The new Nexus 7 is now available on the UK Play Store

  The new Nexus 7 is ready for you to buy, you may have heard about it, if not check out my initial impressions. You can buy either the 16GB model for £199 here or the 32GB model for £239 here. The spec of the new Nexus 7 …

LG confirm new 8.3″ tablet

LG are clearly a company on the up. Following their selection as Google’s partner for the well received Nexus 4, the company have announced and released some remarkable devices. The latest to add to the production line is the companies first foray into the tablet world, the brand …

Samsung unveil Galaxy Tab for Kids

Keeping the kids quiet with a smartphone or a tablet is becoming a growing trend.  One problem with doing this however is handing over a device that can cost over £500 to a child is simply asking for trouble.  Fragility of screens, dirty hands and experimentation are not …

“Feel at Home” roaming now official with Three [updated]

A few days ago we brought you the news that a new roaming service from Three was about to be launched. Today we can confirm this is happening. The Three site has now been updated with a link to this new service which is based on their old …

Another cheap Windows Phone #2 – Samsung Ativ S

Another deal for you Windows Phone bargain hunters. Expansys have also cut the price of the Samsung Ativ S to £199.99 here. It is a decent device, Dual Core, 8MP camera with flash, Micro SD slot, Removable battery, AMOLED 720p screen and some other features I forget. I …

And so it begins.. Vodafone throttling 3G customers

It’s safe to say that 4G hasn’t exactly set the world alight here in the UK. Although there’s obvious benefits, the lack of coverage, relatively low data limits and pricing has meant that most have chosen to stay on 3G. Why? Well, 3G is cheaper, and most people …

Another cheap Windows Phone – HTC 8X tumbles in price

This weekend I’ve seen a number of cheap Windows Phone devices. The Lumia 520 can be picked up on a Pay As You Go upgrade with Carphone Warehouse for just £59.95, meanwhile the HTC 8X has had a further price drop to £189.99 SIM Free (inc delivery). The …

The Bluebo Beast – A Galaxy Note by any other name

Selling for around £137.34 from places like Ali Express, this is the Bluebo Beast B6000 MTK6589T. Yes, it does look a lot like a Samsung Galaxy Note. In fact, in the hands-on I was quite surprised at the build quality and speed of the device. It’s slightly thicker …

The best of Sony is about to get even better

Sony are soon to announce the often leaked Honami or Z1 or i1. In a bit of a tease Sony have posted the following video onto their YouTube channel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alVwMu5fvns From this We can gather that the next flagship will have a very familiar design and once again …

HTC One X & One X+ 4.2.2 update hits UK

We brought you news of the HTC One X and  HTC One X+ update coming to Taiwan earlier this month, and according to Twitter this update is now coming to the UK. XDA TV Producer (and HTC fan) Shen Ye posted two images on Twitter earlier this evening, …

OPPO N1 have photos leaked and a back problem

OPPO like teasing us on bank holiday weekends. The bank holiday at the end of May was when they launched the Find 5 in Europe. This bank holiday they’re asking for suggestions as to what to call their mysterious back side navigation (you can see why!). Not only …

Google Nexus 7 (2013) – Initial Impressions

The original Nexus 7 was something special, up until then small 7″ tablets had either been awful or stupidly expensive. The original Nexus 7 showed us that you could have a well specified device at a reasonable cost. It quickly became the most popular Android tablet ever, I …

Three Like Home returning next month!

Anyone remember the great roaming deal from Three called ‘Three Like Home’? It allowed you to take your UK plan abroad with you and roam on any of the existing Three networks setup around the world such as Australia, Hong Kong etc… Here is a list of countries …

ActiveNotifications gets an update and a new name

About a week ago I reviewed an app called ActiveNotifications, it gives you Moto X style lockscreen notifications, as long as you’ve got an AMOLED display on your devic. Overall I really liked it. Yesterday the app got an update, which not only added new premium features it …

Google Search for Android gets an update

Google Search for Android has just been updated adding a range of new Google Now cards. Google Search for Android is becoming way more than just a search tool, it’s becoming a life management system (almost). Personally I have Google Now disabled to save on battery as the …

Ballmer to retire

Steve Ballmer, top dog at Microsoft, is set to retire. Over the years Steve has been more than just the CEO, he’s been a rather vocal and infamous figurehead who doesn’t shy away from the limelight. His retirement date is set to be sometime within the next 12 …

LiquidMetal back on the iPhone 5C?

When I first saw this headline I had an image of the back of the new iPhone changing shape and trying to kill people like the T1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Apple have actually held the patent for LiquidMetal for ages but only used it for the …

Update to 2013 Nexus 7, to fix touchscreen issues

Google is today pushing out its first post-release update for the 2013 Nexus 7. Google’s Paul Wilcox confirmed on the company’s product forums that new firmware is indeed rolling out to fix touchscreen sensitivity issues reported by some Nexus 7 owners: As a couple of you have mentioned, …

Google Chrome beta gets an update

Chrome for Android has pretty much become “the” go to web browser for me, I barely ever use any other browser. Google have another version of Chrome as well, in the beta test version you can test out the latest and sometimes experimental features. The latest update has …

The Coolsmartphone Podcast – Episode 60

Episode 60 is here, it’s been a week which for me has seemingly been dominated by Oppo announcing something new and also teasing us with something else as well. Luckily it wasn’t all Oppo talk this week, we also covered Firefox OS, Ubuntu Edge, the Samsung Galaxy Golden, …