Author: Leigh Geary

HTC One M9 on sale via giffgaff tonight. Cheaper than competitors

This is a handset which has received a fair amount of criticism because it doesn’t look hugely different to the previous One M8. Almost a year ago Scott Croyle, chief of design, left HTC and now Industrial Design Lead, Jonah Becker, has left. However, I know plenty of …

Samsung E1270 Phone with £4 Credit .. Just £2.99

There’s many reasons why I shouldn’t want this. You won’t really be able to browse the internet, you won’t get any apps, it’s got no WiFi, no GPS and no camera. This isn’t a smartphone. This perhaps could be a phone for a big night out, a camping …

Honor 6 available from Clove for £229.99

We should point out right here that this isn’t the Honour 6 Plus you might have seen us looking at during Mobile World Congress. No, this is the slightly lighter version with a 5″ 1080×1920 pixel screen, compared to the 5.5″ on the Plus. That said, there is …

Alcatel POP C1 – A near throw-away Android smartphone

If you’re tired of having to pay £500, £600 or even £700 for a smartphone, there are options way down at the other end of the scale. This, the Alcatel POP C1, is available on play.com rakuten.co.uk for less than £30 at the moment. Likewise, you can head …

ECOO E04 – 4G octa-core smartphone with 5.5″ screen for less.

OK, I promise I’m going to stop doing this. It’s almost like my eBay addiction, where I look for random gadgets and then forget I’ve purchased them until they arrive a short while later. At the moment, because I’m using an LG G3, I’ve got used to a …

BT Mobile 4G Plans launched.

So it begins. The BT MVNO sitting on top of the EE network has revealed prices and more details of their offerings. It’s a sign of things to come, as the new world order seems to dictate that you absolutely must have your TV, home phone, broadband and …

Less bloat on the Samsung Galaxy S6 brothers?

Ooohh. That bloated feeling. It’s bad enough in your stomach, but when your phone has it and you’ve not even installed anything, it’s bad. Samsung have always received quite a bit of flack for this, but it looks like things have improved somewhat in the S6 devices. There’s …

O2 sold. Three owners now have another network to play with.

As expected, O2 is now under new ownership. The people behind Three, Hutchison Whampoa, have now signed the deal to acquire Telefónica’s UK operation – O2 UK. Due diligence is complete and the final purchase price is £10.25 billion (€14 billion). This will be made up of £9.25 …

Hutchison Whampoa rumoured to be closing O2 deal tomorrow

Remember back in January when we revealed that Hutchison Whampoa were in talks to buy O2? It’s now looking like the deal has been sealed, and further details will be revealed in the morning. Three owners, Hutchison Whampoa, are set to announce the deal in just a few …

Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge – Cashback

Yesterday we had a look at the various places you can buy the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. Both handsets are available pretty much everywhere and it’s safe to say that they’re quite expensive. If you’ve chosen to go to EE to pre-order, you can save yourself …

giffgaff 4G vs 3G tested. Is there really a huge difference?

Every network is pushing 4G at the moment, even the MVNOs – those networks that use the likes of O2, Vodafone, Three and EE as the back-end infrastructure but supply their own service on top. giffgaff is probably one of the most well-known, mainly due to their community …

Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge – Start your engines

If you’ve been won over by the Samsung Galaxy S6 brothers then nearly every UK network has announced pre-orders and pricing. Here’s a run-down of the options available to you if you’re looking to get one. Before I start, if you’re after an up-close look at both the …

Octa-core 5.5″ KINGZONE Z1 offer

After we mentioned them yesterday, the people at Gearbest have been in touch with an exclusive offer for our lovely readers. The KINGZONE Z1 is an Android handset with a 5.5″ (1280×720) HD screen and 4G connectivity. It has a powerful 1.7GHz octa-core CPU (MediaTek MT6752) and runs Android …

When money is no object – premium headphones for your smartphone

Nice looking headphones huh? They’re by an outfit called Astell & Kern and they tell me that they’re a “premium high-resolution audio specialist”. Can you hear the alarm bells? Can you? Well, let me tell you a bit about these special in-ear headphones. They’re a “musician’s choice for …

Honor 4X now available on pre-order, and pretty cheap too.

An octa-core 64-bit 1.2GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM in a smartphone costing les than £150? Sound good? Well, we’ve already had Honor win over the chaps at Three, who are to offer the Honor 6+ exclusively, but if you’re after another 4G smartphone with the same screen …

March Markdown – A gadget-lovers paradise.

As you’ll know, I have a weakness for looking at the handsets and gadgets that you can’t get on the high street. A perfect example is the Atongm W008 watch that I reviewed this morning. At the moment Gearbest are knocking down prices even further with their “March …

Travel with your powerful cube

Rewireable USB Travelplugs. That’s what you want to read about. Oh yes my friend. 2tech are selling these things for £20.99 and it’s basically a chunky plug with dual USB outputs and four power outlets. Imagine one of those triple adapters but with another outlet and another couple …

Atongm W008 Smartwatch Review. Do you really need the Apple Watch?

Since I typed my original post about this device it’s now dropped in price. At around £40 and supported by lots of supposed “5 star reviews” it seemed appealing, so I thought it was worth a dabble. Fancy a cheap smartwatch? Let’s see what it’s really like. First …

Dyson to help boost your smartphone battery life

You probably know about James Dyson. He’s a British guy who struggled to sell his bagless vacuum cleaner to the major manufacturers. After being told that the “bags make us money” and “you’re basically bonkers”, he went on to create a solid British brand, making products for Britain …

Vodafone Smart Tab 4G Review

Look at a network-branded tablet and you’ll sometimes find yourself in a strange world of rebranded Chinese kit. Is it good? Is it bad? It’s really hard to tell. However, for £125 on Pay As You Go or £21 per month for 3GB of 4G data per month, …

Hey Cortana, let’s try an open relationship.

The big selling point of Windows Phone, at least in the TV ads, has been the fact that Cortana is supposedly better than Siri. Get yourself a Windows Phone and you’ll have a proper digital assistant, they say. So, the very last thing you’re going to want to …

That Samsung whistle. GONE!

We’ve all been there. Whether it be a packed train, a busy office, a corridor, bus-stop or supermarket. The infamous Samsung “whistle” notification goes off, then someone imitates it with their very own mouth-powered version. It’s been the “sign of the Samsung” for years now, but now early …

Smartphones – Killing conversation, stopping friendships.

You guys come here, hopefully, because you love your gadgets and smartphones. Even those who don’t have a vested interest in the latest technology probably still have a smartphone of some kind, and they’re probably more than capable of surfing the web, getting Facebook updates and plugging themselves …

Apple – The unstoppable force

People say I’m an Apple “hater”. I’m not. I’m really not. I prefer to use an Android device as my daily driver but I do have an iPad, even though my wife tends to use it more than me. Even though I’d prefer to use another phone, I …

The story of the mobile phone

Last night I stumbled across an old video from 1979 which showed something that was pretty amazing at the time. A truly portable phone. It started me on a bit of a journey into the history of mobile phones, so here’s what I’ve dug out of the archives. …

MWC – My favourite three devices (Leigh)

Back in the day I used to go out to Mobile World Congress on my own. Then it was held in Wolverhampton and there was me and a bloke from Nokia standing around a market stall. * This year there was several of us descending on the event, …

HTC One E9 leaks out

Fancy a flatter version of the HTC One M9 with a slightly bigger screen? These are the first shots of the new HTC One E9, which slipped out via this Chinese site and has a 5.5″ screen who is apparently Quad HD. However, rumours are that the Snapdragon 810 …

Vodafone Smart 4 Max – Get it fairly cheap on Pay As You Go

Fancy a bit of network-branded phone action? The Vodafone Smart 4 Max is on sale right now for a cool £200 on Pay As You Go. For the money you’ll get yourself a big 6″ 720×1280 pixel screen (245 ppi) and a Qualcomm MSM8926 Snapdragon 400 quad-core 1.2GHz …

Android 5.1 finally becomes official

Ha! Your Lollipop is so yesterday. You want Android Lollipop 5.1 baby. It’s now actually official, and the Android blog tells us that it delivers the multiple SIM card support that multiple SIM card phone users have already had for ages anyway. Also included are some “stability and …

Apple “Spring Forward” Event – Live

Could everything we saw and handled last week at Mobile World Congress get blown away with more detail on that Apple Watch? We need to know more about the hardware and what it can do. Also expected at the even is, possibly, a Retina MacBook Air announcement. A …

HTC One M9 – EE go live with pre-orders. Gold exclusive.

If you’ve watched our full hands-on with the HTC One M9 then you’ll probably also be aware that it’s going to arrive here in the UK on pretty much every network. Already we’ve seen Vodafone, giffgaff and Three and O2 put their hands up. Today you can start …

MWC – A look at the ZTE smartwatches

Around the side of the ZTE stand there were some ordinary-looking watches. I only say “ordinary” in the sense that they didn’t immediately scream “smartwatch” at me. They were neither chunky or “techy” in appearance and the design was both understated and stylish. None of these are on …

MWC – Nobody puts ZTE in the corner

ZTE have a huge presence at Mobile World Congress this year. Get around the pretty ladies up front and there’s another huge area, then another. Meetings and demonstrations are taking place in the offices behind the stand, and that’s where we got to meet Waiman Lam from ZTE. …

MWC – Metaio – Augmented Reality continues to amaze

We’ve seen AR before. Displaying images over the a live image that your phone is seeing. It’s all very cool. However, things have moved on a little since then and Metaio look to be pushing things on pretty quickly. Already they have companies like IKEA using their solution, …

Deal of the day? 16GB microSD card for £3.99

It looks like eBuyer are off-loading this Lexar 16GB microSD card today for less than half the normal price. If you still have a microSD slot in your phone then count yourself lucky my friend, as this 16GB Class 10 card is a quick way to boost your …

MWC – Kyocera. A talk about the TORQUE (KC-S701)

I went to meet the lovely people at Kyocera, who I’ve only previously known for their printers, about their phones. To be honest I was surprised. This is a company that have been in existence since 1959 and have 70,000 employees and they have been profitable every single …

Vodafone SIM-only deals – reduced prices on Red plans

Got a phone? Happy with it? Just want a SIM? Vodafone look to have tweaked their SIM only deals with their Red 12-month plans dropping in price. The base Red deal is now £15.30 (down from £17) and you’ll get unlimited texts and calls with 1GB of 4GB …

MWC – KAZAM, 21 month report.

I’m from the UK, so a local company operating in the mobile space is always going to be on my radar. KAZAM are definitely on that list, and we first mentioned them way back in June 2013. They launched a few days earlier, at the start of May, …

MWC – IKEA build wireless charging into your furniture

Think IKEA and you think of a weekend spent touring the store, navigating other couples who are as equally stressed, annoyed and argumentative as you and your wife or girlfriend are. You’ve probably experienced the 14 mile walk around the predefined pathway around the store. You may have …