Category: General

EE 4G – Coolsmartphone Goes Hands On

Tucked away in a leafy part of London yesterday I was given the opportunity to have a play with EE’s new 4G handsets running on the brand spanking new 4G network. The handsets on show were the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE, …

EE Announces 4G handsets ready for purchase

EE – the new brand created by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile and the first and currently only company to be able to offer 4G in the UK have today announced that the new 4G handsets are now available to purchase from Orange and T-Mobile stores, online …

Government speeds up 4G rollout

EE (formerly Everything Everywhere) have been busy recently not only with a big rebrand under the new EE name but also to be able to rollout their new 4G network here in the UK to bring super fast downloads into hands of customers. The big hurdle though was …

NFC Demo using the Bond Phone

Now then Bond pay attention………. Here it is then the Bond phone showing of some of it technical wizardry enough to make Q giddy with excitement. One of the great feature of the recent Xperia Line up including the newly announced Xperia T is NFC is built in …

Three announce DC-HSDPA Dongle

Three have today announced their latest dongle, the Huawei E3256.  This new dongle has access to the new super fast DC-HSDPA network which supports speeds of up to 42Mb/s. Three already support HSPA+ which allows up to 21Mb/s speeds and hope to have 50% of their network running on the new …

Now this is a phone addiction

Can you remember a few weeks ago we all posted our phone histories and some of us had a rather long list of devices. Well one anonymous reader who wanted to show their stash sent this picture in. I’m amazed at how they still have most of their …

If in doubt, flat out

Our top techies have been working away all weekend to add some rather crucial speed to the site. Following two days of watching Star Wars, playing online games and eating Skittles, they’ve done the near-impossible. This morning you should be seeing several lean, mean, fighting machines serving up …

How to get a Euro Internet Pass on your Three phone

A few weeks ago UK network Three introduced their new Euro Internet Pass scheme (which Dan reviewed here), where for a small charge you cab get unlimited mobile internet on your phone on a day by day basis. It all sounded like a great, albeit slightly complicated idea. …

Smartphones – Will we ever get more form factors?

It might surprise you, but I’m a bit simple at heart. OK. Who’s laughing? I have a Samsung Galaxy SII and a laptop, that’s about it. Call it a netbook, call it an ultrabook, whatever, you can get affordable notebooks online pretty easily now and hook up to …

Vodafone welcomes back Sony

It has been quite a while since Vodafone stocked any Sony (or Sony Ericsson) devices, thankfully that has all changed and the UK network has now welcomed the Xperia T and Miro into their list, and both can be picked up direct at Vodafone from today.  There is …

Ebay launch version 2.0 of their Android app… again

We broke the news a couple of weeks ago that the ebay app had been updated from version 1.8 to 2.0 and immediately started causing errors that stopped users doing anything useful with it at all. Later that evening it seemed to have been fixed, but ebay soon …

Samsung Galaxy Camera priced up for pre-orders

Back in the summer at the Samsung Unpacked press event in Berlin the Galaxy Note II and Ativ suite of Windows devices were announced in a flurry of excitement, but what they also announced on the same day was something they referred to as the ‘camera reborn’, the …

Ask us a question for our podcast – Episode 16

It’s that time of the week again and we are preparing to record our next podcast. This week has been a little bit quiet on the news front, the Apple bashing continued and the excitement about Windows Phone 8 didn’t disapate. Oh and a few of the team …

Shut your mouth! Blackberry 10 time shifting on the camera

Not that all you Android and iPhone afficionado’s out there will notice or care, but the Blackberry Jam: America’s conference is underway, and along with the traditional sneak peeks at up-and-coming goodies, they promo’d their latest OS developments. Its been a while since we’ve had some truly simple …

Ofcom, Govt, telecoms LTE talks still not resolved

  We’d all like to see 4G rolled out throughout the country sooner rather than later. The latest report are that the talks designed to move the auction timetable up and to find ways of clearing out the spectrum to be under strain as it enters the final …

RIM rocks on with Blackberry 10

  “Because sometimes it just has to be said through music”. We suspect someone in RIM uttered those words, and to show the world that the RIM execs have a sense of humour, a music video was born and posted on youtube. One of the most amusing thing has …

Google release underwater maps of coral reefs

You may have noticed that maps have been in the news quite a lot recently. It seems that Google are enjoying the attention their main competitor is getting, and has decided to launch the latest addition to their navigation suite: Underwater Maps! The first places to be mapped …

Thought – Are we killing the age of innocence?

It’s fair to say that I’ve followed the mobile landscape for some time now. I sometimes forget that many of you may not remember a time before mobile phones existed, and some of you perhaps don’t even recall handsets without colour screens. Something struck me on a recent …

Google Updates Books App: Brings Right to Left Reading

Google has updated its books app bringing a heap of improvements. According to the Google Android Blog, you will now be able to tap on a location mentioned in a book to learn more about it.  An info card will appear with a Google Map and the option …

My Android Wishlist

Any time now we’re all expecting Google to announce a new Nexus (or even maybe some Nexi) along with the next big version of Android: Key Lime Pie. Now while I love Android and have been seriously impressed with ICS and JB, there are still plenty of areas …

Coolsmartphone Handset & Accessories Supplier Profile: MobileFun

Here at Coolsmartphone each of the writers goes through an inordinate amount of handsets and accessories that go with them. We each have our own favourite suppliers that we find to be reliable and prompt. We therefore thought that we would bring a profile of the ones that …

Get a little more Coolsmartphone

Found us recently? Great. Want more? No problem. We’ve got lots for you to enjoy… Our weekly podcast is a great place to start. Each week we discuss the recent mobile news and gossip. You can subscribe to the feed or catch us on iTunes. It’s your chance …

TheCoolGamer: v2.0

Firstly, thanks for making our launch a huge success! We’ve had a lot of traffic since launch, although our first day was marred by issues with the CloudFlare network that took down a few hundred sites (it wasn’t just us). Secondly, we’ve got a totally new look! We …

giffgaff nano-SIM cards available to buy, but not direct

Since we published our DIY nano-SIM story the gates have well and truly opened. Many giffgaff members have already gone and bought themselves a nano-SIM cutter to hack down a standard-sized SIM. This is being done purely because, at present, giffgaff aren’t providing them and iPhone 5 owners …

Cut your own nano-SIM

Now the long awaited iPhone 5 has arrived not everyone will be able to use it. Apple uses a new SIM card – the nano-SIM. Although all the major carriers here in the UK are supplying the nano-SIM to their customers, there is a select number of MVNO’s …

Give me metal!

So we now know what they iPhone 5 looks like, and its a very pretty thing, with its precision machined aluminium back and sides. Indeed a masterpiece of engineering for iOS fans. We’ve also a plethora of Windows Phone 8 devices launched by Nokia, Samsung and HTC to …

Ask us a question for our podcast – Episode 15

It’s that time of the week again and we are preparing for our podcast, which we will record tonight and publish tomorrow. Some of you may be glad to hear that this week is pretty much Apple free, there is a reason for that which will be revealed …

Inductive charging – That wireless dream

This is a topic that is close to my heart and with the announcement of the latest round of Lumia devices having this capability it’s back in the limelight! I wanted to just share my thoughts on a technology that isn’t really very new at all. I suppose the …

Let us help you decide which Windows Phone to buy

Things are hotting up in the world of Windows Phone. HTC, Nokia and Samsung have all announced some amazing looking devices and they all have very similar specs. So which do you go for then? Personally I have no idea which to go for, I have a gut …

Opinion: Have Samsung’s Apple comparison ads gone too far?

If you’re a regular CoolSmartPhone reader, you’ve probably read Jamie Ryan’s post last week about their new ad campaign that bears the tagline “It doesn’t take a genius”. The ad was designed to take momentum away from the iPhone 5 launch and divert attention to the Samsung Galaxy S3, which …

Sony Xperia T Unboxing – The Bond phone

The time has come for one of the first UK unboxings of the new Xperia T. As you may or may not know I am a Sony Mobile Ambassador in my other life (when not working or writing on here). This gives me several perks, one of which …

Rovio teases Bad Piggies! Coming very soon!

Rovio has had it’s Pig-centric successor to Angry Birds in the fryer for quite a while now and it seems the game is nearly ready for release! The trailer below will give you a pretty good idea of the sort of game play we can expect to see, …

Getting ready for Motorola

Tomorrow is an exciting day for Intel fans with Motorola taking the reins and treating us to something they promise to be spectacular. Along side the three devices announced the rumour mill is abuzz with mention of a bezel-less smart phone and the invite hints at this just …

Are you a gamer? Want to get involved in something amazing?

With the enormous success of Coolsmartphone we decided to launch another website, TheCoolGamer.com, which focuses on Games and Applications across Mobile, Console and PC platforms. On a daily basis Coolsmartphone gets tips about games and apps from you guys (our loyal readers) and the developers that create them. …

Teamviewer announce updated Android app

Teamviewer, the remote desktop application has announced an update that now enables file transfers between your android device and your computer from anywhere in the world with a data connection.  The computer can be a Mac or a PC running Windows or Linux. The data is sent using …

Ebay app problems still being addressed

The ebay app has been having some issues recently, as we reported the other night. Well, it looked like it was fixed. However, as the email and screenshot below explain, ebay are having so many problems with it they have rolled back to the old version for now. …

It’s here.

TheCoolGamer has launched! Hello! After a lot of coffee, code, and hard work, TheCoolGamer.com is finally ready for your consumption! We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it. There’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way, but we hope that …

HP heading back into the smartphone game?

So what happens when you drop a couple of billion dollars on a fledgling smartphone operating system, make a couple of phones and a tablet with it and then fire sale the lot? Well if your name’s HP you might realise you made a little mistake! For HP, …