Oppo N1 CyanogenMod Edition – initial impressions

You want an initial impression of the Oppo N1 CM Edition? It’s massive! Seriously, that’s the first impression everyone has of it. Let’s get over that for now, because size isn’t everything. No really, it isn’t. An impressive package In fact, the initial impression I got of the …

Tesco Hudl – Doing rather well actually

Whilst the recent sales at Tesco have been a little disappointing, their Hudl tablet seems to have been selling well. Tesco’s like-for-like sales were down by 2.4% during the Christmas period, and its shares fell by 4%. However, the good news for the supermarket is that some 400,000 …

Are you a crazed gadget fan?

A short while ago E.ON emailed me. I did the first thing that most people do when a utility company contacts you directly. I hid under the bed and shouted, “We’re not in, we never use the tumble dryer, honest!” šŸ˜‰ After a while I emerged and found …

Competition – Win a three-month subscription to The Times Digital

So, we’re already giving away five CAT Active Urban cases. If you’ve got an iPhone, that’s great, but we figured that one competition this week just isn’t enough. Let’s give away some more stuff! The Times (yes, they read Coolsmartphone too) have been in touch and they’re offering …

Centralize your business contact list easily

A company phone used to be a BlackBerry. In a lot of places it still is, but now there’s more and more people bringing their own devices into the workplace and using them instead. It’s called “BYOD” and those people “in the know” tell me that it’s massive …

The Coolsmartphone Podcast – Episode 75

The Coolsmartphone Podcast is back, we’ve all had our annual Christmas break and we’re here to mumble and um and er for an hour. Joining me this week was Ronnie Whelan and our topics this week were as follows. Our favourite phones, tablets and manufacturers for 2013. The …

Hands on with Three 4G

Three might be the last of the UK networks launching 4G, but many people have chosen to wait for them. It’s especially due to the fact 4G on Three costs no more than your existing deal and you don’t need to swap any plans or SIMs. Also, you …

Picture special – HTC Desire 601 now available on O2 in red

Last September HTC announced the Desire 601. It’s a mid-range device with a 4.5″ QHD display and the video montage feature we also saw on the Desire 500. The handset also includes a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU, which – despite the fact it’s called the Desire 601 – actually …

Top 5 apps for December revealed

Good old Distimo eh? We all love them. No, me neither. However, they’ve done some research and, using bits of data from the Apple App Store and Google Play, they’ve got the top apps of December 2013. The top free apps from the Apple App Store included the …

Been scammed by Cash4phones?

Leigh wrote in October about offers from Cash4phones not being what they ought to be (to put it mildly!), but things have gone from bad to worse. The company is now officially in receivership and the police are looking for the director. If you sent your phone in …

Channel Tunnel to get coverage from EE

Remember that ludicrous sequence from the first Mission Impossible film – where disaster is averted by a train going into the Channel Tunnel and losing phone signal? Well its going to need a rewrite thanks to EE. EE have announced this morning that they will be providingĀ the UK …

Moto G coming to Vodafone “soon”

You know how much we like the Moto G. It’s cheap, it’s got decent specs and it won our “Best Smartphone Under Ā£200” award too. The handset, which we’ve detailed here, will be arriving on Vodafone UK at a non-specific point in the future. Vodafone doesn’t have pricing …

Motorola to launch European Moto X on Tuesday?

Motorola have sent out press invitations today to an event being held in London next Tuesday (14th January). As is common with these invites, they haven’t told us what the event is in aid of. There were rumours floating about in September about a new Motorola tablet to …

Asus announce the Intel Atom equipped Zenfone range

Asus have announced a new range of Intel Atom based phones, there are three devices available in a range of colours and sizes. They come in four, five or six variations and Asus have applied a skin to them all called ZenUI. Zenfone 6 The ZenFone 6 is …

Nokia Lumia 1520 Review

Lets start with a short story. Nokia was circling the drain at the beginning of 2011 and the good ship Symbian was struggling to stay afloat. The anchors of the hefty N8 and E7 were pulling it down into a whirlpool of dispair. The liferaft of the the …

Yahoo! buys Aviate, promises continued development

Yahoo! have announced today that they have acquired Aviate, the context-aware smart launcher for Android. The deal was announced by Marissa Mayer during the Yahoo! keynote at CES, and posts were made shortly after on both the Yahoo! and AviateĀ blogs. Aviate launched their product into closed beta to …

Apple releases 7.1 Beta 3 to Developers

The update draws nearer. Apple today sent out their latest iteration of iOS 7.1 beta. This iteration contains some bug fixes as well as a few UI tweaks. The bug fixes aren’t as visual as the other changes, but they are most definitely there. We can show you …

Apple announce AppStore sales of $10 Billion

Today Apple announced that the AppStore has generated $10 Billion in 2013. Guess what, $1 Billion of that was in December alone. That’s some serious spending on the users part. Eddy Cue, Appleā€™s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services said the following about the whole exciting …

Sony Smartwear announced

Whilst Sony did announce the new Z1 compact, they have also continued the trend of CES 2014 by announcing more wearable tech to go with their Smartwatch 2. The new Smartband and Core are similar in idea to the LG LifebandĀ but aren’t just about fitness and like the …