Category: General

World of Goo finally comes to Android

I previously wrote about World of Goo when it was released on iOS earlier this year. It’s a fantastic puzzler in which you’re tasked with building structures out of cute little Goo balls with the goal being to help your Goos reach the exit pipe for each level. …

Google Maps 6.0 brings indoor maps to Android

Google have just released Google Maps 6.0 onto the Android Marketplace and the standout new addition is the ability to view indoor maps of some malls, department stores and airports. Unfortunately the feature is currently limited to US and Japanese locations however that should hopefully change before too …

Three WiFi Router Review

Being registered on the Three PR list means that I often get emails about new devices. Recently one device which took my fancy was the new WiFi Hub. Three have a massive share of the Mobile Broadband market with an award winning HSPA+ network in the process of …

Orange Increase Contract Charges By 4.3%

In a move which will annoy a lot of people, especially those who this is relevant too, Orange have announced they are to increase monthly prices by 4.3% starting in January 2012 it has been said over at Mobile Today. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve had to re-evaluate our prices for the first time …

Yandex Acquire SPB Software

SPB Software, the mobile software development company famed for it’s prevalence on Windows Mobile devices of the past, has been acquired by Russian company Yandex for an undisclosed amount. Yandex is known throughout Russia as the provider of the country’s leading search engine and operates across most of Eastern Europe. SPB …

Motorola RAZR now available on O2

Looking forward to getting a Motorola Razr? You can buy one now on O2 for nothing on certain plans (£57 per month or more) or pay £249.99 up-front and pay £16.50 per month. Powered by Android 2.3 and featuring “MotoCast” to stream your media to your PC, it’s …

Mobile Broadband Wi-Fi Hub now available from Three

Just a few weeks ago we caught sight of this WiFi hub. Available on Three you simply stick your existing USB wireless dongle in and it’ll turn magically into a WiFi hotspot. It costs £39.99 and allows five devices to be connected with Three speeds of up to …

T-Mobile Launch Vivacity Handset

T-Mobile UK have just launched a great value Android phone on their network called the Vivacity.  With a 3.5 inch screen, 5 megapixel camera, support for 32GB memory cards and running Gingerbread the Vivacity should be a great upgrade to the older ‘Pulse’ range which was on T-Mobile …

Hands On – O2 BoostBox

A while back we talked about the impending trial from O2 around their femtocell technology – well the box finally arrived and I’m going to show a couple of pictures of the mythical beast. Firstly we’ll note that IT IS A TRIAL !… this is not for the …

The state of Android updates

The issue of software updates has always been a topic that has raised much discussion among fanboys users and is a stick that iOS lovers have often used to beat their Android counterparts with. I personally believe that for all of Apple’s faults, one area where they’ve indisputably …

China Smartphone Sales Grow

A report by the market research and consulting group, Strategy Analytics, shows that China, not the US, is now the superpower in relation to smart phone sales growth. The report goes on to detail that in the third quarter, sales grew by 24M versus the US’s 23M. The …

Google updates iPad search app

Google have just given their iPad search app a fairly substantial overhaul. The updated app features a much slicker UI with an integrated browser that slides across to display websites when you click on search results. It’s a feature quite reminiscent of Twitter for iPad. The app also …

Android OS – Now The Most Hacked Mobile Platform

A recent report from security giants McAfee suggests that Google’s Android OS is the platform of choice for hackers currently. The report goes on to note that the levels of malicious software or “malware” targeting the Android OS jumped 37% in the 3rd quarter of 2011, and that …

Adobe: No Flash Support For Future Android Releases

After the apparent lethargy shown by Adobe to support Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich) with Flash, it appears that their about turn will be Flash’s swan song on the Google OS. Sources over at Pocketlint have posted that Adobe has confirmed, that whilst it plans to release Flash for …

Editorial: What’s “Nexus” for Smartphones?

OK, ignore the pithy title a second and let’s be serious. What is next?  Where do we go from here? Let’s look at the background. Apple and Google have created and sustained the smart phone market respectively, since it’s coming-of-age era around a 5 years ago.  We can …

How to access Google Music if you’re not in the US

Alongside the release of their new music store last week, Google also took the opportunity to take their Google Music service out of beta. I previously wrote a hands on about the service, which lets you upload up to 20,000 tracks to stream and download to your Android …

Galaxy Note now available on Orange

We spotted it as “Coming Soon” a few days back and now it’s arrived… for new customers. The Galaxy Note is a rather large and rather sexy phone which has a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU and 5.3″ screen. Orange look to be giving away some goodies as part of …

ZTE Provide another bargain – the T-Mobile Vivacity

Whilst surfing around the T-Mobile Coming Soon section we stumbled on this, the T-Mobile Vivacity. It appears to be a ZTE-built device and has a 3.5″ screen running on Android 2.3 with a 5 megapixel camera plus a further one up front for video calls. Other specs, which …

A shooting Ray of light

There has been quite a lot of activity from the Sony Ericsson design team this year and the latest device to be brought forth from their creative minds is the Xperia Ray. This phone is not your usual fair from SE in that it does not fall into …

Share your images on the big screen

Sony Ericsson have made an app and a web service that makes displaying pictures on a big screen really easy. There are of course a few things you need to do to get it to work. First of all you need to install THIS app from the Android Marketplace. …

Nokia N9 review

The Nokia N9 is a weird beast. It runs the MeeGo Harmattan OS and has been released after a so-called elopocalypse when Nokia’s new CEO Stephen Elop controversially turned towards the Windows Phone platform, ditching both homegrown smartphone platforms – Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo – into gloom. The decision …

Review – HTC CR S490 Desktop Cradle for HTC Sensation / Sensation XE

This cradle device synchronises and charges the HTC Sensation / Sensation XE. Plonk the phone in and it’ll angle your phone at the right angle for watching videos, checking the weather or using the phone as a bedside alarm-clock. Drop the phone in while the special video button …

You! Talk to us!

We’ve had some rather freaky bugs running around the commenting system of late. It’s meant that some of you, using certain browsers, have had problems adding your comments. First up, our apologies. Much of Coolsmartphone is controlled in-house and we can fix local stuff quickly, but there’s a …

Orange Xperia neo owners getting Android 2.3.4

Check for updates if you’ve got a Sony Ericsson Xperia neo on Orange. We’re hearing that Android 2.3.4 has just arrived and there’s a few extra Orange apps too. It’s taken a number of months since other neo handsets started receiving the update. We’d like to hear your …

Orange Announce San Francisco II

Orange have just announced the new exclusive San Francisco II on their UK network with a YouTube video to go with it showing off the features of this new device. The San Francisco II features HD Voice for clearer voice calling, signal boost which helps boost indoor coverage. …

Gmail for iOS reappears on the App Store

After initially appearing on the App Store and quickly being pulled because of bugs, the long awaited Gmail app for iOS has now reappeared. This time in a somewhat more stable form. Those of you familiar with the (pretty fantastic) Gmail mobile web apps will feel right at …

The return of the Motorola Razr

So Motorola are making their comeback and they are using the Razr name to do it. This phone is coming to multiple networks and brings a smorgasbord of figures to the table including the slimmest frame and also being made out of bulletproof material (Disclaimer Coolsmartphone do not …

First BBX device rumour: Blackberry London

Back in October at the BlackBerry DevCon 2011, RIM announced the next gen platform entitled BBX. This new OS will take advantage of HTML5 and will support RIM’s Cloud Services. Now the lucky guys at The Verge have the first pictures of what might be the first BBX …

Review – Pocket Boom Portable Vibration Speaker

I love gadgets. Any kind of gadget pretty much, and I’m interested. So imagine when I saw the blurb for this little box of tricks..  “Turn anything into a speaker!” It works too.. which is pretty crazy. The quality of the sound depends what you’ve “turned into” a …

XXSIM Review

Today we’ve got one of those XXSIM roaming cards that we mentioned the other week. It’s delivered from Switzerland and carries a number from Estonia but it’ll let you receive calls for free in more than 120 countries and there’s no monthly fees. There’s simple roaming rates which …

Galaxy Nexus Available for pre-order on Three

Looking to get the hot new Galaxy Nexus on Three? You can get your name down for one right now. It’ll shortly be available from £34 a month or £40 a month on The One Plan. That’ll get you all-you-can-eat data, 2,000 anytime, any network minutes and 5,000 …

Where not to make a call

Remember the BBC Coverage survey? The stats were obtained after several thousand phones ran an app to check on signal strength. After all the results came in we got an interactive map to show what the coverage is like throughout the UK. But hey, wouldn’t it be good …

Galaxy Note headed to O2

Well, although the link doesn’t work just yet, O2 has added the new Samsung Galaxy Note to their “Coming Soon” pages. We’ve already had a good hands-on with the phone and will have a video online this weekend. Link – O2 Coming Soon

ZTE Racer II Arrives in Ireland

The ZTE Racer II is an entry-level smartphone following hot on the heels of the ZTE Blade and Skate. It runs Android 2.2 FroYo running on a 500MHz CPU. It has a 3.2 megapixel camera, 256MB RAM, 512ROM and 200MB of internal memory. ZTE say that despite the …

NFC and Smartphones

We have been sent a video of NFC technology at work. It has been made by Gemalto who are one of the NFC / Sim card / Software / Services companies are. I guess this will be used as fancy marketing material to showcase their products. It makes …

Where do I go now?

So where do I go?  I should explain… The last time I upgraded, I plumped for the HTC Desire.  If I recall correctly, there wasn’t a huge amount of choice (feel free to flame me in the comments…) and it was the sister phone of the Nexus One, …

Mobile flash is dead..well dying.

Adobe appears to have thrown in the towel regarding the mobile version of Adobe Flash. It now looks like HTML5 will become the defacto standard for websites going forward. This is good news for everyone really. Standards are a good thing, although it does mean more adverts on …

Spotify comes to Windows Phone

  Windows Phone users now have the option of another subscription service in addition to Microsoft’s own Zune Pass. Having recently launched in the US, Spotify have now also released an official app for Windows Phone. As expected, it makes full use of the Metro UI and let’s …