Author: khellan
Writing about smartphones is kinda my thing, but you’ll find me doing that within the Chrome browser on a laptop. Despite the rather respectable competition (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge etc), you’ll find that Chrome is my default choice of browser. It’s by far the most popular way to …
Like 3D TV, you may not have actually tried out Virtual Reality (VR) just yet. It’s becoming a growing trend, especially with gamers and now with businesses too as online training and distanced interaction becomes more commonplace. However, most still don’t realise that there’s no need for expensive …
Even if you aren’t a follower of all things interesting, technological and mobile, there’ll little chance that you aren’t noticing the ongoing spat between China and the U.S, with Huawei phones using Android being a casualty. Huawei has been going from strength to strength over the past few …
Introduction Most phone reviews have a certain pattern when we do them – it may not be all about the specs, but hell yeah, they are important. Despite the efforts of Amazon (let us not talk about the Fire Phone), Siri and the “she who has no name” …
No, really. This deal comes up every now and again, and for data devourers it’s a little like mana from heaven. Lemme cut to the chase here – we’re talking about a SIM-only deal that gives you 45GB a month for 12 months on a SIM Only deal …
I get it, I really do. I get that a manufacturer will build slightly different products for different markets. There are different LTE bands to consider, and maybe the charger will be different. You may even want to change the packaging, depending on how big of a push …
When the Google Pixelbook originally came out, for some of us, it was an immediate object of desire. Sure, it was an Oxymoron, but it was the most wonderful type of machine – over specced and way overpowered, but the absolute pinnacle of what a Chromebook could be. …
Well, that’s a surprise. Lenovorola, under the Moto brand, is going to release all three versions of their newly-announced G6 Family. In case you missed it, Motorola announced two new series of handsets, in their affordable G range, and the value E range. The G range is now …
Earlier on, we covered what we think was the most important part of this year’s Google hardware 2017 event – the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2XL. Next up, we’re covering Mountain View’s home hardware kit – namely, the Google Home range. This Home range wasn’t so much …
Seriously – Google went in. The best place to start is with what we knew – or thought we knew from the rumour mill (if you want to catch up on what we thought we knew, the best place would be alongside the podcast Jawas helping keep the …
You’ve heard all about it, now you want to get yourself one. Well, today is the day to put in that pre-order, and we’re seeing deals popping up on mobile comparison sites already. Here’s a look at some of the offers we’ve spotted so far, but do let …
OK, those of us at Coolsmartphone towers have an unreasonable level of fascination with Chromebooks. Yes, they’re a browser wrapped around a Linux based OS. But paradoxically, they’re also so much more than they should be, to the level where both Garry and Leigh use them as daily …
I have no idea what it is about the YotaPhone concept that I like so much. Leigh reviewed the YotaPhone 2 when it was released, so you can check here to see what he thought about it. The TL:DR version is that although he quite liked it, my …
It may be that I’m that sort of person, but I’ve always had cables hanging around. Even before I was messing about with computers or mobile phones, there were scart leads and coax cables, RCA cables, speaker cable and the list would probably go on if I …
Well, this is impressive. It was a no-brainer that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ were going to rack up some amazing numbers when placed for pre-orders. EE has announced that these current two smartphones have broken records for them, outselling last year’s incumbents (The Samsung Galaxy S7, …
Well, this is a nice surprise to see from the London-based company: they’re on track with the big guns to update their existing handsets to Nougat. Not only that, but they’re going to be the first company outside of Google to update to Android 7.1.1. Even though my …
What is this? I recently read that our Ian posted an article about a Google Maps update now including the ability to share your location, so of course I went to try it. It’s something I’ve used in WhatsApp before, and in Google Latitude back when that was …
Well, today is the day. It happens at some point every year. Not that day, the other one – the announcement of the next Samsung Galaxy S, probably named as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Notice that all indications are that the Edge moniker has been dropped? …
OK, that might not be an official word as of yet, but if Oppo’s new F3 Plus takes off, it might just well be. Now wide-angle lenses aren’t a new thing. We’ve seen the likes LG and others do it before, but they’re usually for the rear camera. …
Most phone users have used the Short Message Service at one time or another. Nowadays, we just call it texting people. Then came the promise of MMS (Multi Media Messaging), or picture messaging. That never really took off in the same way as texting people, since the costs …
The Blackberry Aurora Effect Hot off the heels of the Blackberry KEYone finally being announced this year at MWC 17, news of another Blackberry handset has broken: the Blackberry Aurora. As with most things to do with the once-great smartphone giant, the handset is interesting. Or, rather, the …
The Cables It’s hard to get good cables, and it’s almost unheard of to get good, good cables. This is why I like this ICZI range of USB-A to USB-C cables. I crossed over to using the USB-C standard over a year ago now, when the Nexus 6P …
Yeah, Yeah. A couple of Chromebooks, but who cares, they’re for the education market. Why is this a thing? You’re probably right in your thinking. If you were going to get a Chromebook and money was no object, you might decide to grab the Chromebook Pixel, or even …
Look, I’ll be the first to admit it. A Chromebook can be a weird thing to a techhead. They’re underpowered. They have like this huuuuge dependency on being online. And when all the other arguments have been discussed, they aren’t anything more than a browser. Then again, they’re …
Earlier on this year, I recommended the Moto G 4th gen to someone. They were on a budget and they’d been using what I think was the original Moto G (the Moto G OG, if you will) quite happily for a very long time. Alas, no memory card …
Or, without that annoying alliteration about, Samsung seems to have finished testing Android 7 – AKA Nougat – and is starting to roll out a beta testing program for those folks with a Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. It’s not important that the rollout for Samsung is something …
Old is good too This is a bit of weird and wonderful I think, involving the Nexus 6. Someone remixed the recent Nexus Pixel ad to show off their love for Google’s now-defunct Nexus line. Someone called Superior Sandbox created a wonderful combination of the last time Google …
So, Samsung did something I’m pleasantly surprised at, and launched a new Chromebook, nattily named the Chromebook Pro. It’s a pretty smart piece of kit. I’ve been looking for a replacement Chromebook for a while after my old one went to a fabulous person who needed it more …
I still love HTC. I really do. Sure, they’ve made some missteps over the years in terms of product, and they may have put out one too many phones that are pretty much exactly the same bar shape and look, but Nokia did the same thing when they …
Well, they took their time, but it’s happened – Android Pay now works for NatWest customers. We heard reports from a couple of our readers that they received an email from NatWest to announce that Android users can finally use Google Pay at tills and checkouts across the …
External speakers aren’t something I’ve had a lot experience with – in fact, the majority of my time listening to things these days, it’s a far cry from my old hi-fi setup. These days, I either listen to music through my computer or through my phone, on a …
Why is this a thing worth mentioning? There’s a camera app specifically for Motorola phones (called surprisingly enough, Motorola Camera). It largely depends on whether you have a Motorola phone or not. More precisely, whether you have, or intend to get, one of the 2016 crop of Motorola …
The thing with new types of power standards and connectors is that you soon realise you need more than one charger, because all your old ones don’t fit your new phone or tablet. This is exactly the case with the switchover to USB type C socket for me, …
Two weeks, I finally caved in and accepted that my Nexus 4 wasn’t just a little old and creaky; it was beginning to malfunction. I replaced it with another Nexus because there are few models I could point to and be impressed by their reliability… and naturally that brought …
No, it isn’t Match of the Day for all you comedians out there. We’re talking March of the Droids, the annual event held for and by mobile technology aficionados. Things kick off in Edinburgh this Friday and the cool news is that somehow these wily chaps managed to …
Long when we thought Windows 10 Mobile wasn’t going to see any support further than the Lumias and the Acer Jade Primo, HP has surprised quite a few people with the announcement of the Elite X3. Yes, that’s right – not only are HP going in on Windows …
This is a piece of good news to end the February doldrums. It looks like folks in the EU who have the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the S6 Edge are likely to see a Marshmallow update coming to them soon. Unsurprisingly, South Korea got the update first seeing …
Some of us haven’t bought into this whole paid streaming music malarky for reasons. It may be that you already have a big enough music selection that you don’t get time to listen to the artists you already have, it could be that when people talk about discoverability …
It’s been apparent for a while that you don’t really have a product to release if there aren’t leaks of it before you’re ready to announce. This time it was LG’s turn with the up and coming LG G5, due to be announced on Feb 21 (the same …
I have a thing for the weird and occasionally wonderful. The Turing Phone sits in the first category, and I am sincerely hoping that it will fall into the second category. Google, and by extension, its Android partner ecosystem weren’t afraid to try new things in the early …
