Category: Android
I know there’s quite a few of you out there who work in on concession stores, in retail stores and network shops. I don’t envy you, I really don’t. This weekend I popped into a local EE store just to have a mooch around and there seemed to …
The Samsung Galaxy Ace line of handsets has had quite a success since it launched a few years ago, and the brand has been seen on a few models in its time. The latest device to carry the Ace brand is the Samsung Galaxy J2 Ace which was …
In my opinion it’s one of the best phones to have been announced last year. Now it’s available on the high street for the buying public. Three and Huawei have just announced that the Mate 9 is going on sale in some of the Three stores and also …
My wife has the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and, quite frankly, I’m surprised that it’s still in one piece. You may remember what happened with her Samsung Galaxy S5, and the plastic construction seemed to cope with the constant drops very well. So, if you’ve had a look …
Fancy a handset that will help you through your day? With artificial intelligence and voice assistants becoming a big thing in tech, HTC have chosen to deliver a new helper in their two new handsets. Called “Sense Companion”, it can advise you to charge up if you’ve got …
Back in the day, when we used to have nightclubs and you’d go outside to meet other people instead of “swiping” them, I always wanted to be the DJ. The nearest I got was doing the lights in a local nightclub, and I made the mistake of leaving …
With Mobile World Congress happening next month, the very last thing we expected to see was a new handset from HTC in early January. That, though, is what we have – the Desire 650. There’s a bit of a backstory to this one. It appeared on the Taiwanese …
Right, first up I should mention that this phone doesn’t have Band 20 on LTE, so no 800MHz 4G. Oh, and it also doesn’t have NFC, so no “tap to pay” magic. However, what it does have is a 2.1GHz Helio X20 deca-core CPU with a Mali T880 …
Khellan and I opened 2017 with a cracking episode of the Coolsmartphone Podcast: Coolsmartphone Podcast 192 You might as well drop 5 stars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOoX1EuYtiM We discussed CES, Samsung’s A range, Cyanogen and Lineage, Chromebooks and the Honor 6X. Matteo – @Todoleo Khellan – @Wubanger5 As usual feel free …
In 2011, Nokia took the now-fateful decision to abandon the “burning platform” of Symbian and moved over to Windows Phone. This decision was close one; in those days the smartphone market was very different with multiple OS’s having a reasonable foothold (as opposed to the duopoly of today …
In a way I’m not overly happy that a service like this exists, or has to exist. The NHS here in the UK is crumbling. There’s many reasons for it, and we could argue about them all day, but fact is – it’s broken. We’re now in a …
First impressions matter. Or so we are led to believe. My Honor 6X arrived today and I’ve wasted no time taking it out of its box and popping my SIM and a memory card into it. The things I do for Coolsmartphone.com and you readers. The Honor 6X …
I think I’ve started to reach an age where I don’t always recognise some of the celebrities in magazines and on TV. Especially on “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here” where they now seem to run a full intro detailing why a person is apparently “famous”. …
The Honor 6X was announced and has been available in China since October 2016. Honor have ramped things up and the device will be available to pre-order in Europe and the USA as of later today. The Honor 6X is a mid-range 5.5″ device which will replace the …
Samsung didn’t get much good press in the second half of 2016, mainly related to the Note 7 issues. We’re just a few days into 2017 and the Korean smartphone giant has just officially announced the A3 (2017) and A5 (2017) for European markets. The Samsung A7 (2017) …
“Happy New Year Everyone!” That seems to be what Amazon.co.uk and Honor are saying to us today. With an Honor 8 Deal. In Blue. Whether you are still slightly tipsy from last night or under the weather of some seasonal bug, this is a deal you won’t want …
It seems that there’s no love lost between Cyanogen Inc and CyanogenMod. The CyanogenMod.org website is now dead. It comes just hours after this blog post from the developers behind it. When the CyanogenMod team announced that they were going to fork the source code yesterday we simply …
Well, we didn’t want this to come (especially so late on Christmas Eve when we’re all full of mince pies) but it has. Following our earlier news that Cyanogen OS is to be retired, it now looks like CyanogenMod in its current form is toast too. However, there’s …
At the beginning of November, Huawei released something a little bit exciting – the Huawei Mate 9. I was lucky enough to be given one of these devices for review and as such have been using it for the past few weeks. It is now time for me to …
A short time ago we reported that Cyanogen as a company would be shedding considerable staff. They were also closing buildings with some of the team moving to a single location. The new CEO, Lior Tal, announced the company would cutting ties with co-founder Steve Kondik too. Now Cyanogen …
Enjoy Twitter? Or are you a Facebook fan? I’m definitely more of a Twitter person myself, and have the official app installed on my Android phone. I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with the app because it tends to conveniently “forget” my settings every …
No, I’d never heard of Hebron before writing this either. It’s in Northumberland and there’s less than a couple of hundred houses in the entire parish. However, despite BT digging stuff up and putting a nice green street cabinet for “Superfast Broadband”, residents are still stuck in the …
Filling an entire news item with conjecture and rumour about an upcoming launch? Well, I’ve seen it quite a bit across the web today. Many are trying to decide what exactly the new “HTC U” or “HTC for U” launch, which we’ve just received an invite for, actually …
Some time ago I decided to cancel my current satellite TV subscription. To be honest I thought the monthly fee was extortionate and decided to go along the “cable cutters route”. I found that I could get nearly all, if not all of the content I wished to …
The Coolsmartphone Podcast, Podcast 189, for the week of December 12th 2016 is now ready for download through your podcast client of choice. Whether you are watching the Youtube video of the live recording, or using a client to download the edited audio, we’re here to inform and …
Lenovo and Chrome OS 2016 has been on record for being one of the most interesting years on record. Whether in the political sphere (not going there) to the tech world (Google’s smartphone, exploding Note 7s, the disappearance of headphone jacks). However arguably the most innovative device has been the …
Magic! Honor pulled quite a number in China yesterday unveiling the Honor Magic, a smartphone all curves and shiny glass. The Honor Magic has an interesting spec sheet to say the least, as it differs from most device SKUs on the current smartphone market. The screen is a …
The Honor 8 is a great phone, I use one as a main phone and am very happy with it. Vmall currently have some attractive discounts on the Honor 8: £50 off the white one and £30 off the black and blue models. What do you get for …
Introduction Regular readers of the site may remember my adventures and #firstworldproblems in the tablet world. Whether it was using an iPad Mini (many years ago), Windows, convertible devices or a cheap Android slate, I hadn’t found a device which satisfied me completely. My Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 …
This looks to be the “next big thing” on mobile. Today Super Mario Run will finally launch for iOS devices and, although it looks a bit like the traditional Super Mario Bros, this is an “autorunner”, so the clever little plumber moves forward at all times. That means …
Using Android Pay could result in a nice gift this festive season. Just use your phone to pay for something and you’ll be in with a chance of winning one of 100,000 prizes. Get a cracker every time you use Android Pay “through Dec 31”, which apparently is how …
If you’ve got a hankering for a flip-phone with “proper” numeric keys, the Doro 6520 could be on your shopping list. Now, in a new partnership with Three UK, Doro have got handsets on every UK network. Doro used to be known for selling phones aimed at the …
A new game is now available on Android and iPhone which encourages you to steal (virtually, that is) from others. After downloading “Snatch” you can win prizes by grabbing virtual parcels. Within those parcels are real prizes, including a year’s free pizza from Pizza Hut and a year …
Android skins are one of the most polarising subjects in the geek world, and Samsung’s Touchwiz receives most of the love and hate in equal amounts. Once the do it all approach of weird gestures and strange features, it has become much tamer in later editions. Now, it …
The Galaxy S8 is going to be an important phone for Samsung in 2017. In the wake of the utter disaster that was the Note 7, the company arguably has a lot of ground to make up in winning over buyer’s confidence. Rumours of what the S8 will …
Next time you’re around your parents have a look at how many app updates are pending – I bet its lots! Convincing Joe public to update their apps is difficult enough at the best of times, many just ignoring the pop ups and warnings. Afraid they will break …
Now, I could try and build this up to be something quite clever and inventive. To a degree it is, there’s a strong and quick-retracting cord and a clip which goes onto your pocket. However, I don’t think we can dress up the fact that it’s a bit …
Today Google is rolling out Android 7.1.1 Nougat to some devices. This isn’t a big release, but adds a few features to Pixel and Nexus devices and tidies up things with bug fixes and optimisations. The list of devices getting Android 7.1.1 Nougat from Google is as follows: …
Last week Meizu announced the Pro 6 Plus and Flyme 6. Now it is the turn of the Meizu M5 Note to be officially unveiled in China. The Meizu M5 Note is a super midranger with an amazing spec sheet in value for money terms. All metal body …
Recently we heard about the world of smart buttons, in particular, “flic” which have a number of purchasable buttons to make your life easier. I got my hands on the buttons, and had some fun!
