Huawei P8 – Review
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 …
Category: Hardware Reviews
UNU DX-Free case review
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. …
ZTE Blade S6 4G – Review
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. …
Honor 6+ – Initial Impressions
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+ …
Grace Digital Mondo Internet Radio Review
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 Moto G 4G 2015 – Review
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 …
Remix OS overview.
The other day I unboxed the Remix Ultra Tablet and posted an article with my first thoughts. I have now had a bit more time to use the tablet and I now wish to share an overview of the OS as it is very similar to the Android …
Honor 4x – Video overview
I seem to be bumping into phone bloggers who are getting widely recognised by PR people, networks and manufacturers for adding a few YouTube videos and making a couple of posts on Facebook. No website. No slaving away for hours writing huge reviews. Just a quick video, a …
ZTE Blade S6 4G – Unpacking
It’s another day and the review kit is coming thick and fast. Today we have the ZTE Blade S6 4G, an affordable Android Lollipop phone sitting in the mid level price bracket (currently £189 on Amazon). The phone is available now, and we had a brief hands on …
Remix Ultra Tablet – The unboxing
Today is the day people. The day where I can hopefully get rid of my need for a Windows PC forevermore (well at least out with work anyway). I have been lucky enough to get hold of a Remix Ultra tablet from Jide Technologies. These are the guys …
A week with the HTC One M9 – My final thoughts
Missed our “week with” articles? Here they all are… Day one – The criticisms Day two – The audio Day three – Up close Day four – The camera Day five – Making it your own Dan has also written up an extensive HTC One M9 review but …
Honor Holly – Review
To truly succeed in the budget phone market you have tick many boxes, you have to look good, you have to perform well, you have to have some features from phones two or three times the price and most importantly you have to be cheap. Companies like Microsoft …
HTC One M9 Review
Mobile World Congress is where most flagship devices get announced every year, and 2015 was no different. This year HTC arrived with an upgrade to their popular M8 phone which hopefully filled in the few missing pieces to make this the best phone they ever made. First of all a …
Huawei P8 – Initial Impressions
A wise man once said: A beautiful Smartphone creates beautiful things Personally I feel that applies to a lot of the smartphone market in 2015, with the likes of the Galaxy S6 Edge, the HTC One M9 and of course the iPhone 6 they are all beautiful devices …
A week with the HTC One M9. Day four. The camera tech.
A lot was said about the quality of the new 20 megapixel rear shooter. There’s a raft of options including the ability to adjust the ISO, EV and white balance settings. Not only that, but if you dive into the camera settings further there’s a stack of capture …
Archos Platinum 52 – Review
Archos are the one of the Android stalwarts, they’ve been making tablets for years now and now their product range includes a healthy selection of phones too. All different shapes, sizes and colours are available. The Platinum range offers a large screen, quad core experience at a budget …
A week with the HTC One M9. Day three. A look around.
HTC tell me that their new model has a “dual-tone” design. It’s not immediately obvious when you put it next to the M8, and you can see just that in our MWC gallery, but there is a subtle difference in the edging and the colouring. Yet again we …
A week with the HTC One M9. Day two. Sounds good huh?
I’ve been banging on about this in tweets and posts for some time now, but the BoomSound system on the HTC One M9 is something that I appreciate. Despite the proliferation of Bluetooth speakers and headsets you’ll still find me listening to tunes via the external speaker on …
A week with the HTC One M9. Day one. Let’s deal with the criticism.
This, my friends, is a Jaguar XF. It’s a great car. Below is the facelifted Jaguar XF. It looks roughly the same, but the headlight assembly alone means that you can tell the difference between new and old. It’s not a massive change, but the older design was …
Hannspree SportWatch fitness tracker – Review
The fitness wearable market is quite a varied one. With many manufacturers creating all different shapes and sizes of wrist bands or watches. A few weeks ago Hannspree announced the Sport Watch which seemed to have the ideal combination of features. They’ve sent me one which I’ve been …
Piper NV – Review
Home automation is something that is only really limited by your imagination, possibly what accessories you can buy and possibly also by how much money you have. You get the idea though…. One of the more intriguing things I saw at MWC was the Piper NV, it is …
Alcatel Onetouch Pop D5 – Review
Alcatel have a wide range of devices and keeping up with exactly where each model sits in the range is at times a struggle, when I visited their stand at MWC it took me five minutes to gather myself and work out what was what. Alcatel have sent …
Doro Liberto 820 Mini – Review
Doro have found themselves a niche, they have really really thought of everything that a phone should do in that particular niche. A few weeks ago I was introduced to the new Liberto 820 Mini and when I got back from MWC there was one waiting for me …
Acer Liquid Jade S Review
It has been a while since I have done a review of a new phone so when Acer asked me to test the new Jade S I figured I would give it a shot. I had done a small article when the prices were announced a while back …
Acer Liquid Jade S – Unboxing
A package arrived the other day and in it there was a very shiny box with an Acer Logo on it. Why don’t you join me while I unbox this little shiny box? What we have here is a pretty neat phone that is coming in a suitably …
Vodafone Smart Tab 4G Review
Look at a network-branded tablet and you’ll sometimes find yourself in a strange world of rebranded Chinese kit. Is it good? Is it bad? It’s really hard to tell. However, for £125 on Pay As You Go or £21 per month for 3GB of 4G data per month, …
A look at the Tesco Connect 7″ Tablet
£70 doesn’t buy you much in the technology market, right? Normally a £70 tablet wouldn’t provide a great user experience but recently a new development has hit the market in a wave of cheap Windows 8 tablets, including the Connect 7″ Tablet from Tesco, but how does the device …
Huawei Ascend G7 4G review
Following on from their announcement of the New Huawei Ascend G7 4G (which I covered here), I was lucky enough to get sent a device for review. Device Specs. 5.5 inch HD IPS display, 720p resolution. Measuring in at 7.6 mm thick. 1.2 GHz quad core processor capable of …
Karbonn Titanium S6 – Review
Karbonn are another of those companies you might not have heard of, they are an Indian firm that have been making phones for about five years now. They have recently been named as hardware partners for Google and the Android One project and also Microsoft with Windows Phone. …
KnowRoaming on test – Cut your roaming costs dramatically
Picture the scene. You’re about to go abroad. You’ve got your passport, you’ve booked the hotel and the flight. What about your phone? Unless you’re lucky enough to be using a network like Three and going to one of the countries in their Feel At Home plan, you’ll …
Edifier R1700BT Bluetooth speakers review
Holy hell. I think something just happened in the trouser department. These are Bluetooth speakers like I’ve never seen or heard before. I mean sure, you know deep down that the wood enclosing these speakers is 100% MDF, but it looks lovely and these speakers would sit beautifully …
Acer Switch 11 Review
Acer Aspire Switch 11 Intel Atom Quad-core 1.33GHz CPU, 2GB RAM, microSD reader, 32GB flash memory and 500GB drive in the keyboard “base” section. Windows 8.1 (32 bit), 11.6″ Active Matrix LCD IPS LED back-lit multi-touch / touchscreen at 1366×768. WiFi IEEE 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 8550mAh battery. I’ve …
Xiaomi Mi4 FDD-LTE – Review
Some of you may have heard of Xiaomi, they are the third largest phone company on the planet. The problem is that they are huge in China and India, Europe not so big. You may also have come across Xiaomi with the Miui software, which started life as …
Sony Xperia M2 Aqua Review
Usually here at Coolsmartphone we’ll do a full in-depth review of a phone. It’ll include specs, video, pictures and all the geeky information you need to form your decision. We’ll start this review with a bit of that. This Sony Xperia M2 Aqua has a 1.2 GHz quad-core …
Kitvision Escape Action Camera Review.
Right let start with talking about the elephant in the room, the Kitvision Escape HD5W action camera, that I have been sent through to review, is the spitting image of the current class leader, but I’m not going to go pro there. Now that’s done…… The action camera market …
Lumia 535 Review
Let me start by saying this: I have been an Android user from the very beginnings. My first Android phone was the T-Mobile G1 way back in 2008. So I haven’t really used any other operating systems. Yes, I have had a little play with iOS and Windows Phones …
ANNKE Sparkle SP1 IP Camera review
We’ve got ourselves another security camera here folks. Quick note before I start, this was once £319.99 but they’ve got it available on Amazon for just £49.99. That’s pretty cheap, and it’ll let you keep an eye on your house or office remotely using your phone. It’s got …
Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro – Review
A few months ago Lenovo announced a range of new tablets, some running Android and some running Windows, yet they all shared something unique. They all have a kickstand on the back allowing you to prop up the tablet in a variety of positions. But the Yoga Tablet …
KAZAM Tornado 348 Review
Those models you see prancing up and down the catwalk are sometimes pretty thin. Here, KAZAM have decided to do the same with their latest mobile offering – the Tornado 348. It’s a handset which is just 5.15mm thick, which makes it the thinnest smartphone around. Wait though, …
CarLock Review
Tracking your car is possible with just a smartphone. Various apps will let you do it, but it’s a matter of having a spare smartphone with a data plan and GPS, plus you have to leave it plugged into the 12v charger and that alone will probably attract …