Category: Hardware Reviews
Meizu is a brand not particularly well known here in the UK. Leigh recently reviewed the Meizu M1 Note, and I have been using a Meizu M2 Note for a few months now. This is my review of the Meizu M2 Note, a device purchased from Shenzhen Chigon …
A bit of history first, and perhaps a personal viewpoint from myself. Back in 2002 I handled my first HTC smartphone. It was branded up as an Orange SPV and it kick-started this entire website. HTC had a meteoric rise in the years following, releasing phones under their …
You’ve really got to mention the price in the introductory paragraph for this particular device. For just £50 on Vodafone Pay As You Go it’s insanely cheap. Some of you probably pay more than that per month on a contract. This is the Vodafone Smart speed 6, a …
That time of year has come. It’s the time that all geeks look forward to every year. It is, of course, upgrade time. Those of you who are frequent readers will no doubt be aware that I am currently using the Xperia Z3 as my daily driver. Although I …
Hmm.. The Honor 7. I’m sure someone told me this was a “mid-range” handset. It was almost as if they didn’t want me to get to excited about it. Let’s have a look at the specs first then.. Screen – 5.2″ 1080×1920 (424 ppi) CPU – HiSilicon Kirin …
Huawei released their new flagship phablet last month – The Huawei Mate S. I was lucky enough to attend the launch event and got a hold of one of the devices. I have been using it over the last few weeks to see how good it was, and …
There’s a raft of 7″ tablets out there. Just have a look down your local supermarket and you’ll see a stack of them. Here we’ve got the Acer Icon is One 7. Around back, a very grippy rear panel which has a rather funky pattern on it. The …
Well isn’t this a beautiful looking thing? Everytime I show this to somebody there is an audible “wow”. You could perhaps put the slowest, cheapest CPU and memory in here and people would still be amazed by looks alone. I have the gold version here from giffgaff and, …
James reviewed the handset in May but I wanted to add my own throughts because, at the end of the day, this is a phone which costs less than £350 SIM free. You can get it for less than that on Amazon and you can pay buttons per …
Think HTC and you’ll invariably think of the HTC One handsets. They’re beautiful. They’re well-built and they’re feature-rich. However, they’re also pretty expensive, so what about those who want a taste of HTC but don’t quite have the cash? The Desire 626 is a device I’ve had as …
Something I have been seeing across the industry right now is an emergence of lots of low price flagship challengers. These come from various sources, with the most prominent of these being China. Now, the inherent problem with buying from China is what then happens when it goes …
Those of you who read the site regularly will no doubt be aware that I have had a couple of Ubuntu devices (including the Bq Aquarius E5) come through over the last few months to review. Now we have another one, and this is the daddy of them all. …
It has been a while since I mentioned the Pebble Time. To be honest this is intentional. I had an issue with the first one they gave me, which was resolved by a replacement (more on that later). Now that I have had some time to use it in the …
The latest update to the BBC Worldwide News app version 3.2 sees the inclusion of Android Wear support, meaning short news snippets will be sent to your wrist. Articles are presented in a RSS style layout, with the ability to swipe horizontally and vertically: go up or down …
It feels like it’s taken a long time to get to this place, but finally I have a Meizu MX4. I was very impressed with this when I first had a hands on with it at MWC earlier this year. Since then I have had more of a chance …
So this has surprised me in a way. When it first arrived the box itself didn’t exactly scream “premium”. I mean, there’s nothing really wrong with the box per se, but I’ve got used to some of the recent review phones turning up in carefully sculpted containers that …
So here we have the Samsung Galaxy S6. Immediately you can just feel the quality oozing out of the handset. It is well built, slim and gorgeous to look at. There’s a distinct industrial feel to it, especially around the edges of the phone This white version from …
For the last few weeks I have been using an unusual phone. It’s this, the BQ Aquarius E5 Ubuntu Edtion. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you weren’t aware of this device as it’s not a widely known manufacturer in the UK. Add to that the fact …
Although I don’t spend all day in my car, like a lot of mobile aficionado’s I’ve moved over to using my handset as the source of my In Car Entertainment (do people even use the phrase ICE any more?). Between using it for navigation and listening to music etc, …
Another year has gone by and another Sony Tablet has arrived on our desk at Coolsmartphone towers. Today I have the real pleasure of unboxing the new Xperia Z4 Tablet. We first saw this stunning device at MWC, which we covered live. It was here that we were …
Using a tablet whilst out and about may seem like an alien idea to some, but for many including 4G in a tablet makes it the ideal companion to take on the train, bus or even to the local cafe. Historically tablets have been Wi-Fi only with the …
Most phones look the same. Big screen? Check. One button up front maybe? Check. Manufacturers struggle to achieve differentiation. LG have tried to stand out from the crowd by keeping the screen large and reducing the bezel, which means a better one-handed experience. It also means that the …
A projector running Android, surely that is the perfect device for use in the boardroom or the meeting rooms across the globe. When I heard about the Touchjet Pond I was rather intrigued, a projector that turns the surface you’re projecting onto into a large touchscreen, just seemed …
I have now had this tablet for a few weeks now and I was holding back on the review until a few software updates had been delivered. Since I did the unboxing video back in April it has been a very busy time for the Remix as it …
Come, take a seat my friends, because something is happening again in the mobile industry. When I was young kid (when) started a little website called Coolsmartphone. It was all about a network-branded smartphone called the SPV. For years after we saw networks branding their logo onto phones …
Honor decided to step up their game with the 6+, in a world of fancy curved glass or metal devices they had to release a really good looking device and at a decent price point too. Quite how a relatively new brand make a mark on the mobile …
This thing is incredibly light and remind me obviously of the previous Acer Liquid Jade from some time back. It also kinda reminds me of the older iPod in the design, plus the fact that it’s painfully thin. The phone itself comes in at 110 grams. First impressions …
The idea that a keyboard makes you more productive has been an underlying ethos for BlackBerry devices for a while now. The thought being that you spend most of the day bashing buttons on a laptop or desktop keyboard so why not do it on your phone. Previous …
The modern day tablet is used for a whole lot of things, be it multimedia, playing games, browsing the web, catching up on emails, writing blog posts, online shopping or just good old social media. Picking the right tablet for you and your needs however is a difficult …
So this is the bendy version of the LG G3. At least, it is in my head anyway, because as a big LG G3 user, the LG G Flex2 looks initially nothing more than a kinky version of the G3. However, inside the G Flex2 there are some …
The budget phone market is big business these days, with everyone competing to be the “go to” budget device, one big seller these days is 4G and getting 4G on a device at under £100 is a good thing. I’ve been using the Pop 2 for a few weeks …
Let’s set your expectations shall we? This is £149.99. It’s not going to compete with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and it’s not going to challenge the very latest iPhone either. What it does, even with a slightly older version of Android, it does well. This is from a …
Prestigio might not be a name you have heard in the mobile space before, but sometimes the hidden gems are the best ones.. maybe. The 5550 Duo features a 5.5 inch display with a 13 megapixel camera on the back, 8GB storage which is expandable via microSD cards …
Over the years I’ve played about with a variety of phones running fledging mobile OS’s. Be it Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, Firefox OS or even Ubuntu Phone. For the last week or so I’ve been using the BlackBerry Passport and I’m loving it. The BlackBerry Passport is a …
The Huawei P8 is one of those phones that look good, damn good to be precise. Some may say it looks a bit like an iPhone, or an Xperia Z3 or an HTC One, but there is no arguing in that it looks good, damn good. We were …
On modern smartphones battery life can take a massive hit. Consider all your favourite apps running in the background, emails, tweets and updates plus GPS and Bluetooth connectivity. There are portable chargers available which help boost the battery but these need to be carried around with your phone. …
Over the past few years we have started to see the emergence of more and more Chinese manufacturers into the Global smartphone market. One of these companies is ZTE, for a while they were happy being the people behind the scenes of dongles and some network branded handsets. …
The Honor brand seems to have appeared almost from nowhere, Honor started off as the budget sister company of Huawei, with a few low cost devices under its belt, now they’ve released what one could call a budget flagship. One could also say that with the Honor 6+ …
Beyond accessing radio stations through apps on my iPhone, internet radio was a new concept that I had never really considered. So, when I was given to opportunity to test the Grace Digital Mondo Internet Radio, I was keen to see what it offered. Complete with a catalogue …
Motorola have their three ranges, each have their place in the world and each arguably succeed in their purpose. The Moto G is their budget midrange device, more expensive and with more features than the Moto E and less features than the Moto X. Motorola however do update …
