Category: Android

I spoke to a friend recently who is already selling products from home. They make a little bit of additional cash but, with a smartphone doing nothing now than advertising their business to friends on Facebook, they wanted to know if there was any additional way of getting …

Surprisingly, Google doesn’t quite know everything about you. Not yet anyway. Sure, your phone will be telling Google where you work, where you live, what you look like and perhaps those several cheeky trips to McDonald’s, but there’s probably a bit more detail they can get if, let’s …

OnePlus have announced that the latest version of Cyanogen OS, Cyanogen OS 12.1 (based on Android 5.1), which is currently undergoing testing and Google certification. On the other side of things OxygenOS, which is OnePlus’s own operating system update based on Android 5.1, is in the works. Sadly …

  Huawei has just announced that its new flagship smartphone, the P8. Our very own James reviewed here and it’s now available for pre-order exclusively on iD, the new network from Carphone Warehouse. It costs £21.50 on a almost unheard of 12 month contract, which gives you 300 mins, 5000 …

Honor decided to step up their game with the 6+, in a world of fancy curved glass or metal devices they had to release a really good looking device and at a decent price point too. Quite how a relatively new brand make a mark on the mobile …

Last week Google I/O happened and Google announced Android M to the world. This week I have been testing Android M on the Nexus 5 and I am actually using it as my daily driver (brave/stupid time will tell).  Here is a brief overview of the big changes …

Hitman is one of the big name brands in gaming and provided one of the smash mobile hits of last year with Hitman Go, and now Square Enix Montreal brings Hitman Sniper to the small screen. Sharing similarities with the PC game of the same name and taking …

The SmartBand SWR10 was Sony’s first fitness monitor and linked in with the Lifelog app to keep track of all your movements, sleep and phone activity. Since then the wearable market has moved on with heart-rate monitors being the main addition. So it should come as no surprise that Sony …

Today we were lucky enough to get hands on with Sony’s new flagship the Xepria Z3+. This is a really nice evolution of the Z3 and one that would make a nice upgrade from anyone who is using a Xperia Z or Xperia Z2. It is also a …

Got TuneIn? Like using Google Now? Combine the two my good friend, because now you can simply speak to your phone and tell it what station you’d like to listen to. It’ll fire up the TuneIn app and start streaming the station in question. So, if you’re in …

This is just plain cool and for that reason and no other (well I kinda want to play with one) I am going to post something about it. Anyway moving on. WowWee have just announced that they are going to be making and selling some “next robotic innovations”. …

This puppy looks to be a plastic version of the One M9+ for the Chinese market. It’s got the same measurements of the M9+ (150.99 x 71.99 x 9.75 mm) but is obviously lighter (at 155 grams) due to the fantastic plastic construction. The specs also remain fairly …

Kids using technology is a great thing, modern devices are so intuitive that they can be picked up and used by even toddlers, allowing them to play, create and learn in fun and exciting ways. Kids using technology is also a very scary thing as the little horrors …

It’s been just a couple of weeks since we told you about the cheap and cheerful PIXI 3. This is the PIXI 3 (4) version, which basically means you’re getting a 4″ 480×800 pixel screen at 233 PPI. The phone is also available with a slightly smaller 3.5″ …

This thing is incredibly light and remind me obviously of the previous Acer Liquid Jade from some time back. It also kinda reminds me of the older iPod in the design, plus the fact that it’s painfully thin. The phone itself comes in at 110 grams. First impressions …

OK, OK, following our post mentioning the Vodafone pre-orders, you guys got in touch to point out that it’s on the Three website too. Prices start at £37 per month with the phone free and 4G is available for no extra cost. Three also has an exclusive on …

If you read about our afternoon with the LG G4 and you’re looking to get it on Vodafone, here’s some good news. The network will be carrying the new handset and will have a network exclusive on the red leather version pictured above. To be honest, I’ve had …

There for me was one feature of Android M that stood out above and beyond the rest – Now on Tap. Why is it so amazing? Well, let’s have a look. We all know that Android can support Google Now which is all well and good, but is …

First, a bit of detail about how all this came about. Phones. I get a lot of them to review. I borrow them then send them back, but with different sizes of SIM cards and some handsets offering dual-SIM functionality, it can result in me using Pay As …

Here is a brief overview of what went down in the Moscone Centre last night at Google I/O 2015. The conference started with a massive Pong game stretching across the panoramic screen around the venue. Some guy won a giant fluffy Android toy! Last year 8 out of …

Playboy, that great and venerable publishing powerhouse, have collected some interesting statistics about its readers.  Apparently there are 19 million visitors to its website per month – that’s only marginally more than Coolsmartphone gets.  Of those, 80% (15,200,000) use a mobile device or tablet.  Playboy has clearly realised …

Independent UK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has announced that it has started sales of the latest LG flagship device the G4, and the retailer has the black leather clad device as an exclusive, while also stocking the brown leather option as well as the plastic-clad grey model. …

Naming conventions are a great thing. Sony have the right idea, they have a few product ranges differentiated by a letter, ie E, M or Z. Then add a number on the end, ie M4, Z2 or E4 and that’s you sorted for the next 99 years along …

Today Sony announced an edition to its Xperia Z3 range, imaginatively titled the  Xperia Z3+ The newly announced device is both slimmer (6.9mm) and lighter (144g) than the Xperia Z3, and is available in four colour options to meet your individual taste and style. Choose from classic black, white or …

My main concerns, when snapping photos on my phone, is whether the photo is going to be backed up and just where it’ll be backed up to. Usually I store everything on an ever-filling storage card as I snap pictures randomly through the day. Those pictures, for the …

The modern day tablet is used for a whole lot of things, be it multimedia, playing games, browsing the web, catching up on emails, writing blog posts, online shopping or just good old social media. Picking the right tablet for you and your needs however is a difficult …

There are many new phones on sale now with fantastic cameras built in, but are these modern smartphones good enough to replace a standalone camera when going on holiday? The gap has got smaller and smaller as each manufacturer brings out their latest and greatest, and in my …

When you get “into” running a website and it gets a bit of traffic, you start hitting a problem. Paying for some web space isn’t enough. You need a virtual server, perhaps two or three, then when things get busier you’ll be looking at a full dedicated server …

Periscope has been been finding quite a following recently. It’s all over Twitter and it’s made by… Twitter. The app allows iPhone users to broadcast a live video stream around the world from their phone. However, despite being released by Twitter themselves, the app is only available for …

There’s a possibility, according to Digitimes, that HTC are about to cut their orders for components used in the new HTC One M9. Orders are being reduced by up to 30% “due to lower-than-expected sales for the model”, but HTC have not confirmed this. According to “sources”, the …

If you’re scared by words such as “petite” and “entry level” then you need to stop reading now. This is aimed squarely at those feature-phone customers who just want a cheap and cheerful handset that’ll make calls and perhaps do the odd bit of browsing on the rather …

So this is the bendy version of the LG G3. At least, it is in my head anyway, because as a big LG G3 user, the LG G Flex2 looks initially nothing more than a kinky version of the G3. However, inside the G Flex2 there are some …

The Oppo R7 has just been announced at a big company launch event. It’s powered by ColorOS 2.1 / Android 4.4 and there’s an octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU running the show with 3GB of memory. Inside you get 16GB of storage and there’s a microSD card slot …

MixRadio, the music streaming service previously found only on Nokia Lumia before appearing on other Windows Phones and other Nokias, is now cross platform and available on iOS and Android devices. The service allows you to choose from a selection of over 10,000 pre-selected mixes (10,409 according to …

Our daily dose of Kickstarter pleas usually go into a box marked “meh”. Some are pretty dull, and they almost make us want to add our Kickstarter Campaign for the “Coolsmartphone Readers Beer Bus”. This one, though, jumped out of our crowded mailbox and has caught the imagination …

The LG G4 has barely arrived on our shores and already LG have announced the sibling devices, the G4 Stylus and the G4c, which are a slightly bigger lower spec version with a stylus and a smaller lower spec version with a “Compact” designation. Spec wise they are …

The weather is quite varied these days, you may have noticed! Keeping on top of what the weather is doing is achievable through a variety of methods, be it looking out of the window, actually going outside, using a forecast app or using the Archos Weather Station (other …

The budget phone market is big business these days, with everyone competing to be the “go to” budget device, one big seller these days is 4G and getting 4G on a device at under £100 is a good thing. I’ve been using the Pop 2 for a few weeks …

You’ve probably seen sped up videos online, where the original video is played back at 10X the speed. So the video of a man skiing down a mountain look really smooth and arty. But when you’ve tried to do it yourself they just look rubbish. Well amazingly Microsoft …

Last year we took a look at a company called iMend who repair tablets and phones. We gave them a rather poorly iPad to look at which had a broken button surround and cracked screen. However, they don’t just do iPads. They do iPhones, Samsung and other devices …