Category: Software (Apple)

Can your smartphone really improve your maths?

I’m currently spending quite a lot of my evening helping my son with his homework. Part of that is maths, and things have either changed a lot since I was at school or I’m just incredibly rusty. I’m perhaps the lazy one, not my son. I pick up …

Traffic Nation: Street Drivers Review

There is an abundance of car racing games available on both Google Play and Apple App Store. Traffic Nation: Street Drivers reminds me of racers who terrorise your Saturday nights in town and a 80s racing classic where you had to dodge cars because your car was faster …

Five reasons why you need a reading app

I’m not a massive fan of this time of year. The nights here in the UK are getting longer and the days are getting shorter, so I usually like to book a winter break – even if it’s a quick weekend away. Whether it’s a skiing holiday, a …

Picpal – Selfie sharing and merging, no matter where you are!

Taking a selfie. It’s a term that seems to have taken the world by surprise and, whether you’re at the beach, in the pub or at a restaurant, you’ll see people grouping together to take that all-important selfie shot. What’s great about this, of course, is that you’ve …

New BBC iPlayer features announced.

iPlayer is one of the most popular apps out there. The BBC has had great success with it, with a staggering number of downloads per month. To its credit, the BBC routinely updates the app (albeit not the Windows Phone variant). The most recent version brings a series …

Level up in the gaming industry

My house at the moment sounds insane. My wife and son are both obsessed by the new Angry Birds 2 game that recently launched. It’s not quite the hysteria of the first one, but it’s definitely proving to be a big hit. What I’ve also found, after briefly …

11 Million sign up to trial Apple Music.

According to Senior Vice President of Apple Internet Service, Eddy Cue, Apple’s month old music streaming service – Apple Music – has had 11 million members sign up to for the trial service. The trial gives customers access Apple’s catalogue of 30 million songs for 3 months free, …

Conferencing on the go without embarrassing yourself

Just like video conferencing changed the way you connect with your workplace, the increasingly popular mobile video conferencing is triggering an evolution in how and where you connect. Without the need for a stationary computer or a bulky laptop, you can meet with your co-workers and clients anywhere …

The Angry Birds have returned for a second (?!) adventure

Everybody used to have Angry Birds installed on their smartphone at one point. Now things have changed a little, at least in my opinion. Anyway, despite a FEW Angry Birds versions in-between (y’know, like Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Star Wars and …

Just how secure is your smartphone?

Whether you’re playing World of Goo, Candy Crush Saga, a full-on RPG, or the latest real-money casino games, every mobile user needs to be concerned about security. No-one wants personal details stolen, logins compromised, or credit card information hacked into, but the truth is that attacks are on the …

Get a bottle of bubbly quickly with taxi app Gett

Gett is an app which lets you grab a black taxi. You can download it on iOS and Android. Now, with intense competition from the likes of Uber, Addison Lee and others, they’re diversifying by offering an on-demand delivery service too. It works thanks to drivers and riders …

Coda 2 for iOS is an Amazing Update to a Great App

Earlier this week, Panic – maker of apps Transmit, Prompt, and Coda – unveiled a humongous, free update to Diet Coda, now called Coda for iOS. Panic really wants to stress that that this is no longer an accessory or counterpart to the Mac app, but rather a full …

TVPlayer announces subscription service for extra channels

We’ve already covered a data-free way to get TV on your tablet this week, but if you want streaming TV shows you can also use the likes of TVCatchup or TVPlayer. Both have got mobile apps, but if you want to get access to premium (paid-for) channels, you’re …

Storytime for grownups. Why you should try digital audiobooks

Prologue If you’ve ever taken a class on ancient literature, mythology, or even anthropology, you’ve probably run across “the oral tradition”, mankind’s earliest form of storytelling. Perhaps I’m getting to heavy here, but I’m basically saying that listening to stories rather than reading them was the norm at …

Get a personal coach in your pocket

Cross-training? Out for a run? What you need is a bit of encouragement. Something that’ll make you break out into a sweat. You need to get worn out, and quick. You need to go harder and faster. You need to build your stamina. So how’s about…. Yes, the …

Google Music, now free, with some hefty caveats

Google Music is great, but you need to pay for it. Booo. But wait, you can now get it free via an ad-supported version via the website plus it’s coming to Android and iOS. You’ll get adverts, but apart from that we can see absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t want this. …

MOT Models launch mobile portfolios – A world first

When I applied for my first few jobs I had to sit in a stuffy office while some HR person clicked through my CV. I had a folder with all my qualifications in there too, but fast-forward to today and I’m instead getting job agencies using my LinkedIn …

The Terminator gets added to your navigation

Way back in the day we used to upload voices to our hacked versions of TomTom to Pocket PC devices. Remember someone having Yoda speaking out the directions? Now we’ve got Waze which, if you didn’t know already, is a rather clever community-driven traffic and navigation app. If …

Get your eBooks from.. the supermarket

Did you, my friend, know that Sainsburys do eBooks? No. No. Neither did I. I just go in there for some apples and my special cream. Now there’s a whole new website on www.sainsburysebooks.co.uk filled with the things, and you can either take a preview or go to …

Running a business from home on your smartphone

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 …

Screen Protector to give iPhone 6 and 6 Plus a back button

I moved to iOS last December and one of the great things about it, particularly compared to Windows Phone, is the wild and wacky world of accessories that are available.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in the varied world of Kickstarter projects.  A new idea currently making …

Learning to print the perfect picture

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 drone that follows you. Lily.

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 …

Track and share your dog walks with Walkies

** Warning. This was typed early in the morning after 3 hours sleep. Apologies in advance. This ain’t the Daily Telegraph. I started this website from scratch some 13 years ago now. All I had was a copy of Microsoft Frontpage and 16 million pounds. It’s been a …

Skype and Sky. Too similar, rules court

Here we go again. Another battle between Sky and Microsoft and, after a lengthy case, the court has agreed with Sky. What’s the problem? Well, somehow, it would seem that Skype .. … could be mistaken for Sky.. This isn’t the first time that Sky have thrown their …

Watch Sainsbury’s Movies and TV via your Chromecast

You knew that Sainsbury’s offered TV and Movie content over your smartphone, didn’t you? No, I’ll admit, neither did I, but I do now. If you use Sainsbury’s Entertainment and have their app, you can now output your favourite content to your TV via Chromecast. It’ll also let …

Google to deliver more secure and familiar age ratings

  It’s been a problem for some time now, and to some extent it still continues. I’ve been banging on about the fact that the “family computer” is now a distant memory. You can’t really keep an eye on your kids when they’ve got small connected gadgets which …

Reduce your London cab ride cost – Share the bill with SPLYT

Honestly it seems like we’re getting some sort of taxi app every week here at Coolsmartphone HQ. Today it’s the turn of SPLYT, who’ve raised our eyebrows by offering shared taxi fares to reduce the cost of getting around and 99p rides for a week, beginning next Monday …

Will smartwatches have the same range of apps as smartphones?

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. No sooner has the Apple Watch been announced and we’re already getting emails telling us about apps that’ll run on the thing. That’s expected I guess, but when betting apps also set to arrive on the thing, you know it’ll probably be …

OfficeSuite Free review

Getting Office documents working on your mobile device can be a hit and miss affair. Sometimes you’ll find an app that opens certain documents but won’t let you edit them. Sometimes you can edit some document types but not others, and you can find that the document will …

Grab the opening hours for anywhere, just head to your pocket.

The people at OpenHours have sent me a missive about their new Android and iOS apps for checking the opening times of stores, banks, restaurants and more. You can give their website a spin now and put in something like “TSB Birmingham“. It’ll then tell you how long …

Compare the (super)market

Don’t get me started about politics. One group tell you that things are great. The other guys say that things are still rubbish. Me? I’m voting Monster Raving Looney. I think they’re marginally better and my local MP is dressed as a chicken. Brilliant. If you’re not feeling …

Lucy Hedges shows how to f’ing save money

Right, April Fools is now over… unless you’re in America, then it’s probably definitely still on. Either way, I’d like to state up-front that this is definitely an April Fools joke. This is the First Direct Swear Jar app. An app that runs in the background and detects …

Hey Cortana, let’s try an open relationship.

The big selling point of Windows Phone, at least in the TV ads, has been the fact that Cortana is supposedly better than Siri. Get yourself a Windows Phone and you’ll have a proper digital assistant, they say. So, the very last thing you’re going to want to …

MWC – Ford looking to solve your city transport problems

In London our underground system works very well considering the age and complexity of it. People commute in and out of the city and leave their cars in expensive car-parks or, if you run a business servicing the city, you have to try and get your big diesel …

Top apps to keeping your finger on the pulse of sports news

After reading Leighs problems with his TV (it had an unfortunate collision with a Nintendo Wii controller), I noticed that it would ruin his yearly get-together watching the Cheltenham Festival. Hopefully he’ll have a new TV sorted by then, but if you’re into your horse racing you’ll no …

YouTube Kids now live. Family-friendly streaming videos

The new YouTube Kids app we mentioned yesterday is now here and, in a pleasant surprise, it’s available for both Android and iOS. Whether kids or parents will actively download this instead of using the current YouTube app (complete with rather dodgy content that may or may not …