Category: General

Modobag – Motorized, Rideable … err… luggage

I don’t know about you, but having a small carry-on suitcase with wheels on, one that glides effortlessly around an airport, can be a very, very, very, very .. minor irritation. So, welcome to crowdfunded item number 25251613. The Modobag. A motorized suitcase that’ll make you look like …

Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact now available on Vodafone

Fancy a new handset with the Sony design skills and a 5.2″ 1080×1920 pixel screen? Want it to be dust and waterproof? Want it to measure 148 x 73.4 x 7.4 mm and weigh in at 155 g? Sorry. I can’t help you with that. ONLY KIDDING! Coming …

Twitter full of big, fat tweets…. thoughts?

So we all live in a socail media age, and one of the main protagonists of this age is Twitter. Since its inception many years ago, Twitter users have been restricted to getting their musings across in 140 characters. This was both a blessing and a curse. It …

AmpliFi – The unboxing

Well, I don’t normally get excited about wireless extension system, but there was something cool and futuristic about AmpliFi that certainly caught our interest at Coolsmartphone Towers. We covered the unit’s release not so long ago, and now we have one to review. The box was huge and …

Oh happy days! Self-serve beer!

I’m overflowing with emails at the minute. However, when one pops up with a trigger word, I suddenly sit up and take notice. This time, the word is “beer”, and when I took a look at the email it actually tells me about a “self-serve beer” system. This …

Belkin BoostUp Wireless Charging Pad

Belkin continues to embrace the iPhone moves towards wireless charging with the BoostUp Wireless Charging Pad, which will support the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X (probably other products that were not included in the press release!). “Customers around the world love iPhone and we believe wireless …

Charge Rockstar for all your charging iPhone needs

Got a shiny new iPhone? Still missing your 3.5mm connector? You want to charge the phone and listen to music through a 3.5mm jack? Well, you are in luck dear reader! Belkin has launched the Charge Rockstar, the 3.5 mm Audio + Charge RockStar adapter for the iPhone …

EE launches Enhanced HD Voice

There’s a lot of technical gobbledegook behind this particular story, so if (like me) your eyes glaze over, the take-home message is basically that you’re going to be getting a really clear and high quality line when using EE. For the more technically minded, it goes a bit …

Quick Friday offer for SIM only data junkies

I’ll keep this brief, because I’m hopefully talking to those who want a massive slice of data on a network with great coverage. This one is with Virgin Mobile, who use EE. Their SIM-only offer will give you a massive 20GB of data plus 5000 minutes and unlimited …

giffgaff iPhone 8 pricing announced

OK, as you know giffgaff are a bit different. They run on the O2 network and you can either pay outright and pay for a phone or pay monthly via their peer-to-peer lending system. You should therefore remember that the pricing below is without an airtime contract. With …

US cellular Apple Watch 3 won’t work in the UK

In just a couple of weeks I’m heading off Stateside for my annual hols. So, as I normally visit the Apple shop, I thought I’d pick up a bargain. I had devised, in the famous words of Baldrick, “a cunning plan”. I was to buy a new Series …

Yay! Let’s film stuff in the car!

Good morning! It’s Friday at last !! Well no. Sadly it’s not. It’s still only Thursday. No matter though, because it’s Autumn now and the nights are drawing in, so you can turn the heating on and sit inside, twiddling on your smartphone more. Boom! Now, we all …

New Chromebook by Google leaked – The Pixelbook

Google have an event planned for October 4th this year. It’s believed that the next Flagship phone is due to be announced along with a number of other devices. One of those is a new high-end Chromebook. Well, as is now the norm, nothing is kept a secret …

iD Mobile – SIM Only deals

Earlier this morning I wrote a piece about getting a brand new iPhone on the cheap. It was basically because iD Mobile had put a few offers online. However, if you’ve already got yourself a phone, or you “accidentally” purchased one from the window of CEX or Game; …

Vodafone release iPhone X contract prices

Update – We’re starting to see prices from other networks too. Head here to see the iPhone X deals. In the early hours of this morning here at Coolsmartphone towers, we had a piece of paper pushed under the portcullis door. It had some very interesting information from …

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus pricing announced by Sky Mobile

As we mentioned in our earlier piece, we expected Sky Mobile to be one of the virtual networks offering the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. However, what we didn’t quite expect was for them to be the first people to release contract pricing. Sky Mobile has confirmed to …

Buy a WileyFox and get a free Amazon Echo Dot!

Here at Coolsmartphone Towers we always like a bargain, and we also love supporting the underdog. Which is why this deal seems to appeal to all my senses, especially after the shock of the iPhone X pricing! Small upstart brand WileyFox have been bashing out smartphones for the …

Say hello to Samantha, the AI robot that you can make love to.

She comes equipped with artificial intelligence and has a stack of sensors embedded inside too. This new sex robot can also listen to you and will reply back. However, the “human feeling skin”, as ITV presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield comment in the video below, is cold …

Belkin Active Pro Bag

Back in July, Belkin launched three new BAGS! Yes, I know I said bags, but bags for hardware are usually horrible, nasty, very corporate things. Quite often the traditional hardware bag makes you a target to nasty folk too. Anyway, Belkin launched the Classic Pro, Active Pro and Messenger …

Quick – £6 SIM-only Plusnet plan with 1.5GB of data

Want the EE coverage and reach for a SIM-only deal? Want to pay just £6 every month for 1.5GB of data? Well, if you’re quick Plusnet have a deal which does just that. The PR peeps, who offered me a cookie to pimp this plan, tell me that …

Sky Mobile adds more data and a new 10GB plan

Sitting on top of the O2 network, Sky are pushing hard with their mobile deals. If you’re a TV customer then you do get a slightly better deal, but just now they’ve announced that new and existing customer will get new plans to choose from. Available from Friday, …

EE converting airwaves from 2G to superfast 4G

I found a Nokia 6210i in the drawer at the weekend. I’m yet to find the charger for it, but I think my son will probably stifle laughter as I show him the “Snake” game and the 2G data connectivity we had back then. Anyone remember WAP? Anyone …

We’re on Instagram!

I woke up this morning and somehow got a tirade of abuse. It was because I’m apparently not “down with the kids” and don’t have an Instagram account. “Facebook and YouTube is so yesterday”, I was told. But wait. There is actually an Instagram account for Coolsmartphone, and …

Google Drive App for PC/Mac to shut down next March

Google has announced via a blog post that the Google Drive app for desktop both PC and Mac will cease to be supported from December 11th this year, and the app will shut down completely on March 12th, 2018. Users who are still running the Drive app will start …

Don’t just upgrade. It takes seconds to get a better deal.

Fancy getting the Samsung Galaxy S8 this weekend? Perhaps you just want a better deal on your contract? Well, as we always say here at Coolsmartphone, don’t just upgrade with your current provider. That’s bonkers. Go armed. Doing a straight upgrade, just because you want the latest shiny …

Google in talks to buy HTC

If you have been a smartphone user over the past few years there’s a good chance you have used a device made by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. For many years the company made many devices under different brand names. Remember XDA, MDA, SPV? Even HP branded devices were made …

Snapper – Simple, Fun and Useful

Not everything we test at Coolsmartphone Towers is highly technical but last week “Snapper” landed through my letter box for review. At first, it looked a little novelty, but how wrong was I? The packet comes with some instructions, alcohol wipe and the Snapper. Its purpose, to prop …

Huawei now above Apple in market share

Huawei are now the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. The latest data from market research firm Counterpoint Research shows Huawei overtaking Apple to become even bigger. This result is from strong sales in June and July, which have allowed the Chinese manufacturer to inch past Apple into …

Urban Armor Gear announces cases for the LG V30

We recently had a play with the new LG V30 and, with an expensive new phone featuring an expansive display, you’re good to want to protect it. Although we’re still not overly sure whether it’s launching here in the UK (they’re telling us that “key European markets” will …

Peugeot announce new car dealership… in a phone box

The local Audi dealership I recently visited has the usual “showroom stuff” inside. Salesmen wearing sharp suits, mechanics wearing super-clean overalls, a TV, a free coffee machine, a masseur, a steam room and an open bar. It also has cars. However, as a company called “Daewoo” (remember them?) …

Lindy noise cancelling NC-60 Headphones

LINDY Electronics have announced the NC-60 Noise Cancelling headphones in line with their wired equivalent of the BNX-60. The NC-60 headphones feature a 1.5m audio cable terminated with a 3.5mm stereo jack plug. They are powered by x 2 AAA batteries allowing up to 72 hours of noise-cancelling operation at …

Grab a Bargain! Chromecast and O2 deals!

We do love a good deal at Coolsmartphone Towers and sometimes they come around like buses. First up comes through the money saving platform, Quidco. Save £15 per month with O2’s latest sim only deal which is 15GB for £20 per month, reduced from £35. You have to make …

Tesco Mobile offer up a Back to School deal

With September marking the start of another school year, Tesco Mobile is today launching this new SIM only offering. It’s available until September 24th and gives you 250 minutes, 5000 texts and 500MB of data for just £6 a month. If you know someone heading back to school …

SanDisk to release a whopping 400GB SD Card.

Western Digital has announced the world’s largest capacity microSD card: the whopping 400GB SanDisk Ultra. Priced at $249.99, or £193, this new card should theoretically work with all major flagship Android devices which feature a microSD card, (although a number of manufacturers are moving to sealed storage options). …

Another new network, this time from Vodafone. Welcome VOXI

Yesterday we covered a new virtual network call SMARTY. This is a more simple network that offers purely SIM-only plans at competitive prices. As we found out, it is being run by, and on top of, the Three network. Now Vodafone have done something pretty similar, and both …

New UK network, SMARTY, hopes not to be pants.

Two UK networks have both announced new offerings today. Three and Vodafone. First, it’s Three…. well, actually it’s a new network called “SMARTY” – and yes, that’s all in capitals. They piggyback off the Three 4G network and they tell us that they are going to be the …

300 Android Apps removed from Google Play

On the 17th August this year, a number of researchers including from Google, Akamai, CloudFlare, Flashpoint and RiskIQ uncovered a botnet called WireX which has been found to be contributing towards DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The interesting element of this discovery comes from the botnet being …