Category: Android

The Razer Phone has arrived. Here is our unboxing

We have had something very special arrive at Coolsmartphone Towers today. At least, it’s something that I have been looking forward to for a few weeks. Today we’ve got one of the boldest new phones to come out this year (IMHO). Yes, it’s the Razer Phone! You’re obviously …

Hands on with the Honor 7X

Good morning you wonderful people. Now, I’m going to put some information into this article and it’s totally up to you what you do with it. OK? In a few days Honor will be launching a new phone. They’re telling us how this new phone will “Max your …

Doro 8040 now available to ease you into the smartphone world

Give a modern smartphone to my nan and she’d probably get a little confused and annoyed with the thing. A phone, to that generation, should be a communication tool and nothing else. Having hundreds of tiny icons, pop-ups and games isn’t what is necessarily wanted. Plus, despite the …

HTC Black Friday deals

Yes, it’s the crazy time of year again and HTC have released their offers. The HTC U11, U11+, U Ultra and more are available with discounts galore. Head to htc.com and sign into the HTC Club to be part of the bargain brigade. All these are live right …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro – Review

These days there are so many different smartphones out there it is hard to find things to distinguish them from each other. I genuinely struggle sometimes in finding what makes one phone better than another. That being said, there are things out there that can help to lift one phone above …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro now available from Vodafone

Want the new Mate 10 Pro? Want it with a free Huawei Watch 2? Head to Vodafone right now and you can pick one up for £46 per month with a £10 upfront cost. This will get you 4GB of data plus unlimited texts and unlimited calls. If …

Honor are about to max your view

I’m lucky enough to get invited to press conferences fairly often but sometimes, just sometimes, I’m unable to make it. Instead, one of my esteemed Coolsmartphone colleagues intends instead. The recent email from Honor is a case in point. I couldn’t go to their December 5th launch event …

OnePlus 5T launch today!

Later today OnePlus will take the wraps off the much-rumoured 5T.  A modest upgrade to the 5, which was launched just 6 months ago, the new device is expected to be the first OnePlus device to feature a bevel-less screen.  The screen will grow to 6″ as will …

Is your smartphone just too damn big?

A Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaign isn’t normally something we take a great deal of notice of here at Coolsmartphone. Usually it’s a product that rarely becomes reality. However, this one has actually resulted in a full product, and it’s tiny! It’s the smallest 4G smartphone in the world and …

Anyone remember Psion?

If you’re a long time reader of the site and a long time user of mobile tech, you may remember the Psion series of PDA’s. These were in many ways the forebear of Nokia’s Symbian communicator devices. What made them special was that they used mini thumb style …

My love for Monkey Island has returned..

Back in the day, and I’m talking way back in the day (anyone remember the Amiga?) I I used to love adventure games. Yes, it was a few years ago, but the graphics were just good enough to make you believe that you were stepping into a different …

Easy Logger – A hidden mobile tracking app

There’s plenty of monitoring apps out there but, if you want to pay absolutely nothing, the new Easy Logger app might be of interest. It’s for Android and you will need to side-load an APK, but for precisely nothing per month you’ll get full logging of all phone …

Razer Unveil the Razer Phone and it is coming very soon

Razer is a brand that has been around for a few years now. They advertise themselves as “For Gamers, By Gamers” and they’ve pushed out some glorious high-end laptops over the last few years. I can say with certainty that I have lusted after the Razer Blade laptop …

HTC launch the HTC U11+ and HTC U11 Life.

As you’ll know if you read our HTC U11 review, we do like the HTC handsets. Before the U11 was announced, we got to play with the HTC U Play and the U Ultra but, come on, hands up who actually has either of those two. There lies …

Huawei set the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro

Hauwai has now released the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro, and it is coming very soon. We have been lucky enough to get our hands on with the Mate 10 Pro from Huawei, and the good news is that if you to want to get one …

Nokia 2 with 2 days battery!

Nokia, currently owned by HMD Global, is trying to make the next breed of handsets relive the glory days of strong battery life. This is something that has not been possible with the current era of smartphones. The new Nokia 2, which is due for release in the UK …

Google Pixel 2 XL – Unboxed by Superman!

Fancy the Pixel 2 or the Pixel 2 XL? Well, if it’s size you want, the Google Pixel 2 XL has a bigger 6″ screen and a higher price-tag t’boot. £799 will get you a 64GB version, and it’s £899 for the 128GB model. It’s got a pOLED …

Android? Or an iPhone? Seriously, do you really want to know?

In February next year it’ll be exactly 15 years since this website came into being. I was, for many months before that, writing all this stuff on another domain. A free stick of chewing gum if you remember that far back. If I’m honest, after you’ve seen the …

OPPO Launches the F5, complete with Expert Selfie AI

Chinese phone manufacturer OPPO has unveiled the Oppo F5. This new device is turning mobile photography on its head, with a 16 MP shooter on the rear and a 20 MP shooter on the front. The F5 features what the company are calling “groundbreaking A.I. Beauty Recognition technology”. Yes, a technology apparently designed to personalise …

The iPhone X is now ready for pre-order

A little bit of me still whinces when the price tag on a phone is four digits long, and I can’t buy an iPhone X myself because it would be worth more than the car I’m driving. That’s just weird. There’s no getting away from the iPhone X …

Memory running a little low? Here’s some tips on clearing storage

I review a lot of phones and one trend I’m definitely seeing is the addition of “phone health” apps. On Android they’re designed to keep your phone in shape. To make sure that rogue apps aren’t running in the background, sucking memory, power and space. Space, no matter …

Is this the Oneplus 5T?

OnePlus have already brought us some exciting new smartphones, and they do this without charging a huge premium. Their previous offerings were popular, and more so with the recent OnePlus 5 which featured a dual camera system, great battery and huge amounts of RAM. However… It seems like …

When a smartphone helps you with your backpacking

If you’re travelling light then, even if you’re going ultra-light like I’ve done on my various charity bike rides (which, of course, I don’t like to talk about), you’re going to be taking your smartphone with you. To be honest there’ not a great deal of places where …

Maintenance software goes mobile. What benefits can it offer?

Have you ever heard about CMMS? Well, I hadn’t either. Not until I recently moved jobs. It stands for “Computerized Maintenance Management System”, or sometimes “Computerized Maintenance Management Software” and is basically a way to replace the classic pen and paper documentation. Back in the “old days”, if …

Oreo being delivered to the Sony XZ Premium

I’ve been pretty impressed with the XZ Premium ever since I first saw the thing back in March. The build quality is the usual Sony finery and that 5.5″ screen resolution (2160×3840 pixels) is stunning. It also comes with the ultra-fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 CPU, 4GB RAM, 64GB …

Huawei P10 – SIM-free just £399.99

As you’ll know if you read my impressions of it, I loved the Huawei P10. I really, really didn’t want to give the thing back. With a lot of smartphones now becoming fairly similar with their specs, I’m always on the look-out for three key points… A good …

Bug bounty on offer as Google goes for a big clean-up

It’s pretty simple logic when you think about it. If there’s apps and manufacturers out there developing ways to disinfect and clean up your Android phone, then there’s obviously some apps out there that are misbehaving. Just this week, Google started pushing to get this fixed, with a …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro – Unboxing

Now that the madness of the launch event is over and all the tech world has crawled back into their respective offices, it is time to get down to the business of seeing what is beyond the shiny Huawei exterior. Before I get into the unboxing of the …

Quickly now! Join the Huawei Mate 9 Android Oreo beta

If you’ve got a Huawei Mate 9 then you may be looking on with envy after the Mate 10 announcement. Don’t worry though, because, if you’re super-quick, you can get in on the Android 8.0 (Oreo) action too. Head to the Huawei beta test area and you can …

Tesla on two wheels. The AppScooter

Last week I was reviewing a car and this week I’m getting a pitch from an electric scooter company. It’s certainly different to my years of reviewing phones. This one is an electric bike which can get you to nearly 28 mph in just 3.3 seconds. Depending how …

An interesting way to use your smartphone

Pretty much everybody reading this will be using their smartphone in exactly the same way. You’ll be scrolling down the screen with your finger or thumb. Standard. However, you can hook up a range of both wired and wireless (Bluetooth) kit to let you interact in an arguably …

A look at the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10 Pro

In addition to the main event yesterday, we also saw two more phones being launched by Huawei. One of these is the Porsche Design version. This is the continuation of what Huawei did last year with the Mate 9. I was able to get a very brief hands-on …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro Launch

Huawei has always had two mainstream phone lineups, the P series and the Mate Series. We have seen the P series for this year and we were pretty impressed by the offering. The Mate series traditionally launches later in the year and tends to be aimed at the …

Huawei Live Event – Today

Our man Garry is on his way to cover the Huawei Live event for us today, but in the meantime at 1 pm today there will be a live stream direct from the event. https://youtu.be/XVXytij8Rno

Hands on with the Moto Z2 Play

The new Z2 Play is available with Vodafone. We’ve covered it before but now there’s one right here for you to have a good look at. The bright and vivid 5.5″ screen is a 1920 x 1080 pixel unit and the entire phone is just 5.99mm thick. This …

Distracted by your phone, but still need to use it? Try this.

If you constantly get distracted by your smartphone, there’s a simple fix. Just turn the thing off. Leave it in a cupboard. However, if you need to actually do work on your phone then… well, it’s easy to get distracted by Facebook messages and tweets appearing on the …