Category: Android

Honor 8 – Black Friday discount special

We’re quickly heading towards the credit-card bashing Black Friday sales and, amongst the emails this morning, I spotted that Honor were getting ready to drop their already-cheap Honor 8 to just £299 on Friday. The handset, which normally retails at £369.99, has two 4-core processors, a 5.2″ Full …

HTC 10 evo announced

A brand new waterproof phone without a 3.5mm headset? No, it’s not that one. This is a new handset from HTC, although I should call it new-ish because it has already been on sale in the USA as the HTC Bolt exclusively on Sprint. The phone arrives with …

Matchmaking, without the embarrassment – Spritzr

Matchmaking. Internet dating. Online relationships. These are all words and phrases that used to carry a certain amount of embarrassment, but those days are now in the distant past. Now there’s all manner of dating and relationship apps, from the sublime to the ridiculous. This one claims a …

Acer Iconia Tab10 – Review

It has been a few weeks now since the latest Acer tablet arrived on my desk at Coolsmartphone towers. In that time I have been using it as my main day-to-day device for media consumption. I have not really been using it for very much in the way of work …

Wileyfox Spark X – Review

There was a time, not too long ago, when phones costing £139.99 were best avoided. “Android landfill” they used to call them. Cheap devices with a questionable build quality, a dire camera and wonky screen resolutions. Here, for your money you’re getting a completely network-free device with an …

Festive Feature #11 – Google Chromecast down to £20

I’ve got the old version of this and I really wouldn’t do without it now. Watching a YouTube video, playing something on the iPlayer Radio app, iPlayer TV, All 4, NOW TV, Netflix, Spotify, Wuaki and YouTube. Just don’t mention Amazon Prime. Anyhoo, if you want to beam …

Can you beat the neural network?

This is a nice time-killer, and you don’t even need to worry about getting the app, because there isn’t one. Whether you’ve got an iPhone or Android, just head over to quickdraw.withgoogle.com and draw the object or animal that the website tells you to doodle. It’s a simple …

Coolsmartphone Podcast 186 – Live

John won’t be able to join in this week. Matteo’s back on this side of the pond. Will he be able to keep the conversation on track with Majid, Garry and Greg? OK, that was a silly question. How far off track will the opinionists of the Coolsmartphone …

Get your make-up on! WhatsApp adds video calling

After being rumoured for a while, and then available through a beta build, WhatsApp continues on its quest for global domination of its messaging platform with video calling. Whilst it is arguably the biggest cross-platform messaging service, with a 1 billion users, WhatsApp has fallen behind competitors such …

New Snapdragon chipsets announced   

At the last 4G/5G summit hosted in Hong Kong, Mobile chip giant Qualcomm unveiled its latest mid-range chipsets, the Snapdragon 400 and Snapdragon 600 ranges. The Snapdragon 427 replaces the current budget Snapdragon 425, and improvements for the Snapdragon 427 chipset include the inclusion of Qualcomm’s X9 LTE …

OnePlus 3T – Pre-order tomorrow to get it on O2

Available fully on November 28th, you can get your name down to buy the OnePlus 3T tomorrow with O2. As we mentioned earlier, the OnePlus 3T has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 CPU (quad core) and a massive 6GB of RAM. There’s 64GB of storage (no microSD slot that …

Amazon Prime £59 until Friday November 18th

We’ve written a lot about Amazon, their products and their Prime subscription service over the last few years. Now you can get Prime in the UK if you sign up as a new customer for £59 for the first year. Hurry though, the offer is only valid until …

“So what Android phone do I buy?” – A conundrum

My friends and family know me as a tech enthusiast who is forever buying new devices and perusing the technology press. This has meant that I often I get asked questions on what devices people should buy. This is because (at least in my social circle) most people …

Microsoft Office on your Chromebook? Get ready to pay.

As more and more Chromebooks are being granted access to the Google Play Store and the millions of apps within, people are trying to activate their copy of Microsoft Office for Android. Unfortunately, they’re finding out that a subscription to Microsoft Office 365 is required, especially if your …

Moto M released, bringing bling to a premium low-tier thing

Earlier on this year, I recommended the Moto G 4th gen to someone. They were on a budget and they’d been using what I think was the original Moto G (the Moto G OG, if you will) quite happily for a very long time. Alas, no memory card …

Samsung Galaxy S7 nibbling nougat near you

Or, without that annoying alliteration about, Samsung seems to have finished testing Android 7 – AKA Nougat – and is starting to roll out a beta testing program for those folks with a Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. It’s not important that the rollout for Samsung is something …

Blackberry to make one more physical keyboard device

It’s no real surprise that when to comes to mobile devices with physical keyboards, Blackberry were the industry leaders. But despite this the company slowly declined, beginning with the company ending the use their own Operating System, and then not even producing devices, but using rebranded TCL devices (well hello, …

Get a new mobile from Nuu Mobile

Good ‘ole Nuu Mobile eh? Good to see some smartphones from them isn’t it? No, we’ve not really heard of Nuu Mobile either, but they’re here and they’ve just launched three new handsets in the UK. They range from just £40 all the way up to £129.99 and they’re …

Honor – Crazy Hours could bag you a phone for £1

Honor appear to have re-branded Armistice Day as vMall “Singles Day” today and they’re doing “Crazy Hours” where, from 8AM and on the hour after that, you can purchase 1 Honor 8, 1 Honor 7 Premium, 1 Honor 7 and 1 Honor Band Z1 for just £1. Their …

Venturer Windows 2-in-1 Notebooks get updated

Premium audio and video manufacturer, Venturer, previously brought us the successful BravoWin and EliteWin 2-in-1 affordable notebooks. These were released here in the UK earlier this year. Today they’ve announced their new models – the BravoWin S and EliteWin S. Both Mini Notebooks have a stylish new build with a …

OnePlus 3T to be released next week

Cast your mind back dear reader, many moons ago when HTC furst released the “One” series of devices. Well just a few months after release, the company released a higher spec updated version of the same device. It well and truly upset the customers that had forked out …

Nomu S10 – Review

Here at Coolsmartphone we are approached by device manufacturers from all over the world. I must admit that it is the unheard-of devices from the far-east that intrigue me the most, so I jumped at the chance to review the unknown brand Nomu and their S10 device. ‘Who …

Android Auto now becoming a standalone app 

I’m a firm believer that drivers should have limited, if no access to mobile phones whilst driving. Having just returned from a family holiday in Florida, I saw many drivers using their phone and even texting whilst driving. It just shows how distracted drivers can be whilst fiddling …

Virgin Media goes 4G. Adds free WhatsApp and rollover data

If you’ve got Virgin cabled up to your house then it’s in your own interests to look at their mobile deals too. They have better deals for Virgin customers, but you can also take a look at their offerings if you’re not a customer. Better still, today they’ve …

Huawei Mate 9 Unboxing

The time has come to unbox Huawei’s latest and greatest phablet – the Mate 9. If you have read the launch article then you will know what to expect, but for those of you who didn’t then here are the highlights. Kirin 960 chipset, the world’s highest performing …

Huawei Mate 9 arrives

I’m sitting in Munich right now having just finished at the Huawei Press event. We saw the bigwigs at Huawei talk about their latest release, the brand new Huawei Mate 9. There’s been lots of speculation about the specs and looks of this particular phone. Some people have even suggested that it …

Huawei November event – Liveblog

Hello! We are here in Munich to cover the events of Huawei’s unveiling LIVE. We expect to see the Huawei Mate 9 in at least one variant with the possibility of a Pro version appear as well. Also expect to see Lecia on stage and a lot of …

EE – The Robin returns

Remember the kid-friendly EE Robin? It was the world’s first 4G-connected tablet which was designed specifically for parents and their children. Now an updated version is available, with the new Robin adding an improved Hopster app for “digital playtime”. This app delivers 1500 episodes of kids TV shows, …

Google Home found at Walmart, what a tease…

I’ve been in the US of A for a couple of weeks now. I came over for the Big Android BBQ, where I delivered a talk and met a lot of amazing people. I then went to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I met up with Jolanda …

Acer Iconia Tab 10 – Unboxing

Today we have a new tablet in the house from Acer – the Acer Iconia Tab 10. The Iconia Tab 10 is Acer’s take on the low cost but premium build tablet that aims to be your new multimedia device. The Acer Iconia Tab 10 is currently available …

Hot Wheels stunts, filmed on a tiny car camera

Me and my son love Hot Wheels. When I was a kid I used to put tracks all around the house and now I’m doing it all over again. Anyway, we stumbled over this simply amazing video. It’s been filmed by someone with far too much money and …

Track your child without a huge cost

If you’re wanting to keep an eye on your child and want a no-frills way of finding out where they are, here’s a way I recently stumbled across. What you’ll need, in this particular setup, is a cheap Android phone for your son or daughter. These are everywhere …

Sengled Pulse Solo LED + Wireless Speaker – Review

If you’ve got a need for a lightbulb but you want some music coming out of it, welcome to the Sengled Pulse Solo LED light and Wireless Speaker. This one is an E27 screw-in fitting and puts out about 550 lumens. Now, if you compare this with regular …

Xiaomi Mi Mix – Who needs a bezel?

Overshadowing their Mi Note 2 somewhat is this, the Xiaomi Mi Max. It’s packing some wizardry from our friends at Elliptic Labs and, if you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll have known all about it way back in March. Before I go any further, you need …

The modular phone is dead.. for LG

We can talk about what comes after the smartphone until the thing is actually released. However the long touted next step towards the future has died a death before it even got started. According to the Electronic Times, LG is abandoning its modular approach that it launched with …

Xiaomi Mi Note 2 announced

A 5.7″ curved display which bends around the edges, a Snapdragon 821 CPU and a massive 6GB of RAM. Plus, t looks like a Samsung Galaxy Note7. Meet the Mi Note 2. For 2799 yuan ($413 or £339.51) you can get a 4GB memory version. This has 64 …

What? You’ve still got a Galaxy Note7? Here’s a software update

If there’s anyone out there who hasn’t returned their Note7, you can at least enjoy a new software update that is rolling out on Monday. Unfortunately, the software update is designed to help stop your phone going boom banga-band. It’ll limit the maximum battery charge to 60%. The …

LeEco LePro 3 and Le S3 announced

Sorry but we are a wee bit late on this one guys, however as the phone is not destined for our shores (at least through the normal channels), I’m sure you will let me off. There was a big announcement in San Francisco on Wednesday from the Chinese …

Nomu have a sale on, and their smartphones were already cheap anyway

We’ve got ourselves a Nomu S10 on test at the moment. Sure, you might not have heard of Nomu, but it’s a decent waterproof and lifeproof Android handset with a 5″ 1280×720 pixel HD screen and is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Mediatek CPU. Running Android 6.0 there’s …