Category: Software and apps
My wife was chatting to me recently about one of our first holidays abroad. I’d started to do some IT contracting and she had got her first full-time job. We treated ourselves and off we went, on the first holiday together. Trouble was, a few days into the …
Mobile phones have become a great part of our everyday life. Today it’s virtually impossible to live without a smartphone. Our mobile phone provides everything we need to get by. We can talk to our friends, chat on social media, take pictures and upload them immediately thanks to …
See this? This is my mother in law playing a game on her Kindle Fire. After a bit of help, she’s aware of the whole “in-app purchase” madness which can easily see you heavily out of pocket. Perhaps what annoys me a bit is the fact that, as …
A few days ago I mentioned the Top 5 games that my wife seems to be addicted to on her phone. That, I thought, was all of them. However, there’s actually some more, and one is proving to be quite addictive. It’s called Best Fiends and is a …
Think of a name like Sega and you’re instantly transported into a world of Sonic the Hedgehog, Outrun and Earthworm Jim. They’ve long been associated with classic video games but now Sega Games are going in a slightly different direction. Sega Networks, who are a division of Sega …
If you work hard, and you’re lucky, one day you’ll become a manager. You might be a team leader or a shift leader. However, one thing that will have stuck with you on the way up the career ladder is the good and bad experiences where your work …
There’s plenty of monitoring apps out there but, if you want to pay absolutely nothing, the new Easy Logger app might be of interest. It’s for Android and you will need to side-load an APK, but for precisely nothing per month you’ll get full logging of all phone …
As you may have realised by the sheer age of this website, I’m old enough to remember when there simply were no phones in school. I grew up in an age when there was a First School, a Middle School and a High School. At no time did …
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while but it kept slipping off my radar. On Saturday, whilst at the local Tesco, it popped up in my head again as I spotted a lengthy queue at the lottery counter. There’s still a fair amount of people who, …
I remember a time when the Pocket PC was king. It was the device of choice in businesses up and down the land. You could connect it to your Exchange server and, with a small stylus or an on-board slide-out keyboard, you could work anywhere. It was a …
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. …
Here at the Coolsmartphone newsroom (which to be honest is normally a kitchen) we’ve heard rumours that the latest version of the Netflix app is showing as incompatible with rooted devices. Netflix has just confirmed that with the v5.0 update adds some special.. ahem .. “new features”. They’ve …
We were big fans of the MSQRD app when it first came out. It’s quite a fun little gadget which, with the aid of your phone camera, puts masks and hats on your face via augmented reality cleverness. Now there’s another one to add to the collection, it’s …
Want to read a book? You might head to Google Play, Amazon Kindle or the iTunes Book Store, right? Well, according to the Publishers Association, less of us are doing this. Although digital sales have increased by 6% to £1.7bn and account for 35% of total revenues, the …
I get quite a few emails from App Annie. They’re an analyst firm which produces business intelligence tools and market reports, and on their site you can have a look at the most popular games and apps for different mobile operating systems. Advertising is definitely a big driver, …
You may remember my indestructible Audi A4. She’s an old girl now and has been on the road for a decade. I bought a Bluetooth OBD gadget to plug into it just so that I could find out what all those error lights on the dashboard are. Yes, …
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 …
Let’s be honest. If you’re buying an Android phone then, if you’re careful and don’t install much, you’re probably not going to be bothered by viruses or other nasties. However, looking at my son’s phone, he’s definitely not careful, and when I’m rushing to find an app to …
You may remember my trip down memory lane when Microsoft launched their classic Solitaire app for both iPhone and Android devices. It was true to the original Windows desktop version, and Microsoft took great pride in promoting the “classic” feel of it, with the same graphics and te …
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 …
It’s 2017. The internet has been around for quite a long time and, I’ll freely admit, so have I. I’ve seen web pages go from simple blocky creations to Flash-heavy monstrosities. I’ve seen us go from huge CRT monitors and PC’s to tablets and mobiles. Here’s how our …
We are used to hearing news that more people are accessing the web on a mobile device rather than a desktop. However, a new and somewhat significant milestone has been passed, this being that Android’s internet use has overtaken Windows PC’s. According to StatCounter the Android platform represented 37.93% …
What is this? I recently read that our Ian posted an article about a Google Maps update now including the ability to share your location, so of course I went to try it. It’s something I’ve used in WhatsApp before, and in Google Latitude back when that was …
Have you ever picked up your Bluetooth headphones, then pocketed a pair of wired headphones in case they run out of juice when you’re out? Do you carry a spare pair of backup earphones as you’ve no real idea of the battery level of your Bluetooth earphones? BatON …
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 …
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 …
Just recently I had to admit to something. Somebody asked me to scan a document at work and email it. I was confronted by a very hi-tech printer, plumbed into our network and equipped with a keypad to navigate around the control panel. After a lot of random …
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 …
Apps. The ones I download are mostly free because, deep down in my heart, I’m tighter than a gnats backside. How do these apps make money then? How do the developers get paid? How do those big TV advertisements appear on TV if we never actually click “Buy” …
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 …
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 …
It’s only a few weeks that reports suggested that Apple’s ambitions to enter into the car market had pretty much ground to a halt. Despite lay-offs and hints to suggest priorities have changed, Apple is very much back in the self-driving car game according to recent letters. A recent letter from …
VaragtP Studios have today launched a cute garden game called Planetera. The purpose of the game is to create your own virtual garden with cute creatures of various shapes and sizes called helpers. Even cute games have villains called evil critters, not the most menacing name! Game Features: Plantera …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Surprisingly, up to now, Whatsapp Messenger – which is probably one of the biggest messaging services in the world, hasn’t supported two-factor authentication. Well, that was until now. People that are using the latest beta version of Whatsapp are starting to see the option to turn on this …
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 …
If you’re on a train journey to an unfamiliar station then Virgin Trains has launched an app that’ll help you find your way around shops and platforms. The app delivers real-time automatic sign translation too, so if you’re coming to the UK from further afield, it’ll let you …
If you have a look at today’s modern media suppliers – the likes of Amazon’s Prime Video, Sky Go, BBC iPlayer and the all 4 app all offer the ability to download programs and watch them later offline. When quizzed earlier this year, one of the biggest online …
