Category: Companies

#MWC2018 Huawei Unveil Mediapad M5 series

Android tablets have been stagnating for a while and we have not really seen much in the way of growth in the market ever since the Samsung Tab S3 came out last year. Well, Huawei is hoping that there new Mediapad M5 series is going to change all of …

#MWC2018 Huawei live blog

Time for us to see what Huawei have got up their sleeve for at this years MWC keynote. We pretty much know that we are not going to see a new phone but there may be some new tablets on the horizon. Join the live blog to find …

More Galaxy S9 and S9+ details

Samsung is now gearing up to launch the 2018 versions of its flagship Galaxy series, the S9 and the S9+. They have an unpacked event scheduled for the 25th February, which is just prior to this years Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. Both handsets will be powered by …

Huawei set the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro

Hauwai has now released the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro, and it is coming very soon. We have been lucky enough to get our hands on with the Mate 10 Pro from Huawei, and the good news is that if you to want to get one …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro Launch

Huawei has always had two mainstream phone lineups, the P series and the Mate Series. We have seen the P series for this year and we were pretty impressed by the offering. The Mate series traditionally launches later in the year and tends to be aimed at the …

Cyngn takes a new road.. literally

Those of you that have ever dabbled in changing the OS on an Android phone will no doubt will have heard of Cyanogenmod. This group of enthusiasts built operating systems for a myriad of Android phones compiled from the base AOSP. At one time things were going well, …

Three – Free in-store sign language for customers.

UK mobile provider Three have launched an innovative service to for deaf customers thanks to a partnership with Sign Solutions. The company will now be able to provide sign language to deaf and hard of hearing customers to who seek in-store support. This is something that is initially …

US cellular Apple Watch 3 won’t work in the UK

In just a couple of weeks I’m heading off Stateside for my annual hols. So, as I normally visit the Apple shop, I thought I’d pick up a bargain. I had devised, in the famous words of Baldrick, “a cunning plan”. I was to buy a new Series …

New Chromebook by Google leaked – The Pixelbook

Google have an event planned for October 4th this year. It’s believed that the next Flagship phone is due to be announced along with a number of other devices. One of those is a new high-end Chromebook. Well, as is now the norm, nothing is kept a secret …

Google Drive App for PC/Mac to shut down next March

Google has announced via a blog post that the Google Drive app for desktop both PC and Mac will cease to be supported from December 11th this year, and the app will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. Users who are still running the Drive app will start …

Google in talks to buy HTC

If you have been a smartphone user over the past few years there’s a good chance you have used a device made by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. For many years the company made many devices under different brand names. Remember XDA, MDA, SPV? Even HP branded devices were made …

Huawei now above Apple in market share

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 …

SanDisk to release a whopping 400GB SD Card.

Western Digital has announced the world’s largest capacity microSD card: the whopping 400GB SanDisk Ultra. Priced at $249.99, or £193, this new card should theoretically work with all major flagship Android devices which feature a microSD card, (although a number of manufacturers are moving to sealed storage options). …

Chromebook ‘Eve’ likely to be uncovered at Pixel Event, Oct 5.

OK, those of us at Coolsmartphone towers have an unreasonable level of fascination with Chromebooks. Yes, they’re a browser wrapped around a Linux based OS. But paradoxically, they’re also so much more than they should be, to the level where both Garry and Leigh use them as daily …

First Snapdragon 845 chips bagged by Samsung

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 …

Somfy Security Camera – Review

I have been recently sent through the Somfy indoor security camera for review. Good Points: Design. Ease of Setup. Picture Quality. Ability to digital pan and zoom Built-in in alarm. (Very loud alarm) Motion alerts. Ability to talk back to the camera. Key fob arm/disarm. Door and window …

OnePlus 3/3T: No updates after Android O

Those of you that are regular readers of this site know I am a OnePlus fanboy. I have had every device the company has produced; my favourite still is my ceramic OnePlus X. (despite there not being any support for this device, i,e, no more OS updates). My …

Vaux – Amazon Echo Dot Powered Speaker – Review

Like many households here in the UK, or in fact all over the world now, we have an Amazon Echo… hey it’s the future, it’s… like talking to your house …and it answers back. Our Echo sits in our kitchen and now has replaced our radio, our kitchen …

Russia to ban VPN’s and Proxies.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has now signed a law due to come into force in November banning technologies which allow users access to banned websites. These sites are on a list which has been created by the Russian government and extends to virtual private networks (VPN’s) and proxies. …

Amazon Anytime messaging app rumours

I don’t know if you agree with me on this one, but do we need yet another messaging app? Well if the rumours are correct, the retail giant Amazon believes that we do. The company has reportedly been sending customers surveys relating to a new messaging service called “Anytime”. …

Flic – Smartbutton Review

Last year we had a play with the flic buttons for the first time, now we take another look to see how they have changed. The conversation went something like this Ian, would you like to review a button? A button? Yes but it’s a smart-button. Oooo a …

RCA Android tablets launch in the UK

Following the successful launch of its 2-in-1 affordable Windows notebooks here in the UK, premium audio and video manufacturer Venturer (both of which I have reviewed here and here) have announced a new range of Android tablets under the RCA branding. RCA is a name new to us …

Smartphones made of glass, lol

Wikipedia lists glass as ‘a non-crystalline amorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical, technological, and decorative usage in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optoelectronics’. Here’s a further list of some things that are made of glass: Light bulbs Drinking vessels Spectacles Greenhouses Ashtrays Smartphones …

Microsoft reveal a Chromebook competitor (almost)

Here at the Coolsmartphone hive of activity, a number of our writers use Chromebooks. I and the editor-in-chief Leigh use them predominately – I must use my Asus Flip easily 95% of the time. The Chromebook has been a runaway success, with it being an inexpensive device with a …

Galaxy S8 manufacturing costs revealed.

Someone who is far braver than I am over at IHS Markit decided to get hold of the latest flagship from Samsung the Galaxy S8 and take it apart to have a look-see what’s inside. While ferking around, they have decided to do a quick cost breakdown of …

Eve V going into production

Some of you may remember that I have been an avid follower of Eve-Tech and their crowdfunded 2-in-1 project. After an extremely successful Indiegogo campaign that was run at the tail end of 2016, the company is now ready to push into production. The potential shipping for the computer …

Apple to offer GarageBand, iMovie, and iWork, free to everyone

In the past if you wanted to get your hands on 3 of Apple’s biggest software packages; namely, iMovie, GarageBand, and iWorks (which includes Pages. Numbers and Keynote),  there were two ways. The owners of older Apple devices i.e. pre-2013 had to purchase the apps from the App …

Wileyfox chews out a Nougat upgrade

Well, this is a nice surprise to see from the London-based company: they’re on track with the big guns to update their existing handsets to Nougat. Not only that, but they’re going to be the first company outside of Google to update to Android 7.1.1. Even though my …

A few hours to wait for the Galaxy S8

Well, today is the day. It happens at some point every year. Not that day, the other one – the announcement of the next Samsung Galaxy S, probably named as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Notice that all indications are that the Edge moniker has been dropped? …

SMS integration to be removed from Google Hangouts.

According to an email being sent out by Google, Hangouts SMS integration will stop working after May 22, 2017. The company will presumably roll out an update on the day that will disable the SMS integration functionality on the app. Google will start showing an in-app notification to …

Google Maps to add two new interesting features.

Right back in 2008 I got my hands on my first Android device, the fantastic T-Mobile G1. One application stood out above all the rest – Google Maps. Back then it was just a very simple mapping tool giving users a fairly simple view of the world. Google …

Microsoft hike Surface prices and blames Brexit vote

Following the Brexit vote last year, it appears that Microsoft has jumped on the “Let’s hike the prices in the UK and blame Brexit bandwagon“. It always intrigued me that in the past when we had a strong pound, we had the 1 dollar = 1 pound pricing. …

More data and mins From Giffgaff 

If you are an avid reader of our site, you’ll know that us here at Coolsmartphone Towers love a good bargain. And whenever we find one, we like to pass it on. Well, check out low-cost carrier GiffGaff, which runs on the O2 network. Customers purchase bundles which …

Netflix now allows content to be saved to SD Card.

Remember some time ago we brought you the news that finally, Netflix was allowing customers to download some of their content and store it to the device?  The good news is that the latest update to the media streaming app allows content to be stored on the SD …

Cyanogen OS finishes at year’s end.

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 …

Amazon completes first drone delivery.

Remember about three years ago when retail giant Amazon announced that it was going to deliver your parcels by air,  using drones? Oh how we giggled. Well, that day has just drawn a step closer.  Following a trial in Cambridge, the company has  completed the first Amazon Prime …

Goodbye Pebble – it’s all over

Of all the smartwatches on the market, Pebble is my favourite. I backed the original pebble on Kickstarter and have bought every one since, including the latest Pebble 2 with heart rate. You can have a look at my review here. I have backed the newest Pebble Time 2 …

Amazon to open a store without a checkout

Online retail giant Amazon has decided to do away with any kind of checkout process in a new store. Customers will instead show their phone when they walk in, pick up their goods and just walk off. Grabbing anything off the shelves, stuffing it in your bag and walking out. …

Newton Mail App – Review

Remember all those years ago when you’ve got your first email account and you couldn’t wait to set it up with a stupid account name? Now, many years later, it’s quite embarrassing having to pass those details to any prospective employers, hospitals or friends.  So what do you …