Category: Features

The Gadget Show Live 2015 – Report

Over recent years The Gadget Show Live Exhibition has become one of major consumer technology shows on the calendar, attracting thousands of visitors through its doors. The appeal of the show is obvious – a great venue in the Birmingham NEC, access to the TV shows presenters and …

Huawei’s profits rise by 33%

The world’s second biggest telecoms equipment maker Huawei said profits jumped a third last year, its net profit was 27.9bn yuan ($4.5bn; £3bn), up from 21bn yuan in 2013. The Chinese firm, which is also a major smartphone maker, saw revenues rise by 21% over the year. Our cash …

Teen Developers – Patrick Balestra

Amazing that we’ve come to 15 interviews now! That means we’ve been doing this segment for about 30 weeks! As such, the list of new people to interview is slimming down. If you’re interested in an interview for you or someone you know, email me! Thanks! Could you …

giffgaff 4G vs 3G tested. Is there really a huge difference?

Every network is pushing 4G at the moment, even the MVNOs – those networks that use the likes of O2, Vodafone, Three and EE as the back-end infrastructure but supply their own service on top. giffgaff is probably one of the most well-known, mainly due to their community …

Smartphones – Killing conversation, stopping friendships.

You guys come here, hopefully, because you love your gadgets and smartphones. Even those who don’t have a vested interest in the latest technology probably still have a smartphone of some kind, and they’re probably more than capable of surfing the web, getting Facebook updates and plugging themselves …

The story of the mobile phone

Last night I stumbled across an old video from 1979 which showed something that was pretty amazing at the time. A truly portable phone. It started me on a bit of a journey into the history of mobile phones, so here’s what I’ve dug out of the archives. …

Teen Developers – Amit Kalra

Wow! This is our 14th developer interview, and the list to come is still long! I’m so glad it’s lasted this long and hope for it to continue far into the future! But in case you haven’t noticed, quite a few of the questions are repetitive. So that’s …

MWC – My top 3 things (James)

2015 was my first year of attending MWC. I really had no idea what to expect, Leigh and Dan have spent years going and covering a huge range of devices. This year was going to be no different, Garry, Leigh and I all arrived on the Saturday ready …

Teen Developers – Rohan Kapur

My apologies for our last interview, as it came out a little later than we were hoping. You may’ve noticed it wasn’t posted by me; Life’s had me busy, but I’m sure this week’s interview will make up for it! So my thanks to Rohan for such an …

What’s in my bag (Garry) – MWC 2015

Well that came around quick didn’t it? MWC 2015 is here and, in preparation of the team arriving in Barcelona, we have decided to share an insight into the kit we are taking with us. I have tried to go relatively lightweight with my gear as I’m going …

Teen Developers – Josh Trommel

Thinking of creating your own app? It’s not as hard as you think, provided you put your mind to it. In our regular feature we take a look at teenage developers, how they got started, what drives them and the challenges they face on the way. This week, …

Send money through Gmail. Coming to the UK soon

Following its launch in the US, the “Send Money” feature in Gmail is finally on the way over here too. To be honest this does exactly what the name suggests and will let people to sign into their Gmail account and send money from right there in the …

Teen Developers – Ahan Sabharwal

From New Delhi, India, we have Ahan Sabharwal! Could you start by telling me a little about yourself? I’m a 15-year-old Android and web developer. Apart from coding I enjoy photography, playing the guitar and designing. I also find startups fascinating and the idea of creating things sublime. …

Skype on a Chromebook in minutes

Gah. The amount of emails I’m getting about this is insane. I updated my instructions on how to get Skype working on a Chromebook earlier this week and I’ve already got people saying that I’ve hacked my Chromebook or done some other weirdness. Others have stated that this …

Yotaphone 2 – Overview and picture special

We’ve managed to get a bit more time with the two-faced phone and over the coming days I’ll show you just what this thing can do. However, when I do get a new gadget I’m always quite excited to show it to you straight away, so here’s a …

Teen Developers – Tom de Ruiter

Howdy all! I hope you’ve all enjoyed your holiday festivities! I took last week off, but this week we have our longest interview yet! So take a break from a week of busy CES news and enjoy hearing about Tom de Ruiter’s life! Could you start by telling …

CES – Day one. Terrible carpets.

You’ll find every tech blog in the world following the endless announcements and reveals in Las Vegas right now. Yes, we’re following the crowd a little too, but in the midst of all the emails and new innovations I almost forgot that I don’t like being part of …

Creating a low-level smartphone strap-on for your car

We’ve featured the READYACTION mount a number of times here. It’s basically a low-cost system for strapping your smartphone to your bike, yourself, your windscreen or anything else you fancy. Initially I showed how it could hold onto a digital camera via a chest-harness mount to film some …

Teen Developers – Virindh Borra

Hey folks! For those of you who may not have noticed, the past several months we’ve been doing a bi-weekly series featuring teenaged developers who create all the awesome software for your phone! The interviews are pretty short, but a fun and inspiring way to see the thought …

Huawei reveal the Honor 6 Plus

Stuffed with three, yes three, 8 Megapixel cameras, Huawei today unveiled its latest smartphone under the new Honor branding. Following on from the reasonably priced Honor 6, meet the new imaginatively named Honor 6 Plus. The new device’s unique selling point is it’s three 8 megapixel cameras. There’s two in …

WhatsApp on top of your lap – or just on your laptop?

Heck its been a long time coming – and it’s been wanted for a very long time. Who knows why it has taken so long, but we’re finally starting to see indications that WhatsApp may be coming to our desktops. So these hardcore guys over in the WhatsAPI-Official …

Carousel by Dropbox update now recovers space on your phone.

Recently I moved to using my Nexus 5 as my daily driver again (just to use the pure Lollipop Android experience).. Thing is, with it being a 16GB version, space is at a premium, as it is with a number of handsets that haven’t got microSD slots. I …

Teen Developers – Tyler Guidry

Could you start by telling me a little about yourself? My name is Tyler Guidry, and I’m a 17 year old highschool student in Louisiana. I’m pretty much that one nerdy guy that everyone knows. You know, the one that fixes everyones computer problems when most of the …

Inateck TPB-IM iPad mini Sleeve Case Review

Do you use your iPad naked (ooooo missus, the iPad, not you) or do hide all of the Apple design inside a case ? I recently took my iPad mini out of its case and instantly remembered how thin and light the device was. I decided that’s how …

Adding a Joystick to your Tablet – a look at the Satzuma Joystick

A lot of mobile games have a problem to resolve, most of us are used to playing games with a physical control pad, and most Tables and Smartphones can’t provide that option. Games designers obviously provide different control mechanics to get around the lack of buttons on mobile …

Teen Developers – Micah Benn

Hey, folks! Sorry this week’s interview is a little late. I had a bug with the scheduled publishing, but it’s all good now! Could you start by telling me a little about yourself? Of course! Let’s see, where to start. I’m Micah Benn, a Computer Science major at …

Got yourself a free mobile phone delivered? Watch out

People tell me that this is a known scam, but to be honest I’d not heard about it. However, a neighbour (at least according to the Neighbourhood Watch Newsletter I seem to get every week) had scammers do this to him. Luckily the guy realised, but this is …

Sharp’s eye-watering 736ppi display

It appears that phone manufacturers are moving away from the camera megapixel race and instead onto who’s got the higest resolution screen. A screen resolution is measured by pixel density, or Pixels Per Inch “PPI” (not payment protection insurance). Now the human eye struggles to see anything more than …

Want to view your NHS records from your smartphone?

Our National Heath Service (NHS), love it hate it, it’s still the envy of the world. As we move ever closer to the digital edge, it appears that the NHS is following too (abeit slowly). The NHS today outlined a number of new digital improvements that include making …

When free really isn’t free

Wondering how the makers of mobile apps can afford TV advertising when they’re free to download? Well, we seem to quite like a model named “Freemium”. The word itself, which is a mash-up of “free” and “premium”, means that you get the entire game or app for absolutely …

Teen Developers – Jonathan Kingsley

Could you start by telling me a little about yourself? I’m a software developer/computer security nerd from Britland, I’ve been building things at companies and freelancing for the better part of 2 years now, and i’m currently working on my own company with 3 other awesome people. I …

Could network roaming be coming to the UK?

Network Roaming is one of those break through events that we have been expecting for along time, but a lot of us were starting to suspect that it would never happen. The ability to roam across networks would allow users who find themselves without service to switch to …

Teen Developers – Colton Anglin

Today we talked with Colton Anglin, a young developer based out of Oklahoma City. He develops for open source and the Web, and loves all things Apple. Hackathons are pretty great too.     You say that you enjoy contributing to open source projects. Does developing open-source feel any different than …

Halloween Smartphone Spookiness. Morph Costumes reviewed.

When I was young we didn’t really do a great deal at Halloween. It was all “Penny for the guy” a few days later for Bonfire Night / Guy Fawkes Night. However, Halloween now seems to be as popular here in the UK as it is in the …

Oppo N3 to have the swivel camera like the N1

Phone manufacturer Oppo has released the above photo of their rumoured next device the Oppo N3, with what appears to be a rotating rear camera module at the top of the device, which we first saw the N1, enabling the high quality selfie, which seems to be the …

Teen Developers – Marcel Voss

I certainly hope that everybody is enjoying our bi-weekly teen interviews. We had a little incident with our last interview and had to take it down, but I feel like this one is so awesome it’ll make up for it! Marcel is a 17 year old from Germany, …

Has Apple just reached crisis point ?

It’s not often that I jump into tabloid style headlines but as our podcast listeners will learn in this weeks show, when I started to write this article I had just had my iPhone trashed by a ‘safe’ iOS update. With that in mind – Has Apple just …

My coverage of Bart’s Bash 2014

Well the event is done and now it’s time to review how the event went and how once again mobile tech helped me during the event. As those of you who read my previous article will know I was planning on covering the event for the site by …

Pocket-Casts web based podcast player now in beta.

I absolutely love the PocketCasts app, I must use everyday and I have installed it on every device I own both iOS and Android, to be honest it’s one of the few app’s I can’t do without. If you don’t know what PocketCasts is, it’s a podcast aggregator …

Have Apple just become a little less Apple-like?

Just to get something out in the open, I’m a big fan of Apple, the iPhone & iOS. The beauty of the devices the way that everything just works is simply superb and my iPhone has enriched my life. Everything Apple has done with the design of its …