Category: Android
Can you remember the fuss / excitement about the OLPC project? OLPC or One Laptop Per Child are a US based non profit organisation who provide laptops for children in the developing world. They sort of triggered off the boom in netbooks. Their initial cheap laptop made a …
Android-powered handsets sporting hardware QWERTY keyboards are a bit of underrated niche. Whilst there’s many form factors out there, just a handful of those were actually worthwhile. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Mini Pro, although quite popular, never attracted me enough due to its tiny size. This made it look …
You know the scenario, you’re browsing through the hundreds of games on the Android Market and you come across something odd. You tap on it to read the bio. It starts to freak you out. You wonder quite why someone would make it. You then wonder if it’s …
Android wallpaper apps are a nightmare. There are loads of them. In the main they are just front ends to a website full of qvga wallpapers. Which when you use on you nice new tablet or qHD phone the picture looks horrendous. The Wallbase website has a large …
It’s quickly turning into another big “review day” here at Coolsmartphone. Next up is this, the T-Mobile Vivacity. We’ve actually already reviewed this a few weeks ago but I’ve got one right here and figured that you’d like a video overview too. The T-Mobile Vivacity is actually built …
Lord knows what’s going on now. We thought originally that Sony Ericsson were teasing us with a possible Windows Phone, then we changed our minds and figured that it was probably the Android-powered Arc HD which would make an appearance at CES. Now, with this further image posted …
Another CES leak. How hard can it be to keep a product under wraps until a big event? Anyway LG and Verizon have released some info about the successor to the LG 2X. It is a 4G LTE device but hopefully a GSM variant will come to the …
Not brilliant news for HTC, especially just a month before Mobile World Congress… Profits have dipped by 25% in the last quarter. HTC has faced stiff competition from Samsung and Apple, with Nokia also above them in the smartphone maker leaderboard. Sales fell in December by 20.3% but …
CES is due to start in the US in a few days. For some reason manufacturers are desperate to announce their products before the actual event. Velocity Mobile have announced two tablets a 7″ and a 10″ tablet that will come with Ice Cream Sandwich installed. Even though the …
Storage. There’s just never enough. Cast your mind back to 2005 when the Samsung SGH-i300 came out. Powered by Windows Mobile it had a hard drive on board. Yes, you heard right… a hard drive on a phone. Now, try not to laugh here, because this seemed like …
I’ve been using ICS for about a week now on my Nexus S and feel I have enough experience with it to note down my impressions. This isn’t a structured review by any means, just my comments on things I like and dislike. UI/Feel I love the new …
Come on, it’s not the end of the sales yet. Look at the guys at DFS, they only have one week in the year when their sale isn’t on 🙂 Anyway, the people at Very are having a sale. They’ve reduced the price of many Acer tablets… .. …
Samsung have just announced the Galaxy M, launched in South Korea yesterday. No news of when it’ll come our way, if at all, but it looks like a nice, capable mid-range smartphone. As you can see from the photo, it’s running Gingerbread and has a decent enough spec …
Have you ever been sent a Word document that needs your Signature? There’s a couple of ways of getting around this issue. You could print the document, sign it, scan it back in, then email it back.. Or you could print it, sign it and fax it. However, …
Motorola have just announced the MOTOLUXE over at CES in Las Vegas which is another android handset with a large touch screen and decent set of specifications. Packing a 4 inch corner to corner display and an 8 megapixel camera the MOTOLUXE looks quite an appealing choice. Other …
You’ve seen the Motorola DEFY, you’ve had the Motorola DEFY+ .. now, shrink it down and you get this, the Motorola DEFY MINI. Motorola have just announced two new phones, this being one of them. The DEFY MINI is dustproof and water-resistant just like the earlier models. We’re …
The Samsung Galaxy SII is amazing. We know that, you know that. However, when Orange (and Barclaycard) launched their “contactless payment” service the Galaxy SII wasn’t listed as a supported handset. Actually, there weren’t a great deal of phones supporting the “touch to pay” system. To do this …
Clove have reported today that the popular Samsung Galaxy Nexus which recently launched will be coming out in white from next month here in the UK (February). Priced just under £500 this gives anyone interested in the Nexus an interesting choice of colour now. Over on the Clove …
Asus UK have announced on Facebook that their original Transformer tablet will get an update to Ice Cream Sandwich at some point in the future. Don’t you just love these announcements? Hopefully the asap bit means only a few days after the Prime release. Which is meant to …
More power! Single core CPU’s? Pah, they’re yesterdays news. Digitimes reckon that HTC will be rocking up in Barcelona with many disk and quad-core CPU’s inside their spanky new phones. The HTC Edge is going to be one of them but there’s now rumours of Tegra 3 (quad …
Over at Android Developers, some interesting numbers have come to light. Do we all know what Android OS we’re running on our devices, and do we care? It would appear that more than half the worlds Android devices (54.9% to be precise) are TWO full generations of the …
Are you after a Asus Transformer Prime? Are you in the UK? It probably worth checking this thread over at xda-developers . It looks like units are starting to fly off the shelves from PC World and Currys. It seems that the larger PC World stores are the …
Well, that’s an Android then. Despite our earlier guess that Sony Ericsson had gone all Windows Phone on us it looks like this will be the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD, aka Nozomi. The camera / video switcher image is a bit of an Android give-away here, and …
The Android Market has hit a new milestone of achieving 400,000 active applications, reports Distimo. It is still playing catchup to the Apple App Store but it is certainly gaining pace and I imagine will continue to do so – there’s only so many apps that can be …
I got one of those super cheap HTC Flyers over christmas and it received an over the air update fairly quickly (it is the 32gb 3g model). It was reported yesterday that the 16gb WIFI model has also started to receive the update. So here is a quick …
The brand-conscious will be able to get the flashy LG Prada handset this month according to an LG press release. It states that .. The phone is now available to Korean customers and scheduled for the release in most European countries and other parts of Asia in January. …
It seems that ASUS have thought again about their locked bootloader policy on the Transformer Prime and have announced the following information over at their FaceBook page which has also been picked up by XDA-Developers.. Oh, and ICS is coming on January 12th too! Good times.. ICS will …
Story so far. The bootloader on the Asus Prime is locked. This prevents developers doing a lot of fun developer things like custom ROMs. The Prime is a SIM free device too, so there’s no networks asking Asus to stop network unlocking. The guys at xda-developers have started …
Did you get yourself a cheap HTC Flyer this Christmas? If so, it’s time to check for updates as we’re hearing that the Honeycomb update has started to arrive. We’ll have a hands-on with the new Android update later on, but do let us know if it has …
With just a week to go until CES, Sony Ericsson are at least telling us that they will be launching…. ermmm…something. There’s a guessing game on Facebook at the moment as to what it’ll be. We’re thinking that another Android handset or three will be popping onto a …
Samsung have today announced an upgrade to the Ace, the Ace Plus and whilst looking nearly the same its whats inside that makes the most difference. The screen has been made larger from the original 3.5 into to 3.65 inch with a HVGA resolution making the experience much …
The Asus Transformer Prime has kinda fell out of love with the developers over on XDA-Developers. No ROMs can be flashed to this device because the bootloader is locked down with 128 bit encryption. This is the same trick that HTC did, but then they eventually did a …
Wehay! Official Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs for the Samsung Galaxy SII are arriving, and through the Samsung Kies software too….. apparently. Android 4.0.1 and Android 4.0.3 have leaked out, although it looks like there’ll be certain markets and variants getting the new OS update first. This roll-out has …
First of all it is really good. Secondly a bit of history for the Advent Vega. When PC World released the Advent Vega a lot of people were excited about it. It had hardware very similar to the Motorola Xoom and it was much cheaper. Pretty soon after …
There’s a stack of voice-control apps in the Android Market. Stick “Voice Assistant” in and you’ll see Vlingo, Speaktoit, Skyvi, Alice and a whole load more. There are, however, several apps calling themselves “Siri”. Some show themselves as “Fake Siri” but one is actually by a developer calling …
In another ‘Xmas terrific deal’ shock, Orange have reduced the price of the original Motorola Defy to just £99-99. This seems to be out of stock on-line, and therefore in store only, but definitely worth checking out if you’re after a cheap Android handset. Leigh reviewed this handset back …
HTC are now letting you unlock the bootloader of every phone they’ve launched since September 2011. There’s not a great deal to say here, but if you’ve tried it do let us know. The announcement was made on their development site where you can also find the tool …
Is it too big? The jury is probably still out on that one. You can always check out our review of the Note to find out yourself, however a lot of people must like it because Samsung has shifted a million of them already. The phone / tablet …
We’ve seen a number of deals in recent weeks on the XPERIA PLAY. Most of the stock on those sales has now gone, but if you missed it then don’t worry, here’s another great offer. A company called ChitterChatter (no, we’ve not heard of them either) is offering …
