Category: Android
It’s not something I talk about much, but I’ve actually met Bill Gates. He’s a bit shorter in real life and had a lot of bodyguards following him around at the time. We spoke about the Microsoft Smartphone because, way back when, Microsoft was actually pretty successful at …
Just last month we covered the fact that Google Play is now listing real-money gambling apps. For quite some time before, the iPhone and Android stores have differed in this respect. On the iPhone, you could download gaming apps that let you transfer your own cash into an …
Right now I’m carrying around the Honor 9. It definitely ticks a lot of boxes for me. The battery life is decent, it takes great photos, it has a great screen, there’s 64GB of on-board storage and it’s pretty nippy too. The blue or grey one is available …
It seems a long time since we first saw the Sony Xperia XA1. It has a bigger brother, the XA1 Ultra, too. The XA1 has now popped up on Vodafone has a 5″ screen 720×1280 pixel screen. It’s powered by Android 7.0 and has a 64-bit MediaTek Helio …
Some of my favourite iOS and Android games I tend to see the same games being played on the bus to college in the morning, but I’m a little different. My choice of apps, and the games I have installed, isn’t always mainstream, but I enjoy them all …
A few years ago I worked for an internet provider. My advice, if any parents ever asked, would be to keep the PC in a “family room”. Now, well now you just can’t do that. Kids demand phones, and those phones aren’t “dumb phones” either. No. The latest …
Overnight Google gave us the official news which confirmed the substantial HTC rumours. It’s loose change for Google, who have almost $100 billion in the bank. They will now acquire the HTC for $1.1 billion. Their announcement is as follows.. With this agreement, a team of HTC talent …
With the Pixelbook leaking, we’ve already seen a bit of what Google will be announcing on October 4th. However, there’s much more.. Leaks suggest a new Pixel, cunningly named the Pixel 2. These pictures have been found on the internet and there’s rumours that the HTC-built phone will …
OK yes. The iPhone 8 is a great phone. The iPhone X is an even better phone. But if your son, daughter or significant other wants one of these, it’s a LOT of money to be spending. Take, as an example, the iPhone X pricing we covered recently. …
Here at Coolsmartphone Towers we always like a bargain, and we also love supporting the underdog. Which is why this deal seems to appeal to all my senses, especially after the shock of the iPhone X pricing! Small upstart brand WileyFox have been bashing out smartphones for the …
As we mentioned earlier on Twitter, new iPhone handsets tend to go through a number of stages during their lifespan. Stage 1 – The iPhones are announced in front of a set of carefully-selected press. Stage 2 – The handsets are derided and criticised. Stage 3 – The …
Many of us will probably be getting numb to the fairly regular security warnings that become inextricably connected to our smartphones. There’s an acceptance of risk when we download apps, and we freely skip past that screen which tells us just how many permissions an app requires. Now …
Recently we told you about the Lindy NC-60 Headphones with Active Noise Cancelling technology. They have at last dropped through the Coolsmartphone Towers mailbox. What arrived was a nice glossy black box displaying the NC-60 in all their glory in a nice tight wrapper. Just like Christmas, the …
Huawei are now the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. The latest data from market research firm Counterpoint Research shows Huawei overtaking Apple to become even bigger. This result is from strong sales in June and July, which have allowed the Chinese manufacturer to inch past Apple into …
EE are showing off a new type of store in Tottenham Court Road. It’s one of their new “Showcase” stores and basically lets you play with and enjoy the range of tech and services that the network provides. You get to experience experiential zones and there’s the chance …
Recently we covered the fact that Google Play have now allowed real-money gambling apps into their software store. Until recently, you either had to side-load (downloading an APK manually and then installing it with the security permissions reduced) or you would need to just browse to the site …
A full aluminium body, curved glass and it’s 7.5mm thick. Not bad so far and, with a 5.2″ FHD 1920 x 1080 pixels screen at 423 PPI it’s going to be pretty decent to use. Specs on this one include 16GB of internal memory (plus a microSD slot, …
We’ve managed to get our hands on with the newly-announced LG V30. It’s a big launch here at IFA for the company, but we’re still not exactly sure whether it’ll be coming to the UK. The closest we have is “key European markets”. We’re hoping.. Anyhow, here’s it’s …
Did you see the Galaxy Note8 launch? We’ve got all the Note8 details and we’ve taken an in-depth look at the Note8 deals on offer too. But how about seeing the thing in the flesh eh? Let’s see. It’s pricey. Very pricey, so we had to handle this …
Play House Plumb. Grape Jamboree. Butterscotch Tempest. Daft names for paint colours. You’ve probably seen those paint shades in your local DIY store and thought, “How do they come up with those names?”. Well, now mobile manufacturers are doing it too, and we’ve got some reasoning and descriptive …
OK, short version. The BlackBerry is back, albeit with TCL Communications at the helm. In February I took a look at it. It’s a bit heavy and a bit chunky compared to some handsets, but that keyboard has returned and you’ll find a range of BlackBerry apps inside. …
Anyone remember Golden Axe? Well, me neither, but this new / old SEGA game is now available for both Android and iOS. It’s free to download and play but you’ll obviously get a few ads to pay for the thing. You can though, if you wish, remove all …
This morning I just made it to the Sony Press Conference with Peter Holden of Talk Android. Another event, another incremental series of product launches, or was there more? Read on here on Coolsmartphone.com to find the answer to this existential question… We came in as a German …
How does a phone with a 6″ screen sound? How about one with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 CPU and 4GB of RAM? What about the 64GB of storage with a microSD slot? Sounding promising? Welcome, then, the new LG V30, announced just this morning. It’s one that has …
Today Acer had a packed press conference at IFA in Berlin where they threw an impressive product portfolio at the market in preparation for the 2017 holiday season shoppers. Acer’s Jason Chen, the CEO and Chairman of the Taiwanese company, was on stage running the show and joined …
I drive my wife crazy on a weekly basis it seems. It tends to happen when she asks if I’ve got any loose change. I don’t. I very rarely do. At work, the vending machines and the staff restaurant – they’re all “tap to pay”. When I go …
If the HTC U11 review sparked your interest, but you want a touch more storage space, today is the day for you. The one we looked at had 64GB, but now you can pre-order the unlocked 128GB version on the HTC website. Now, we should perhaps point out …
If you’re following us on Twitter then, first up, thank-you. We think you’re brilliant. Secondly, you should’ve spotted our earlier piece about the Xperia Touch in February. It’s a device which turns any surface into a touchscreen and, when I tested it (video below), I kinda wanted to …
If you’ve spent any time browsing Google Play recently, you may have spotted that something has changed. The Play Store here in the UK, until very recently, not allowed gambling with “real money” in apps and games. Now though, following an update to the developer policy page, you …
The jury is still out on whether we should actually be calling it the Note8 or the Note 8, but either way you can get all the details here. If you want one, we’ve got you a list of all the offers and deals, courtesy of the various …
Sky are pushing hard into the mobile arena, but they’ve now announced a better deal if you want some Sky TV action too. Their newly-announced £35 per-month deal delivers an iPhone SE on a “Swap24” plan. This, along with their appropriately-named “Swap12” offering, lets you upgrade to the …
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Yeah. That didn’t go well did it? It became famous for all the wrong reasons – appearing on warning signs at airports and generally becoming the butt of jokes involving explosions or fireballs. Today marks the launch of the Note 8, and the …
At the beginning of this year, Samsung managed to broker a deal with Qualcomm to reserve the first batch of the Snapdragon 835 chips for their latest flagship device – the Galaxy S8. This gave the Korean mobile giant the jump on other OEMs for releasing devices with …
I’ve just got back from the Coolsmartphone canteen, where I’ve high-fived almost everyone because I’ve crow-barred the this song into the title of this article. For the uninitiated, head to the bottom for “Magic” by Pilot, and re-live the 1970’s, baby. But wait, before all that, we’ve had …
Google has woven their Android O launch into the US solar eclipse – the first to be seen across the country since 1918. Android is educating fans via this site and taking the opportunity to reveal all the Android O goodness too. You can watch the livestream below …
At home I have a NAS box. I originally purchased one of these because I’ve somehow used all the storage that my cloud provider had available and the cost to upgrade was nothing short of insane. I’d tried other providers, however the cost, the reliability, and the fact …
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 …
Try as I might, I’ve been unable to loan a Sony Xperia handset so that we can give you a review. At the launch during Mobile World Congress I was, however, very impressed by the build quality and the sheer speed of the thing, which in tests could …
The time has come. Nokia have returned the to flagship party! At least, this is what we are being told. We’ve got details from all the material released during the press event, held yesterday. The more obvious question is, why should we care that Nokia are back in …
The smartphone manufacturer has been keen to let us know certain bits of information about their upcoming V30 device. It’s going to have an F1.6 aperture camera with a glass lens. The dual camera setup also gets laser detection autofocus, optical image stabilization and electronic image stabilization too. …
