launch event. It’s powered by ColorOS 2.1 / Android 4.4 and there’s an octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU running the show with 3GB of memory. Inside you get 16GB of storage and there’s a microSD card slot …

A tablet stand? For £3? Yes, actually

Want a tablet stand that’s cheap and portable? How does £3 grab you? This one is made from strong cardboard and ideal for slipping into your case or bag. It’ll prop up your device and you can get a dozen of them for £16 – about the same …

Get loads of data… for a bit..

If you like your data, check out this deal from EE. Right now they’re offering a limited edition SIM, plus you can win tickets to Glastonbury. Order by 31st May and top up a £10 1GB data pack with 50 texts and 50 minutes of calls. Once that …

The drone that follows you. Lily.

Our daily dose of Kickstarter pleas usually go into a box marked “meh”. Some are pretty dull, and they almost make us want to add our Kickstarter Campaign for the “Coolsmartphone Readers Beer Bus”. This one, though, jumped out of our crowded mailbox and has caught the imagination …

18 month SIM only deals now available on Tesco Mobile

SIM only deals, to me at least, usually mean one month rolling plans. However, if you want to lock yourself into a longer deal and possibly get even better value for money, you can go for a 12 month plan. Tesco Mobile has today become the UK’s first …

Broken phone? No insurance? No time? Try this..

Last year we took a look at a company called iMend who repair tablets and phones. We gave them a rather poorly iPad to look at which had a broken button surround and cracked screen. However, they don’t just do iPads. They do iPhones, Samsung and other devices …

Windows Mobile – Back from the dead

We’ve been covering smartphones since the Orange SPV and Microsoft Smartphone 2002. That, along with Microsoft Pocket PC, eventually became Windows Mobile 2003, then Windows Mobile 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.0, Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 6.5 and then we had the whole “Windows Phone 7 Series” launch that …

I did have £60 burning a hole in my pocket..

You know I’m always eager to find a bargain, so when I stumbled across the Elephone P6i QHD 5.0 smartphone, it was already pretty cheap. Powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz CPU and delivering 1GB RAM, 4GB on-board storage and a microSD card for more, this also comes with GPS, …

Speedy Pong – Relive the 80’s on the bus!

I don’t often plug apps that much because, for reasons best known to developers, we get about 10 “auto submitted” emails every day in an incomprehensible format which tells us nothing about the app or what makes it great. Gianluca, on the other hand, emailed me directly with …

Honor 4X – Review

Let’s set your expectations shall we? This is £149.99. It’s not going to compete with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and it’s not going to challenge the very latest iPhone either. What it does, even with a slightly older version of Android, it does well. This is from a …

£0 per month is coming back. FreedomPop headed to the UK

A new MVNO is to come to the UK in July, but its a bit different. Called FreedomPop, it will offer free and paid-for SIM-only plans in a few weeks time. I’ve just used their website from the USA to check out what’s currently offer in America. For …