Category: Android

Android Ice Cream Sandwich on the Raspberry pi

Some of you have probably bought a Raspberry pi. Some of you are probably wondering what one is. Well the picture shows you what it is. 🙂 The Raspberry pi is a mini motherboard that you can buy cheaply and install a variety of different Linux distributions on. …

Ouya receives boost from Square Enix

The Ouya Android console has now received support from makers of Final Fantasy III, Square Enix. The Android powered device, which is expected to retail for around £63 ($99) has now received more than £3 million ($5 million) in funding through the Kickstarter website. Effectively the console is …

ZTE retain their position in the top 5

ZTE have maintained their position in the world rankings for mobile device shipments. As we all know devices shipped are drastically different to devices sold. But hey we’ll just carry on with this. The others in the top five will be Apple, Samsung, HTC and Nokia. This marks …

ZTE are having a competition to win a nice new Grand X

ZTE UK have launched a Facebook video production competition with rapper Professor Green. OK, he keeps popping up every time ZTE is mentioned recently. I guess he just really likes ZTE, or something… Well anyway ZTE are offering you the chance to win a brand new Grand X …

Time2Touch 7″ Android 4.0 Tablet for £79.99

No, I’ve never heard of Time2Touch either, but their MC7403A tablet usually sells for £189.99 according to their website. It has a 7″ 800 x 480 pixel capacitive screen, 1.5GHz CPU, WiFi, 1.3 megapixel camera and runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich. There’s access to Google Play too. A …

Casio announces two business/rugged based tablets

Yes the well known business/rugged genre for devices. The demographic for these new tablets is obviously going to be for the business man who could just flip out at any minute (due to his highly stressful job) and smash up his office and all the computing devices around. …

Samsung upgrade some of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 range

Yesterday Samsung started to update some of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 models to Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with the Wifi model (model GT-P7510) taking its turn now. As usual with Samsung you can either update using Kies or wait for your device to pick up the ota …

Google add another Nexus 7 video, this time it’s Google Now

So over the last week Google has been adding a variety of videos to their Google Nexus YouTube channel. Today is the turn of Google Now and the cards. After watching this I was still none the wiser. I guess I should just use Google Now more. But information …

Sony Tablet S Successor Coming in August?

The Sony Tablet S is going to be replaced soon with what looks to be a much more powerful tablet – the SGPT1211 – but will it be able to compete with the Nexus 7 and the iPad? The Tablet S is a well designed, stylish 9″ tablet …

TVCatchup for Android – New Beta to try

There’s a big sporting event going on at the minute and, as you may know already, you can watch all of the 24 Olympic channels via the BBC Olympic app. If, however, you fancy watching “Midsomer Murders”, “Come Dine with Me” or some other bilge, you should definitely …

ZTE Grand X Available now

Want a ZTE Grand X? You can bag yourself one right now thorugh those people at Phones 4u. Dan got up close and personal with the new device just days ago. It’s runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, has a 960×540 4.3″ qHD screen, dual-core 1GHz CPU, 5 megapixel …

Nexus 7 Accessory Lineup Leaked – Coming Soon

So, you have your shiny new Nexus 7, you’ve installed all your apps and got it running exactly as you want it.  But what about those official accessories to go with it.  After all those pesky iPad’s have them in their thousands! Well, according to Nordic Hardware the official …

Sony Xperia tipo headed to Orange

The cute Sony Xperia tip looks set to arrive on both O2 and now Orange too. The handset sits squarely in the “Entry Level” category with a 3.1 megapixel shooter, 800MHz CPU, 3.2″ 320×480 pixel screen and 2.5GB on board storage. However, the phone does run Android Ice …

Google Nexus 7 review – Final Conclusion

By now you will have hopefully read our selection of reviews for the Nexus 7. General consensus is that it is a great piece of kit. Jelly Bean is great. People are just going to go mad buying these. Amazon are screwed unless the next Kindle Fire is …

Google Nexus tablet group review – Video Comparisons

We have written a lot about the Nexus 7 recently, we have looked at every aspect of the device and even took looked at how to hack the thing as well. But how does it compare to other devices? It has been well documented that Google are not …

Google Nexus 7 review – Software

Software review (by Ravi Patel) I’m here to put a slight downer on things. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Nexus 7. Pound for pound it could very well be the best gadget ever. But it isn’t perfect (what is?) and I wanted to point out some …

Galaxy Tab 8.9 16GB WiFi dirt cheap

Come on, you wanna be holding one of them too, don’t you? 😉 Today our friends at eXpansys (who still haven’t sent our free gifts for all the clicks we’re sending them).. have the Galaxy Tab 8.9 WiFi 16GB device down to £199.99. 🙂 Be quick though, because …

Google Nexus 7 review – Photo special

We have talked quite a bit today about the Nexus 7, we have looked at every possible aspect of it & we have compared it on video to whatever other tablets we could get our hands on. One thing we haven’t looked at is some pictures of the …

Google Nexus 7 review – Hardware, Design and Performance

Continuing the Coolsmartphone group review of the Nexus 7 tablet. Now we have Stephen and Garry covering the hardware side of things. Nexus 7 Hardware & Design (by Stephen Murray) Well, where do I begin…? Maybe the bit I found most surprising. The Nexus 7 is light, it …

Google Nexus 7 review – Introduction

It is now time for us at Coolsmartphone to review the Google / Asus Nexus 7 tablet. Over the years we have been sent devices for review, we have blagged devices from suppliers for review and heaven forbid we have even bought devices ourselves for review. With this …

Review – Nexus 7 SD Tabletwear Stand & Type Case

A few days ago we bought you news that the guys over at Mobile Fun have started to stock Google Nexus 7 Cases and Covers. One of the lines that is currently available is the SD Tabletwear Stand & Type Case and we here at Coolsmartphone have managed to …

HTC Desire HD – No Ice Cream Sandwich: HTC Explains Why.

Yesterday HTC gave more information as to why the Desire HD (or HTC Ace) will not be included in the HTC’s round of updates to Ice Cream Sandwich. The Desire HD was launched in October 2010, and originally had Android 2.2 Froyo, which was later upgraded to 2.3.5 …

Jelly Bean factory images now available

If you own a Nexus device first of all let me congratulate you. Secondly you probably have come across the factory images. These factory images let you totally wipe your device and restore it to the day you bought it. Ideal if you flash new roms, kernels and …

Yet another ex-Windows Phone employee joins Amazon

The rumours show no sign of going away. Amazon, it seems, could be working on a “Kindle Flame” phone. Way back in February we spotted that Brandon Watson had left the Windows Phone team to join Amazon. More recently Windows Phone business development boss Robert Williams left and …

Orange Travel Angel saves you from big bills

In our recent podcast we were discussing roaming packages and data. It’s a problem that face when they go abroad – that bill shock. A lot of changes have been made recently to ensure that prices are reduced and are more reasonable when you go on holiday. However, …

Control your hotel room from the Galaxy SIII

If you’re lucky enough to check-in at the Holiday Inn London Stratford City, try out their new Holiday Inn app. It’ll let you grab the latest Olympic updates, check-in, check-out, access room service, laundry services and even use the phone as a in-room phone extension. Not only that, …

Samsung “Inadvertently” Removed Universal Search on UK S3’s

Recently Samsung issued a software update for the Galaxy S3 in both the US and the UK that removed the “Universal Search” functionality on the handset. This was reported to have been in response to ongoing litigation with Apple involving this feature, despite the Galaxy S3 not being …

Jelly Bean arriving on the Motorola Xoom

We’ve just had a message from “Ragu” who tells us that his Motorola Xoom has just received the Android Jelly Bean update. He’s converted his UK Xoom to a US build and the update arrived promptly this morning. The 79MB over-the-air update includes a smarter keyboard, Google Now, …

Hannspree HANNSpad SN70T3 review

After using the HANNSpad for a few weeks now it’s time for the full review. I thought I should get this review published before my Nexus 7 arrived as that would just ruin my experience with the HANNSpad. First of all I feel I should point out this …

Boxcar acquired by Kwaga

Another day, another popular app iOS app being acquired. Today it’s the turn of Boxcar, the push notification app that became popular a few years ago as a central notification app, before the days of notification centre. The service was most commonly used as a supplement to apps …

Sony 2011 Handsets Not Getting Jellybean

It has been confirmed that the 2011 range of Sony handsets including the Xperia Arc S will not be getting Android 4.1 otherwise known as Jellybean. In an unsurprising move after their hesitation in upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich, it was confirmed on Facebook by the UK Product Manager …

Samsung Galaxy S Advance: Unboxing (Gallery)

So, thanks to a rather good Carphone Warehouse deal, I’ve got my mitts on the Samsung Galaxy S Advance. While I wait for the phone to charge, here are some unboxing shots… The Galaxy S Advance has a 4.0″ SuperAMOLED curved screen, with 8GB storage, a microSD card …

[GUIDE] Hacking the Nexus 7 – Rooting and Flashing Roms

ROOTING There are a lot of all in one tools around that you can use to root your device but I find it more helpful if you do it manually, this also helps you get a better understanding of what is going on in the process. Admittedly it’s …

[ROOT] App DataSync

For those of us lucky enough to own more than one android device, you’ll love this app What does it do? Its like TitaniumBackup where it will take a backup of not just your app/game but will also save the data of said app/game So what’s the difference …

Today Google posted another Nexus 7 video

This one again is aimed at beginners and it shows you how to arrange your apps and widgets. Yes it is basic but I feel this is a good thing for Google, it will certainly help new users. But how many off them will find the Google Nexus …

Hatchi arrives on Android

Hatchi, the Tamagotchi-style iPhone game that was released earlier this year, was launched on Android earlier today. The game, which was a bestselling app in the UK, Australia and elsewhere upon release into the iOS App Store, has a price tag of 64p and requires a device with …

Google posts a getting started video for the Nexus 7 tablet

So you’re new to the whole Android thing. You accidentally bought a Nexus 7 in the last few weeks. How on earth are you meant to set it up? Well Google have the answers in the form of a nice little video. No camping this time. If you …