Category: General
The Ravpower RP-PB08 is a small portable battery backup pack for charging phones when away from mains sockets. I carried one with me for a week to see how it performed with a variety of phones, and these are my findings. Good Points Size Charge level indicator Torch …
Rootmetrics, a company that gives supposedly unbiased data reports about the mobile industry, recently voted EE the best mobile provider in the UK. Vodafone, unsurprisingly, disagrees. However, rather than just grumbling into their morning coffee, management have released a statement on the company forum lambasting Rootmetrics, saying that …
“I like the Windows Phone platform, but I couldn’t have it as my only phone”, is something I hear all the time. Unfortunately there’s a lot of merit to that statement and, even now, I agree. Huawei has heard our gripes and is doing something about them. Sort …
My initial thoughts on this were a little negative if I’m honest. Kids all-too-quickly get their hands on phones and, before you know it, your five-year-old is sending emails and offering web design services. This toy-like mobile only allows incoming and outgoing calls to four designated numbers and …
Following announcing the HTC Desire 816, the Taiwanese company has stated that it has received 450,000 pre-orders in just 72 hours. Now the mid-range device is believed to heading to the UK, with a price tag around £315 (but this has not yet been confirmed). Spec’s incude Android …
If you’re thinking of trying a new network out, we’ve already mentioned Ovivio quite a bit. You pay for a SIM to be delivered and then, on plans like their Freedom 0 offering, you get 250 minutes, 300 texts and 500MB of data to use every month for …
If you’ve used roaming data (watch those charges) then you’ll probably be aware that you can get 100MB of data for £3 per day on EE when abroad. Other options include 200MB to use over 30 days, which is £35. Now however, in France and Spain, EE customers …
The smash hit puzzle game that has enraptured iOS users this year has finally found its way into the hands of Android users. Yes, I’m talking about Threes!, the game that appears to have made basic maths cool again. The premise is simple: merge 2 and 1 tiles …
It has come to that time again, the one that occurs every two years and send shivers down the spine of every mobile phone addict… upgrade time. As yet I haven’t had the barrage of phone calls from my network asking me to upgrade to whatever random handset …
I just don’t get exclusivity deals, in my eyes it only benefits the manufacturer and the retailer, not the consumer and the Garmin VivoFit fitness band is one such tie up. With it being available exclusively at John Lewis. The NEW Garmin vívofit is the only fitness band …
Having just got back from the Mobile World Congress, we’re now hungry for more. What’s next? What’s big? What is just 10 miles from my house? Yep, it’s The Gadget Show Live. Microsoft will be there, as will Samsung, Nokia and Sony Mobile. You’ll also get to see …
I’ve a couple of questions for you. Firstly, are you on O2? Do you have a package providing 1GB or more of data per month ? If so, you’re in luck, because O2 seem to be delivering access to their 4G network for free if you tick those …
If there’s one thing that’s clear, its that HTC would never be able to run a submarine. All those leaks would have killed them a long time ago. On the other hand, its nice to be able to see the successor to the HTC One just one more …
One of our eagle eyed staff noticed that the Z1 Compact has now been added to the Coming Soon section of the Vodafone blog. Although they don’t have pricing up yet, it will probably be just a matter of time. Personally, it’s one of the ‘mini’ handsets that …
Using a #Jolla phone is like having one foot in the past, one in the future. A slightly strange stance but ultimately quite fun… I tweeted this recently in a moment of whimsy but thinking about it afterwards I realized it really is an accurate summation of my …
Now, you have to be pretty quick on this one as Vodafone are restricting the deal to the first 3000 orders only. If you’re looking ahead to the Xperia Z2 as you next handset and want to bag a free TV, Vodafone today have an offer to give …
Blackberry, we all know that the company is Ahem struggling shall we say, people loved Blackberry smartphones for their physical QWERTY keyboard and to be honest there is no other smartphone built with a keyboard that come close to it for both ease and speed of use and …
The other day I received some long awaited Screen protectors from a small company called ScreenProof. They are a relatively new kid on the block with regard to screen protection and having used the camera protector on my Lumia 1020 I thought it would be worth trying them …
Leaky old evleaks has spoilt HTC’s party once again with a tweet consisting of the image above, and the wording: Holes. Time. Colors. Also, like its predecessor, look for M8 to arrive as a Google Play Edition. The second statement is pretty self explanatory, but the picture seems …
Whilst Oppo is busy leaking veiled images and suspiciously high resolution photos that beat around the bush as to what its new flagship phone is going to look like, design award website Red Dot 21 has gone and published some full-frontal renders of the Find 7. The page …
Seriously, I’m really going to struggle to stretch this post out to any more than two paragraphs. It’s a teaser video for the next big Angry Birds game from Rovio. All we know is what is revealed here, which is the fact that it… A) Involves Angry Birds …
In a legal battle that has been going on for the last 20 years (or so it seems), Apple have been fighting with Samsung about patent infringement in pretty much any court that will listen to them. The original and biggest case is the one that has been …
More speed. You want it, don’t you? 4G, yeah. That’s it. You want that in your life, but you don’t want to pay a whole lot of cash for it. Step forward giffgaff, who are about to deliver your 4G fun on a contract-free plan. Their 4G page …
Waiting for a friend or loved one to return from holiday or a business trip, you’ll no doubt have checked the flight arrivals page on the airport website. However, with FlightRadar24 you can go one further and, with the paid-for version, you get some very clever augmented-reality functionality …
Naming an app must be a difficult task, if I was tasked to do that I’d be there for weeks thinking and thinking what to call it. So I can entirely understand what the confusingly named Recent is all about. Picture the scene, you have taken a load …
For most people a 1GB data package will suit their needs. Sure, it’s not ideal and I’d much prefer if we could all have unlimited packages, but sadly it’s not the case. So if you’re looking for more data, what options do you have? Vodafone have today launched …
As you may or may not know, here at Coolsmartphone we are big fans of Oppo phone’s, our writers have owned both the Find 5 and the N1, and we are all eagerly awaiting the upcoming flagship the Find 7. Following rumours that the 7 with come with …
I’ve fancied a change for a while now, something totally different, a change of OS, a change of apps, processes, gestures, hardware and even size. I don’t know what’s happened to me, my normal daily setup of a Nokia Lumia 1020 and a Nexus 5 just isn’t doing …
Well, we all knew that it was bound to happen, but just days after the announcement? That’s pretty amazing. The new Nokia X has already been rooted and the Google Apps installed, this despite having a locked bootloader. THe X has been cracked by members of the XDA …
So, we brought you the news today Three have 1.7 million 4G customers. However, we have even better news… The MASSIVE list of cities or towns now due to get 4G this year has appeared online on the official Three site. It seems that the Three deployment has …
A strange thing occurred to me recently. My local high street seems to have less and less shops open. The stores that were there are now behind shutters and the people, it seems, are behind closed doors too. Even those stores that fare well in tough times, such …
The boys at Three have sent us some details on how their roll-out is going. Their deployment started in December last year but they’ve informed us that all of their customers are now on a 4G tariff. Three reckon that around 1.7 million customers are already using a …
I’ve seen a lot of these articles and, looking around the hordes of press people today it all seems to be a pretty similar setup. Usually it involves a MacBook Air, some camera equipment, a phone, another phone, possibly a tablet. So after heading to my makeshift office …
Sure, those big stands are OK. The companies at them have spend colossal sums of money to be here in Barcelona to push their products, but I personally prefer to go to those smaller stands where there’s just a monitor and a guy standing under it trying to …
EE have just announced a 6 year agreement with Wembley stadium to bring latest technology to the English national team arena. Whilst there will be no change of stadium name, EE will provide enhanced 4G coverage, fast WiFi access as well as mobile payments via NFC. Olaf Swantee, CEO …
We’ve just come back from a rather cool demonstration with the guys at RealVNC. Their in-car management system will connect to your smartphone, iPhone or tablet and allows you to control all aspects of the device through a screen-mirroring system. The demo, as you’ll see below, shows how …
Not to be left out, Vodafone has stepped up to the plate to announce they’ll also be stocking the Samsung Galaxy S5, the latest iteration to the Galaxy flagship. They’ll be joining EE and Three who have already confirmed the 16 Megapixel waterproofed wander will be gracing their …
Dixons Retail Group has revealed that it’s entered into preliminary talks with Carphone Warehouse about a potential merger. The group currently owns PC World and Currys that sell a range of tablets amongst their wide range of household electronics goods, but only scratches the surface with a small …
Stoke-on-Trent. Famous for oatcakes, the potteries and something called “the D road”. Now there’s something else.. 4G! Three are continuing their roll-out and there’s now coverage in parts of Hanley and beyond. Adey Watkins has emailed in to tell us.. I tried a speedtest to the Sheffield server …
Yes, I know we don’t normally cover this sort of thing, but I’m putting this squarely into the “interesting” category. You may have seen or heard of on-board cameras in cars, particularly in the US, that continually record footage as you drive. In the event of an accident, …
