Author: James Pearce
Here at Coolsmartphone we love Oppo and we love innovation. But something I’ve seen today relating to the two is a little disconcerting. Oppo have been posting images teasing the upcoming N1 flagship device and recently they’ve been mentioning the rear input panel, today they posted this image. …
If there was one thing I’ve always wanted to do on Facebook it is to save other people’s pictures to my phone. Pictures of random people I don’t on the beach, hundreds of pictures of drunk people I used to go to school with and thousands of pictures …
Google have slowly been breaking apart the core Android apps and providing them in the Play Store for anyone to use, the latest being Google Keyboard. It has been out a few months and has just had an update. The main new feature is that a long press …
Halo – Spartan Assault possibly the biggest exclusive to ever appear on Windows Phone and Windows 8 has had an update. I reviewed it few weeks ago here and I found it to be a great game, on both my Windows Phone and also on my Surface RT. …
Oversized phones are becoming quite popular, with most manufacturers offering one, the latest being Acer and the 5.7″ Liquid S1. You can get the Liquid S1 for £299.99 from Expansys · System: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean · Processor: 1.5 GHz / Quad Core / Media Tek MTK 6589 …
Some photographers are gifted special people, given the most basic of equipment and they can achieve impressive results. Give one such guy a HTC One and just look at what can be done. The photographer Alexandru Ivan said the following about his work. I made these photos with …
Images of the upcoming Galaxy Note 3 display have leaked out and it looks like Samsung have gone down the same path as the Galaxy S4, ie keep the chassis the same size and trim the bezel. The Galaxy Note 3 should be unveiled at IFA in Berlin …
Have you always fancied a Nexus 4? Do you like to buy a phone just before its successor arrives on the scene? If you answered yes to either of those then today is your lucky day. Google have reduced the price of the LG Nexus 4 models to …
The new Nexus 7 is ready for you to buy, you may have heard about it, if not check out my initial impressions. You can buy either the 16GB model for £199 here or the 32GB model for £239 here. The spec of the new Nexus 7 …
Another deal for you Windows Phone bargain hunters. Expansys have also cut the price of the Samsung Ativ S to £199.99 here. It is a decent device, Dual Core, 8MP camera with flash, Micro SD slot, Removable battery, AMOLED 720p screen and some other features I forget. I …
Sony are soon to announce the often leaked Honami or Z1 or i1. In a bit of a tease Sony have posted the following video onto their YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alVwMu5fvns From this We can gather that the next flagship will have a very familiar design and once again …
The original Nexus 7 was something special, up until then small 7″ tablets had either been awful or stupidly expensive. The original Nexus 7 showed us that you could have a well specified device at a reasonable cost. It quickly became the most popular Android tablet ever, I …
About a week ago I reviewed an app called ActiveNotifications, it gives you Moto X style lockscreen notifications, as long as you’ve got an AMOLED display on your devic. Overall I really liked it. Yesterday the app got an update, which not only added new premium features it …
Google Search for Android has just been updated adding a range of new Google Now cards. Google Search for Android is becoming way more than just a search tool, it’s becoming a life management system (almost). Personally I have Google Now disabled to save on battery as the …
Chrome for Android has pretty much become “the” go to web browser for me, I barely ever use any other browser. Google have another version of Chrome as well, in the beta test version you can test out the latest and sometimes experimental features. The latest update has …
Episode 60 is here, it’s been a week which for me has seemingly been dominated by Oppo announcing something new and also teasing us with something else as well. Luckily it wasn’t all Oppo talk this week, we also covered Firefox OS, Ubuntu Edge, the Samsung Galaxy Golden, …
I’ve become a bit of a battery pack convert recently, choosing to charge up wherever I am and not worrying about where the nearest power socket is. I recently purchased one of those huge 13000 mAh battery packs which is fine when you can carry a large weighty …
I’ve always been a fan of large oversized phones and also dual SIM phones, so imagine what I was like when a large white device with dual SIM slots arrived on my desk. I opened it up and I did a double take, I was hit with a …
I do love a good phone case and now and again I’ve gone a bit mad and bought an Otterbox case or two. Normally when buying cases I just search for the lowest prices I can find and never really consider that what I’m buying could be a …
SwiftKey Cloud has been in beta testing for a few weeks now and it allows you to sync your SwiftKey keyboard word predictions between devices, so when you get a new phone it doesn’t have to relearn all of your made up words. To sync with the Cloud …
HTC have a few great devices at the moment, what with the One range and the Desire range. Well know another device has leaked out online by regular leaker @evleaks on Google+ It is apparently called the HTC Zara, which I guess is the codename for it. Evleaks …
Earlier on today Oppo announced the R819 which looks to take on the Android mid range market. Oppo Style, who are the European distribution company, have the R819 up for pre order already, at a rather tempting price of €269. An interesting thing though is that even the …
The 7-8″ tablet market is a rather competitive one, with Apple and Asus at the top of the pile. The iPad Mini and the Google Nexus 7 are undoubtedly the market leaders and there are many other manufacturers trying to get in on the action, Acer, Amazon, Gemini, …
OPPO have announced the launch of the rather catchy named “R819” which I hope isn’t its final name, the R819 is apparently one of the thinnest and lightest smartphones in the world. Weighing in at just 110 grams, the R819 packs a sharp display, long-lasting battery life, and …
The Huawei Ascend P6 is one of those devices that spend their lifetimes being compared to others. We have reduced the price of the Black Huawei Ascend P6 to £260.00 (+VAT) , down from £283.00 (+VAT). Please not that this price drop only applies to the black variant …
Google+ is slowly becoming my social network of choice, Twitter is getting bogged down by API restrictions and Facebook is just….. Well… Let’s just leave it there. Last night Google pushed out an update which added a range of new features. The update has also tweaked a few …
A few days ago we posted details of the “new and improved” YouTube app for Windows Phone made by Microsoft. We all assumed it was the version that Google and Microsoft had worked on together to meet Googles requirements. Since then the web has been awash with frustrated …
Remember a few months ago when two ex HTC staff members decided to start up their own phone company? Well, here they are and their new company logo. Leigh wrote about the initial announcement of their company here, which gives more detail on their history. Yesterday they announced …
Now that some lucky Lumia 920 and 925 owners can install the Lumia 1020s Pro Cam app, you may be wondering how on earth the app works. There are a lot of settings to play with and to help with that Nokia have published a few videos that …
Episode 59 of the Coolsmartphone Podcast is here already. Another of those leaky weeks this week, with topics including the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, the Samsung Watch, those two rumoured iPhones, me and the HTC One Mini, the weird square LG VU 3, wearable gadgets and some other …
Nokia have just announced the UK pricing and availability of the Lumia 625. The Lumia 625 offers 4G connectivity and a large screen Windows Phone experience for people on a budget. The key features of the Nokia Lumia 625 include: · Choice of 5 semi-transparent changeable shells – …
The upcoming US only Motorola Moto X has quite a few nice software features. In my eyes the rather fancy lockscreen notifications are a great idea, allowing you to quickly see what the latest notification is without having to turn your phone on. As I have a few …
The HTC One Mini is now available on Vodafone. The slightly smaller brother of the HTC One is slowly becoming available around the UK with various networks and retailers stocking it. The HTC One mini will be free on Vodafone Red 4G-ready from £34 per month. The various …
A few months ago Microsoft released a really good YouTube app, it had some great features including blocking adverts and downloading videos. Google didn’t like it though and made Microsoft withdraw it, which they did and last night they re-released it. They sort of did anyway, as there …
Cast your mind back to last week, I reviewed the Acer Liquid E2 and I found it to be a pretty good budget phone, with a few problems. Well Three have now got some stock and you can get them on a contract or on PAYG. Brendan from …
The LG G2 and it’s rather unique rear buttons has certainly got tongues wagging. I’m so unsure whether or not the rear button is going to be rubbish or not, I think I could only tell by using the thing. LG have posted this video on their YouTube …
A few days ago I posted an article about wireless charging. It was all about some receiver cards that attach to the battery in either your Galaxy S4 or Note II. I bought one for my Note II and I’ve spent the last few days playing about with …
In the olden days picking a new mobile phone was easy. I used to grab the Argos catalogue and flick through until I found a reasonably priced phone and then I’d buy it. Done. Simple. Fast forward a few years decades and the list of specifications, manufacturers, software …
I’ve not been the biggest fan of flip cases over the years. They tend to fall into two brackets, either cheap nasty leather things or stupidly expensive and supposedly premium quality. This isn’t the best frame of mind to be in for this review. Tech21 make a range …
The HTC One Max is the next weapon in HTCs constant attempt to keep afloat. Regular leaker evleaks has posted a non final piece of artwork of the upcoming monster from HTC. This might actually be the ONE for me. The HTC One Max is rumoured to be …
