Category: Handsets (General)

Samsung Galaxy S9 – Review

The introduction Samsung is one of the largest players in the Android arena, and their Galaxy handsets have become iconic around the world. This year at MWC, the company announced their latest versions – the Galaxy S9 and S9+. Both of these are on sale now. We were lucky …

Huawei P20 Pro Review: Is this the best cameraphone?

  As you can see I have made a fairly bold statement up there. That my friends, was not just for clickbait. It was a serious intended question, which during the course of this review I intend to answer. I have had the privilege of testing a few of …

Essential Phone is now available to order for the UK

Well, it was only a matter of time wasn’t it? Sure, it’s felt like an age since the phone was first released, but now the Essential Phone PH01 is available to buy for us in the UK. The Essential phone got a lot of media attention as it was …

Pursuit of Burdenless Speed – OnePlus 6

Did you ‘6et Ready’? If you have been under a rock recently, OnePlus have started their teaser campaign for the upcoming flagship phone – OnePlus 6. The new handset was previously rumoured to be quite a beast using the new SnapDragon 845 processor and in three variations 64GB, …

Carphone Warehouse offering P20 SIM FREE for £599

Yesterday, we told you about EE launching the Huawei P20 with a pair of Bose Bluetooth headphones. Well, Carphone Warehouse is selling the handset SIM FREE for £599 and they include the Bose QC 35 II headphones which retail at £329.95. Very good bargain for the music lovers …

Samsung Galaxy S8 still outselling the S9

According to Business Korea, despite heavily advertising its latest flagship sales of the Galaxy S9 in its home market, Samsung has failed to reach the expected levels as the previous Galaxy flagship the S8, which is currently outselling is successor. Samsung states that consumers don’t believe there is enough …

#MWC18 – Essential Phone. Hands on

I decided to take a bit of a wander down to the Essential Booth today to go and find out about their phone. Also, the burning question that I wanted to ask. Just when will we will see them in the UK? Unfortunately, I was unable to get an answer …

#MWC18 Gemini PDA from Planet Computers

I have talked about the Gemini PDA on the site before and I am a huge fan of what they are doing. Today I had the chance to get hands-on with a full production unit of it in its Android version. The device has been made of the …

More Galaxy S9 and S9+ details

Samsung is now gearing up to launch the 2018 versions of its flagship Galaxy series, the S9 and the S9+. They have an unpacked event scheduled for the 25th February, which is just prior to this years Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona. Both handsets will be powered by …

Honor View 10 photo special

We are deep into the mid festive slump but, for some of us, work has to carry on for a few more days before the shenanigans of the New Year begin. In an effort to cheer you all up, I have been busy taking pictures of the soon-to-be-released …

Unboxing the Honor View 10

A few weeks ago I was down in good old London town where I bore witness to the latest Honor flagship. Today I have received a pre-production unit for review here at Coolsmartphone Towers. The phone is now available for preorder from the Honor website and, if it is …

Watch out for the phone zombies!

Some years ago China tried to control smartphone zombies. They were everywhere, heads down and drifting into each other. It got so bad that a separate smartphone lane was installed so that very low-speed accidents no longer happened. Now, in Sweden they’re trying something very similar. Their solution …

Honor 7X – Thoughts and Unboxing

Yesterday I was allowed to leave the confines of Coolsmartphone Towers and escape into the depths of London for a few hours. During my brief sojourn into the real world, I was able to attend a small gathering of phone enthusiasts and bloggers (okay it wasn’t that small, there …

The Razer Phone has arrived. Here is our unboxing

We have had something very special arrive at Coolsmartphone Towers today. At least, it’s something that I have been looking forward to for a few weeks. Today we’ve got one of the boldest new phones to come out this year (IMHO). Yes, it’s the Razer Phone! You’re obviously …

Huawei Mate 10 Pro – Review

These days there are so many different smartphones out there it is hard to find things to distinguish them from each other. I genuinely struggle sometimes in finding what makes one phone better than another. That being said, there are things out there that can help to lift one phone above …

Huawei set the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro

Hauwai has now released the launch date for the Mate 10 Pro, and it is coming very soon. We have been lucky enough to get our hands on with the Mate 10 Pro from Huawei, and the good news is that if you to want to get one …

Nokia 2 with 2 days battery!

Nokia, currently owned by HMD Global, is trying to make the next breed of handsets relive the glory days of strong battery life. This is something that has not been possible with the current era of smartphones. The new Nokia 2, which is due for release in the UK …

Three receive criticism over £117 iPhone contract.

Think about what you could actually buy for £117 per month. Well, I’ve had my eye on this Citroen C4 lease agreement. Sure, you’re not going to end up fully owning the thing unless you pay a big balloon payment later, but for this sort of money, you …

Vodafone release iPhone X contract prices

Update – We’re starting to see prices from other networks too. Head here to see the iPhone X deals. In the early hours of this morning here at Coolsmartphone towers, we had a piece of paper pushed under the portcullis door. It had some very interesting information from …

Buy a WileyFox and get a free Amazon Echo Dot!

Here at Coolsmartphone Towers we always like a bargain, and we also love supporting the underdog. Which is why this deal seems to appeal to all my senses, especially after the shock of the iPhone X pricing! Small upstart brand WileyFox have been bashing out smartphones for the …

Google in talks to buy HTC

If you have been a smartphone user over the past few years there’s a good chance you have used a device made by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. For many years the company made many devices under different brand names. Remember XDA, MDA, SPV? Even HP branded devices were made …

Huawei now above Apple in market share

Huawei are now the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. The latest data from market research firm Counterpoint Research shows Huawei overtaking Apple to become even bigger. This result is from strong sales in June and July, which have allowed the Chinese manufacturer to inch past Apple into …

SanDisk to release a whopping 400GB SD Card.

Western Digital has announced the world’s largest capacity microSD card: the whopping 400GB SanDisk Ultra. Priced at $249.99, or £193, this new card should theoretically work with all major flagship Android devices which feature a microSD card, (although a number of manufacturers are moving to sealed storage options). …

Here’s your Olympic medal. Some of it used to be a Nokia.

Provided that Japan still exists and North Korea haven’t fired another ruddy missile at it, then they’ll be holding the Olympics in 2020. The medals, which usually cost a small fortune to create, are going to be made in a very different way this time. Members of Japan’s …

First Snapdragon 845 chips bagged by Samsung

At the beginning of this year, Samsung managed to broker a deal with Qualcomm to reserve the first batch of the Snapdragon 835 chips for their latest flagship device – the Galaxy S8. This gave the Korean mobile giant the jump on other OEMs for releasing devices with …

OnePlus 3/3T: No updates after Android O

Those of you that are regular readers of this site know I am a OnePlus fanboy. I have had every device the company has produced; my favourite still is my ceramic OnePlus X. (despite there not being any support for this device, i,e, no more OS updates). My …

Out TV viewing is changing

Got a Sky or Virgin TV contract? Let me ask you a serious question. If you’re not into sports, are you really using it fully? Enough to warrant the monthly cost? Statistics announced today by Ofcom show that 90% of people still watch live TV every week. Some …

Gaming with Android and Windows, Mobile? PGS has an update.

Yes people, I’m learning the Daily Mail-style of click-bait again, in the vein hope that we’ll have enough advertising revenue to pay for the servers this month (sadly, ad-blocking is killing our revenue). OK, long story short. Imagine you want to create a Portable Gaming System. Something running …

Broken phone? How about fixing it yourself then?

So, your phone breaks. You’ve got no insurance. You have to pay a fortune to fix it, right? Well, yes. Even if you’ve got insurance you’ll still need to pay for the excess, and that can increase wildly depending on who the insurance is with, what you’ve done …

RCA tablets – Saturn 10 Pro – Review

  Back in June, we wrote a quick post about some new Android tablets destined for our shores, these being the RCA Saturn 10 Pro and the Mercury 7L. They’re said to be some of the best Android tablets around so I’ve been sent both devices through for …

Carl Zeiss lenses, back in Nokia devices 

Remember the Nokia devices of old? The ones equipped with the high quality ​Zeiss lenses? Together the two combined their skills to produce devices that could take stunning images. Take the 808 PureView for example, a device that still struggles to be beaten even next to the smartphones …

Oaxis launches InkCase, an E ink display case for iPhone 7

Remember back in 2014 when the Yotaphone was launched with its innovate design by having an e-ink display on the back of the device? Unfortunately, the device never caught on along with the next iteration – the Yotaphone 2. Well today, Oaxis has announced the latest in its family of E-Ink …

eBook sales on the slide as people switch back to paper

Want to read a book? You might head to Google Play, Amazon Kindle or the iTunes Book Store, right? Well, according to the Publishers Association, less of us are doing this. Although digital sales have increased by 6% to £1.7bn and account for 35% of total revenues, the …

Galaxy S8 hits record sales.

Well, it very much appears that Samsung is rising  like the phoenix from of the ashes of the Note 7. (Did you see what I did there?) The Note 7 disaster now seems to be far from customers minds, with virtually no impact on customer confidence with the …

Galaxy S8 manufacturing costs revealed.

Someone who is far braver than I am over at IHS Markit decided to get hold of the latest flagship from Samsung the Galaxy S8 and take it apart to have a look-see what’s inside. While ferking around, they have decided to do a quick cost breakdown of …

Wileyfox chews out a Nougat upgrade

Well, this is a nice surprise to see from the London-based company: they’re on track with the big guns to update their existing handsets to Nougat. Not only that, but they’re going to be the first company outside of Google to update to Android 7.1.1. Even though my …

Internet use now higher on Android than Windows

We are used to hearing news that more people are accessing the web on a mobile device rather than a desktop. However, a new and somewhat significant milestone has been passed, this being that Android’s internet use has overtaken Windows PC’s. According to StatCounter the Android platform represented 37.93% …

A few hours to wait for the Galaxy S8

Well, today is the day. It happens at some point every year. Not that day, the other one – the announcement of the next Samsung Galaxy S, probably named as the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Notice that all indications are that the Edge moniker has been dropped? …

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to return as a refurbished device.

According to a statement released by Samsung Mobile, some of the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 devices will be sold as refurbished devices. Samsung also has plans to salvage each other components such as cameras and semiconductors. In addition, they intend on extracting the metal parts from the remaining …