Urbanista Seattle – Mark II
Last year we reviewed the sleek design of the Seattle range of headphones from Urbanista. End of November, Urbanista announced a wireless version of the Seattle headphones. Here is a video to see what we thought:
Category: General
The Nintendo Switch – It’s coming!
My son and, to be fair, my wife, are both big Nintendo fans. My wife used to have a Game Boy Color and my son has gone through the Nintendo 2DS, 3DS, Wii and the Wii U. Even though he’s now moved onto the big world of Playstation, …
EU Shock-free roaming now just months away. But..
Let’s put aside the “Trump” business and all the #Brexit news shall we? I’m here to tell you that being part of Europe is a good thing.. for your phone bill. Whilst we in the UK are part of it, roaming charges are no longer a problem. From …
Apple, you’re losing the battle for the home
I’ve waited so long for home kit. Not even a resonable amount of time, a really long time. HomeKit is great and Apple’s approach to creating the most secure home products that all work well is without doubt the correct approach. With that said there are so many …
Fancy a ZTE Blade A512 ? It’s now available on Vodafone
Got £79 and fancy a ZTE device with Android 6.0 and a 13 megapixel camera? Powered by a quad-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 425, this is the ZTE A512 and it’s now available on Vodafone Pay As You Go. It features a 720×1280 pixel screen, Android 6.0, 16GB of …
Sky TV and Discovery do a last minute deal. Channels to remain.
Was it a strange advertising campaign to get us all talking about the 13 Discovery channels on Sky? Was it all planned? Well, we’ll never actually know, but what we can say is that, late last night, a deal was reached between Sky and Discovery. The Discovery channels, …
Vodafone SIM only offers are back
Look, I don’t need 20GB of data a month. You probably don’t need 20GB of monthly data either. But got £20 for 20GB on a SIM only plan? That’s too good to miss. Wait a moment. Let’s work that one out shall we? Yes, you’ve got to get …
CACAGOO OBD-II Bluetooth Vehicle Diagnostic Scanner – Review
Let me set the scene for you. As I mentioned just a short while ago, I’ve got an Audi A4. It’s an entire decade old and I’ve absolutely nailed it into the ground. I’ve not taken a great deal of care of it and have failed to service …
Tesco Mobile slash the price of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
With Mobile World Congress just around the corner and a raft of new handsets about to be announced, it’s a good time to check for deals on the handsets that are out there now. Tesco Mobile have just been in touch and they’re offering a pretty good deal …
Three launch native WiFi Calling
Three have today launched native WiFi Calling on selected devices here in the UK, and this is just another step in the direction to #makeitright Before now, Three have relied on a separate downloadable application called Three inTouch to get customers a better signal using WiFi routing. Whilst this …
First look – The EBox T8 V Streaming TV Box – Version 5
We’ve received another Android TV box to test today so I thought I’d give you a quick overview as it’s an improved version of an already very popular box. This is from EntertainmentBox – it’s the EBox T8 V and is powered by an Amlogic S912 64bit octa-core …
Lenovo Yoga Book – Unboxing
It’s not that often that a device comes along that is truly a game changer. That is until now. Today I had the pleasure of unboxing an item that in my opinion is truly groundbreaking, and could potentially change the game in its field. I am, of course, …
Sky to add internet TV services, but the Discovery channels are about to go
Sky TV beam down their channels via Astra satellites to little dishes mounted on houses up and down the land. However, there’s still quite a number of potential customers who can’t receive channels because of their location or the type of building they live in. Some 2 million …
Using your phone whilst driving? Points and fines to double
Despite it being law for a number of years, people are still continuing to use their phone whilst driving. The RAC has released some rather worrying statistics from a recently commissioned survey. There’s been an increase in drivers owning up to using a handheld mobile phone – from …
A cure for the printing syndrome
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 …
Samsung Galaxy S8 handsets leaked
The grand-master of the phone leakers, Evan Blass, has just dropped this little nugget on Twitter. It’s the new Galaxy S8 from Samsung.. When I say “it”, there’s actually going to be two phones. Gone are the navigation buttons you’ve grown used to in previous Samsung Galaxy handsets …
Netflix now allows content to be saved to SD Card.
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 …
iClever BoostSound BTS08 Bluetooth Speaker – Review
Available from Amazon US for $49.99, this definitely isn’t one of those speakers you pop into your coat pocket. Measuring in ay 25.15 x 11.18 x 13.21 cm it’s definitely got some “meat” to it, and I mean that in a good way. Up top, four touch-control keys …
BT loses nearly £8bn thanks to dodgy Italian accounts and stagnating growth
BT is a very strong company. They’re a household name and there’s more than a million small investors in it. However, they’ve lost over 20% in their shares in just one day. It caught those investors seriously off-guard. The reasons? Yes, there’s more than one. You may know …
Fancy a Selfie Ring ?
Christmas seems to have just flown by, and somehow we’re just days away from February. During the festive season, as part of the regular “works Christmas do”, I got to go to the Zulu Sundance party at the NEC in Birmingham. It was definitely different, and you’re met …
How much is the app marketplace actually worth?
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” …
The Coolsmartphone Mobile Video Studio
OK. Slightly off-topic today, but the regular readers will no doubt be aware that I film a lot of our product reviews in my car. As an example, my SanDisk iXpand overview or this FM transmitter review. I was even doing this some 10 years ago in glorious …
BeeLine – Cycle navigation made easy
I like the sound of this little doo-hickey. Just strap it to your bike and it’ll provide a simple guide to your destination. An arrow shows you the direction you need to be heading and below it’ll show how many miles remain. You can then make the best …
Huawei Mate 9 available on Three UK
In my opinion it’s one of the best phones to have been announced last year. Now it’s available on the high street for the buying public. Three and Huawei have just announced that the Mate 9 is going on sale in some of the Three stores and also …
Galaxy S7 edge on Vodafone – New Blue for you
My wife has the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge and, quite frankly, I’m surprised that it’s still in one piece. You may remember what happened with her Samsung Galaxy S5, and the plastic construction seemed to cope with the constant drops very well. So, if you’ve had a look …
The paper aeroplane gun. I want one!
My brain works in strange ways. Last night, as is usual, I put my phone into “Airplane mode” before going to sleep. It’s a little habit I’ve fallen into because, deep down, I don’t trust that “silent mode” won’t silent my morning alarm too. So, I put it …
Who needs a drone? Get your packages delivered on this!
At Christmas my nephew had a drone. Just a few days later it seemingly latched onto another signal and, whilst he was flying it across a large local park, it decided to fly in one particular direction – never to be seen again. Part of me can understand …
Find out who that withheld caller was – Show Me The Number!
OK, you know the deal. You get a call from a withheld number and you ignore it. It could be one of the many PPI calls, it could be one of those ambulance-chasing claims companies. It could, however, be a call from your doctor or a call from …
iD Mobile SIM-only deals. Definitely worth a look.
Before I mention the iD Mobile plans, I know that Sky are now running their mobile network too (which sits on O2) and they’re very eager to be mentioned here. For Sky customers, it might be worth checking out (head to sky.com/mobile). Sky keep emailing me to let …
Get a personalised Sky remote or phone skin, for free
OK, not quite free. You’ll have to pay postage. However, if you want a personal skin on your Sky remote control or your phone, just put FREESKIN in during the checkout process on the Wrappz website. Apple, HTC, Google, Nokia and other skins are available so you should …
Poweradd USB Rechargeable LED Bike Lights – Review
Yes, bike lights. Welcome to the never-ending list of stuff that we’re reviewing here on Coolsmartphone. I’m hoping that we’ll have some sports cars in next. These are LED lights. Back when I was a kid I’d have a huge battery in each of my bike lights and …
Can’t get an appointment with your GP? See one online
In a way I’m not overly happy that a service like this exists, or has to exist. The NHS here in the UK is crumbling. There’s many reasons for it, and we could argue about them all day, but fact is – it’s broken. We’re now in a …
Huawei Mate 9 to get Alexa. Let’s test it.
Over the last few days I’ve been faffing about with the voice-controlled Amazon Echo Dot. It’s got an invisible lady inside called “Alexa” which will do your bidding. The device itself is a magical disc-shaped unit which will wake up and then answer your questions. It’ll also play …
Put your shades on and get some POV action – Sunnycam Activ
Over three years ago now we reviewed these Hyundai sunglasses. They had a “hidden” camera up front which meant that you could secretly record “stuff”. I tried it on a summers evening whilst cycling and the results were a little low-quality and bumpy. However, fast forward to CES …
SanDisk launch a super-speed 256GB microSD card
Think your microSD card is big enough? Think again. Over in Las Vegas, SanDisk have just revealed their new 256GB Ultra microSD card. It boasts transfer speeds of up to 95MB/s and you can have the additional storage it provides presented as preferred or adoptable storage on Android. …
Video meeting at work? Use your phone.
Christmas is over for yet another year but, over the New Year too, you’ll probably be keeping in touch with friends and relatives. The modern way to do this, even for those who aren’t technically familiar, is via a video call. On Android you’ll probably be using Skype …
Merry Christmas Coolsmartphoners
Have a quick look on the “Whois” for this site and you’ll see the following … Creation Date: 2003-02-14 08:44:29 Yes, in February it’ll have been 14 years since I bought the coolsmartphone.com domain name. Now, while I’m having a quick trip down memory lane, does anyone remember …
Cyanogen OS finishes at year’s end.
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 …
Gamevice – Making gaming on iPads fun!
Back in March at the Gadget Show Live event, I got to meet the Gamevice team where they introduced me to their Gamevice Live adapter for the iPad. At the time, they didn’t have an adapter for the iPad Air until the past couple of months. The adapter …
Spy Lantern Surveillance Camera – Review
Having a security camera on your house can be a good and bad thing. Sure, you can keep an eye on things, but it’s also a sign that you want to keep something protected, and thieves might target your house because it’s got cameras hanging off it. So …