Category: Networks / Carriers
Hmm.. that title was a little promotional wasn’t it? Almost as if I’m trying to sell it. Honestly, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the free EE contracts that our entire housing estate enjoys. * If your contract just isn’t enough, have a look at a new …
BT & EE are joining hands to put all our media and comunication consumption in one place. Although the Three & O2 deal was not allowed as they were giants in the same field and would land up reducing customer choice, this merger is not thought to be …
If you’ve ever wanted to completely destroy your data allowance and find out how fast your mobile network is, you could download the Ookla Speedtest or browse to Speedtest.net. It will, if you do it enough, give you a rough idea of just how quick your connection is. …
Hopefully it’ll actually definitely happen this time, because we’ve been promised an end to roaming charges before. Now, we hope, the European Parliament will stick to the decision. First, from April 30th next year, an interim cap on roaming charges in Europe will kick in. This will mean …
We all know about Three and how well received their “Feel At Home” offering is. It allows customers to use their phone in America and a range of other countries just as if they were back in the UK for no additional cost. There’s 18 destinations in total. …
Most kids, unfortunately, end up sat in front of a tablet for a portion of their day. Hopefully it isn’t for that long but, with Christmas on the horizon and more kids wanting to play games and apps, EE have release a child-friendly device called “The Robin” to …
We here at Coolsmartphone towers love UK mobile operator Three. They were the first operator to roll out a 3G network here in the UK, plus they rolled out unlimited data and 4G for no extra cost etc. I think nearly all our writers have a least one Three …
Back in the late 90’s I was using a clunky big Nokia phone and colour screens were just a pipe dream. There was a TV show on back then called “TFI Friday”, hosted by Chris Evans. He bought and sold a radio station, became a multi-millionaire, shacked up …
Yes, you’re right. This is a phone that hadn’t even been announced yet. HTC are trying to do a big build-up to their October 20th launch event. However, Orange France have just gone ahead and listed the thing on their website anyways. Details are there, plus pricing and …
Have you got a mobile running on the Sainsbury’s Mobile network? Well, sadly it won’t be working much longer. The supermarket has given a 90-day notice that all services will be discontinued and you’ll see the network completely snuffed out on January 15th. The reasons, it seems, revolve …
Following a quick demo from the team at Vodafone on their new Call+ features, I thought it would be useful to do a short write up before a full review in the coming weeks (should the loaner phone arrive soon). If you aren’t familiar with Call+, it’s a …
Want broadband at home? Mine is from EE and the fibre broadband connectivity has been OK. Sadly I can’t say the same about the home phone service, which was completely broken for well over a month. Anyhoo, now Vodafone are getting in on the action with broadband and …
Over the years we’ve seen a number of MVNO’s here in the UK attempting to give you something for nothing but, each and every time, they’ve failed. First we tried Ovivo, then we tried Samba Mobile but both went pop fairly quickly and customers were left without service. …
Android security is once again in the news for all the wrong reasons after the latest round of vulnerabilities have made international press. The background problem is that Android is supported on multiple platforms via a wide range of manufacturers from Samsung to HTC, and all those in-between. …
You have to question the logic behind this one. I mean, were the Vodafone executives on a country break when they decided that remote pubs should get better coverage? If you’re on Vodafone and you don’t get much signal indoors, get yourself a Sure Signal box. After hooking …
Yup, 4G just got cheap. OK, so you’re not going to get bleeding-edge technology throughout the whole smartphone at this price, but £50 will get you Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and a 5 megapixel rear shooter. Other specifications include a strong-facing 2 megapixel camera, quad-core CPU running at 1GHz, …
As you know, this weekend people will be rushing out to get the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. It went on sale yesterday so here is a rundown of the offers, pricing and additional value added extras available on the various UK networks. Vodafone If you decide to …
If you’re inside and don’t have much coverage, a WiFi hotspot could be your saviour. Provided you’re a Vodafone user and you’re using the correct phone, the network will soon be letting you make calls via WiFi. The system, which launches in the autumn, will be accessible on …
Ofcom, the British telecoms regulator, has revealed it is about to increase the fees it draws from the UK’s network providers. Ofcom charge a rate for using the mobile airwaves, but they’re now cranking up the costs by almost a factor of three. Currently it draws £64.4m in fees …
Remember FreedomPop? After other networks tried and failed to offer completely free mobile plans, FreedomPop said in May that they’d be heading to the UK to offer free and paid-for SIM-only tariffs. However, with a launch date of “summer” we were getting more than a little worried when …
Just days after we told you about the upcoming Vodafone VoLTE and it’s … errr… not quite here still. However, the WiFi calling that EE has been making a big deal about has almost arrived on Vodafone. The network tell us that the list of compatible handsets is …
What’s that? I shouldn’t be writing articles after just two hours sleep? Pah. What’s the absolute worse that could happen here. I don’t need no sleep to write proper. We were at the Honor 7 launch just a few short days ago and, we have to say, it …
The first in a series of “How to” articles begins with the best way to get a good price on your next plan. Now, let’s admit it, we’re creatures of habit. We usually get to the end of our contract and then we’ll call our current network to …
Back in May we covered the launch of free mobile provider FreedomPop. They promised to launch here in the UK this summer with £0 per month plans but, as we head into September and the kids return to school, we’ve still not heard anything on a launch. Despite …
We get fed some rather interesting news and rumours via our contact form. Today we’ve had a tip that Three are about to give their customers a rather nice little present. Rumour has it that their chunk of 800MHz spectrum will be switched on from September 10th, which …
Fancy the new super-sized Samsung Galaxy S6 edge + on giffgaff? They’ll be selling it from September 4th contract free and completely unlocked. You can then stick one of the giffgaff monthly SIM cards in, and there’s a range of plans to choose from with 3G and 4G ‘goodybags’. …
Bit of a UK only deal now. The Peoples Operator is an MVNO that we originally covered a while ago as part of our Charity Networks article. They have now launched a rather cool sounding promotion which is designed to get you using their network. It’s pretty hard …
The 4G roll-out seems to be happening more and more quickly as days go by now. Sometimes, in places I’ve previously only ever received GPRS, there’s now full 4G. No hop from 2G to 3G here. Just a big leap up from 2G to 4G. It’s welcomed, definitely, …
If you’ve been abroad lately you’ll probably have that text message arrive when you land… Calls will cost a crazy amount here, texts will be just about bearable, but please don’t even think about using data unless you want to re-mortgage your house. Sure, some networks are doing …
You want MORE data? Three have just launched a brand new 40GB mobile broadband package. This is based on a 12 month contract for customers here in the UK. Before now the highest allowance was 15GB. Just the other day we spotted a new 20GB plan on offer …
Right, let’s be honest, you’ve probably never heard of this MVNO and they only offer 3G packages. However… They were purchased from the Phones 4U administrators by EE, and Life Mobile unsurprising runs on EE. Right now they have some “summer special” tariffs on 30 day SIM-only setup. …
Fancy grabbing the latest Samsung kit via an MVNO? Tesco Mobile, the 50/50 venture between the grocer and O2, will be selling the all-new S6 edge+ from £43.50 a month with no up-front cost. The shiny new phone will be available online and from Tesco Phone Shops from …
A couple of years ago I left EE. It was, for me, a pretty big change. For some companies and some services, I’m fairly loyal. A lot of people are. For example, I’ve never switched my bank, despite them being generally dire for several years running. However, for …
Here at Coolsmartphone we love our mobile devices, and when travelling want to keep using them. What’s the point of having a wonderfully powerful smartphone if you can’t use it to post pictures of your meals from distant lands? Apart for social media bragging while travelling, smartphones can …
giffgaff, the MVNO owned by O2, has decided to chuck in 4G data as “part” of their goodybags (aka monthly plans). No separate 3G plans and 4G plans. If you’ve been looking at the 3G-only £5, £7.50 or £10 goodybags then everything will be remaining pretty much the same, except …
Ordered anything through OneStopPhoneShop.com, Mobiles.co.uk or e2save.com recently? Yeah. You could have some serious problems. Carphone Warehouse has been hacked pretty badly, and they operate all of those sites. Although overall owners Dixons Carphone state that the “vast majority” of their customers are unaffected, personal details of up …
Wi-Fi Calling is almost the holy grail for people such as myself where the signal at home is shall we say less than desirable. The news is therefore good for those with an HTC One M9 on the EE network for Wi-Fi calling is about to be rolled …
If you’re a traveller and you NEED data, you may have already heard of an operation called Goodspeed. They basically let you either buy a MiFi unit outright or pay for it monthly (£8.79 p/m on a 24 month contract) which you can then take with you on …
Let’s assume that there’s a healthy section of you on giffgaff. Let’s also assume that you might be going to an area where the signal perhaps isn’t so great. Perhaps you’ve looked at Three and thought that getting 1GB of data for £14 isn’t enough on a Pay …
It’s green! As green as the beautiful green grass. You can get it on the 32GB, 64GB or 64GB versions and there’s gold, white and black to choose from too. But hey, wait, the green one is now available from Vodafone. We had a look around and it’s …
