Category: General
I’ve dabbled with external battery packs before, you know the sort. An unbranded 3000 mAh battery that refuses to work after a few weeks. It was after my wife and her friends went to a festival down south a few weeks ago and all of their phones died …
Here in the UK the internet is changing. The classic flavour of “the web”, where people can say and do what they want and download anything without fear of traffic management or data limits, is long gone. We now heavy a heavily controlled, heavily monitored and heavily firewalled …
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a type of MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that we had not covered before; Charity MVNO’s. I have since been contacted by Donate Mobile, pointing out that I had missed them from my article. I’ve updated my original post but …
A (rather difficult to read) shipping note has been spotted showing that a Samsung SM-V700 watch has made its way from Korea to Bangalore, “For R & D purpose”. Unfortunately there are no specs, but surely it will be an extension of their “life companion” ethic, so expect …
The Samsung Note range started off as a bit of a novelty but as established itself as range that sells a good quantity of phones and has launched an entire market, that of the phablet with HTC, Sony and Nokia bringing out larger handsets and Samsung adding more …
The day has arrived….. That magic day when you get your hands on with the object you have been lusting after since it was announced in all the glitz and glamour that go with product announcements. This device which is very firmly in the Phablet range with a …
Sky (yes Sky!) have just entered the hardware streamer market with the launch of the Now TV box this morning. As the name implies, it’s a standalone box that can stream Now TV as well as other services such as iPlayer, 5 On Demand, Sky News, BBC News …
Channel 4 have just updated the iOS and Android app (at the same time) to version 3.0. The new version allows downloading so users can grab programmes from the last 30 days to watch any time within the next 7 days rather than only being able to watch …
It’s Coolsmartphone competition time again! Yay! This week we’re giving away the two Sony Xperia Tablet Z cases that we’ve recently reviewed. Seeing as I’m in in charge of this competition it has to be really simple, so all you have to do is read the reviews of …
Been on the fence about the Galaxy S4? Perhaps it just isn’t blue enough for you. Maybe it just doesn’t go with that new blue Lamborghini you’ve just bought. Happens to all of us. From today though you can head over to Phones 4U and order the S4 in an, …
No I don’t mean Bruce Springstien, I’m talking about Sundar Pichai. Now, he’s has been around the block. He didn’t become the senior vice president of Google without encountering journalists. He really should know that journalists can’t keep secrets, especially when the secret is the manufacturer of the …
Shifu is an intelligent task management and todo list. Instead of just reminding you at a set time to do stuff it checks to see when you aren’t doing anything and then reminds you. The developer describes this as follows: Shifu is your smart friend who lives in …
The Tabletwear Advanced Case for the Xperia Tablet Z is a budget stand style case to clad and protect the slender lines of Sony’s finest bit of Android gear. This is my second featured review of cases for the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, the first was of the …
Sunglasses … with a frickin’ hidden camera. Honestly, it’s like something out of Austin Powers. I don’t know where to start. Back in 2002 I was happy to review a phone that had a colour screen. Now I’ve got a pair of sunglasses which look and feel like …
Well, this is simple enough really. It looks like a little green robot and parks itself neatly around a UK electrical socket. Once you plug it in it’ll hold your phone and keep the endless cables nice and tidy in the clever little fingers in each “hand”. Made …
For years now many have said that a phone camera will never replace a normal standalone digital camera. However, has that now changed with the introduction of smartphones such as the Nokia 808 PureView, Samsung S4 Zoom and the 41 megapixel Lumia 1020? These new advanced low-light optics, …
Join the Coolsmartphone writers at 5PM British Summer Time for today’s Breakfast with Sundar Pichai event by Google. We’ll be bringing you all the news, opinions and reactions from this event. We expect to see some more information on Android and Chrome, particularly Android 4.3, a new Nexus 7 …
Rubber keyboards. We’ve seen them kicking around for a bit now, but the myType Bluetooth keyboard is easily folded down into your pocket and has keys which are spaced for touch typing, unlike most portable keyboards. When you need it, the myType keyboard connects to your device via …
Today has seen EE (formerly Everything Everywhere who were formerly T-Mobile and Orange) release their interim 6 monthly results which takes them to the end of June 2013. Main story here, they ain’t half bad. With turnover of £3.2bn and pre tax earnings of £734 million, EE seem …
The latest beta version of Swiftkey is now available, and it brings cloud support to spread predictions between all your devices. Swiftkey is a third-party keyboard that predicts what you type, as most Android users will know by now. The way it does this is by analysing what’s …
Popular video and text messaging app Tango has been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. You remember the SEA, they’re the ones who hacked the Sky apps so you couldn’t control your Sky Plus box from your garden. We reported earlier that Viber – an app for making …
The support site for the popular chat application Viber appears to have been hacked today by the Syrian Electronic Army, with their support page defaced and an extract from their user database extracted. In a statement made on the defaced page, the SEA wrote: Dear All Viber Users, …
The Ubuntu PC operating system has been around for a good while now, the free computer OS that is open source and helps make cheap pcs possible, especially for developing countries. They have been working on a smartphone OS for some time and now that work has been …
Sometimes I try to hide it, but quickly people realise that I have a bit of a “thing” about phones and, invariably, I get asked lots of questions. “What phone should I have next? Is this one any good?” This. This I get asked a lot. Once I …
We do get some slightly strange requests here at Coolsmartphone. BeeWi have sent us a car. Yes, an actual car. There was a bit of a fight to review it. Sadly it wasn’t a full-sized motor but a remote controlled Mini Cooper Coupé. Now, while we wait for …
The Nokia Twitter account has today teased a new addition to the Nokia family. Something BIG landing tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow at 9 am UK time http://t.co/Ow3Zy36Hn3 #Nokia http://t.co/JhTYSNfhxa It’s been a busy few days for Nokia, with the new 41-megapixel camera toting Nokia Lumia 1020 announced in New York City just last week. Nokia could …
Getting the Nexus 4 the other week left me a little nervous, I’ve seen more pictures of shattered back panels than any other phone ever. Needless to say I wanted something to protect it, whilst looking through the dozens of different styles I decided that this time I …
Intro I’m a dropper, a slipper, a butterfingers, the type of person who knows if the phone can drop at the worst time, it will. So testing the snappily named Spigen SGP Google Nexus 4 Ultra Thin Air Case for my Nexus 4 was something I took seriously. …
Let’s be honest, times are hard. The next smartphone you buy will probably be bought in one of two different ways. You’ll either get an unlocked phone or you can get a contract handset and sign up for two years or so. Getting out of that contract, by …
There are some of us who think that bigger is not always better. There are some of us who can remember back when the Ericsson T28 and T29, The motorola V70 and V90, even the Nokia 8800 family were some of the most luxurious and desirable phones going. …
Excitement over a new Motorola phone is something the world hasn’t experienced for many a year, but the Moto X is causing quite a stir. This is made all the more curious as it’s not exactly well specced. Unlike the impressive 3300mAh battery from the RAZR Maxx, the …
The Moto X phone should be great, an important evolution of the smartphone in some substantial ways and a resurgence for Motorola. How have I come to this conclusion? Let me explain… A couple of weeks ago I bought the Motorola RAZRi which we reviewed here. This phone …
Regular readers will know that I’ve ditched my long-standing Orange contract mobe and switched to a rolling monthly deal instead. The benefits are that I’m not hooked into a 2-year deal, I’m spending less because I’m not subsidising that “free” handset, and I can hop to another network …
I don’t normally do this, but I have to issue an apology to Natalie. She’s the PR lady for Kensington and I did tell her that I’d review this product a good three months ago. “Pah, it’ll only take a few minutes to review that”, I thought. Wrong. …
I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for a couple of years now, and overall I’ve been pretty happy with their service. Crucially, the plan has unlimited data with a ‘fair usage policy’ – which turned out to be 500MB. Naturally, being a blogger, I go over that limit within …
Headphones. Everyone has them. Whether it’s the subtle white in-ear ones or those trendy over-the-ear jobbies that people sport on the way to work, it shows our love of music or podcasts. There’s a problem with these though. Unless you only have one ear plugged in, you’re going …
A case made of bamboo. It’s not something you hear of every day, but that’s what he people from The Snugg have loaned us. It’s currently £29.99 or $29.99 (don’t get me started on that currency conversion) and here’s a look at it. First up. Yes, it’s very …
A survey of 2,000 Americans has revealed that our TV viewing habits are definitely changing. The “Television and Advertising Survey” shows that more than a third (34%) of TV “viewership” is on a mobile device now. It also shows that 47% of Americans now watch TV programming on …
Nokia has just announced it’s financial results for Q2 and they aren’t pretty reading for fans of the Finnish manufacturer, with a loss of 115 million Euros ($151m) in the last three months alone. Ouch! Whilst this is an improvement compared to the 150 million Euro loss last quarter, …
Batteries in phones are still a massive weak point in mobile phones and in Bristol they’ve started to really take the p*** with their new invention – a charger powered by urine. It all works by using microbial fuel cells which, when peed on, produces enough charge to …
