Author: Leigh Geary
You may have missed it, but the Xperia XZ Premium wasn’t the only Sony phone to be announced in Barcelona this year. The Xperia XA1 and XA1 Ultra are for selfie lovers and a “super mid-range” phones. The XA1 has a 5″ screen (720 x 1280 pixel) and …
Sure, she’s not the newest iPhone in the world and it “only” has an 8 megapixel camera and 4″ screen, but for £199 you can’t argue much. The mighty Argos is selling them right now, completely unlocked. It’s got Siri on-board and has a dual-core A7 CPU. Up …
This was tucked away around the back of the Alcatel stand but there was no shortage in interest. It’s a bit of a heavy thing at 180g and we’ve already posted a BlackBerry KEYone gallery after it leaked all over the place last Saturday morning. This one is …
We’ve given the press people at Kodak quite a few emails now. We’ve still not been able to borrow one, so during our trip around the Mobile World Congress we finally got a few minutes to have a look at the Ektra in the flesh. It sells for …
The BBC has analysed NHS data which shows an continuing increase in sleep disorders in children under 14. In the last decade hospital attendances have tripled and ten times more prescriptions are being written out to help kids get off to sleep. The reasons? Well, it’s not all …
Just the other day we took a look at the rather massive Doogee Y6 Max. Imagine one of those old cheap tablet devices but with less bezel and a better resolution screen. Now imagine it costing about the same amount as one of those cheap tablets but it’s …
Don’t worry, I’d never heard of them before either. They’re actually a company called Shenzhen Kenzinda Technology Co. Ltd. and they’re 10 years old in May. They have factories in India, Iran and Ethiopia along with Shenzhen City. Now, as “E&L Mobile” they’re trying hard to move out …
To be honest I was quite surprised that the flexible screens we saw last year are still being made on the same production line and not by a big smartphone manufacturer. FlexEnable tell me that they’re now looking to include their screen in factories, production lines and distribution …
If you’re in certain areas of the world you can buy this InnJoo Pro 2. InnJoo are base in Dubai and seem to produce everything from TVs to hoverboards. This handset, which sells €359.95, has some very admirable specs and looks good too. Powered by a MediaTek MT6757 …
Remember the YotaPhone 2 we reviewed? You can go out and buy one of those for hardly any money at all and you get two screens – a normal colour one up front and an e-ink screen around the back. Here in Barcelona, just a short while after …
Powered by the very latest Android Nougat OS, I was quite surprised by the Hisense kit here at Mobile World Congress. Older handsets we’ve received had questionable build quality, but there’s definitely been an improvement of late and this tough smartphone doesn’t look overly “blocky” in appearance – …
I don’t know what it is about me and Sony. I’ve never totally gelled. Over the course of this week in Barcelona I’ve called their new phone “the ZX” (it’s not, that’s something to do with Spectrum computers) and I’ve also called it the “Xperia XZ” (it isn’t …
I had a look at the rather good Nubia Z11 yesterday and was pretty impressed by the camera. On the other side of the stand is the aggressively priced Nubia N1 and the newly-announced Nubia N1 Lite shown in black on these shots. The Lite still has a 5.5″ …
We came to have a look at MyKronoz last year and they have a wide variety of wearables again this year. This one is brand new, and combines a digital screen with old-school analogue hands. The result is the ZeTime, which has a 30 day battery life, heart …
No! Don’t make me leave Barcelona! It’s warm and sunny here! OK so this one isn’t a smartphone, but it is a rather cool charging unit. You can charge it up and then unscrew the bottom to reveal charging points for your devices. Inside, depending on the model, …
Sure, you could get the new / old Nokia 3310 to play Snake on, but it’s not the traditional version. It is, as you may have seen in my hands-on video the other day, a modem jazzed up version. If you want the traditional version, try getting this …
Available in May, this will cost you €149 (£127.74) in either black or white. It’s another phone from TCL and this is a pretty entry-level affair. The Alcatel A3 actually has a higher resolution camera than its bigger brother, the A5 LED. Here you’ll get a 13 megapixel …
Standing out from the crowd here in Barcelona is particularly difficult. I’m not talking about the stands, because it’s already tricky enough in that respect. Money (a lot of it, think millions of pounds) buys you big floor space and a bigger impact. Some companies resort to sweets, …
I’ve filmed this slightly out of sequence but today we’ve got my rambling tour of halls 5, 6 and 7. If you’ve missed some of these, don’t worry, we’ve got Halls 1, 2 and 3 here plus Halls 8 and 8.1 from yesterday. Today the highlights include… The …
Whether you’re a new driver or a more experienced one, it’s really worth paying attention to this. From today, if you’re caught using your mobile phone at the wheel in the UK, you’ll get 6 points on your licence and a £200 fine. New drivers who have passed …
Yowser. 32GB of 4G Data on a SIM only deal, currently half price at £14.50 per month. You can’t argue with that can you? This one got spotted by Jack F, who emailed me when it appeared on HotUKDeals. Just head here to get the offer. It’s worth …
Those rather clever robot makers are getting a little too good at their job now. This latest robot is called “Handle” but look a little bit too “alive” for me.. What next? Will it start watching TV and reading books really quick like Johnny Five in Short Circuit? …
This one was actually launched at IFA last year but still takes pride of place on the Nubia stand. First there’s a “Standard Edition” which comes in either silver or grey. This has 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage. It costs €499. Then you have the rather bling-tastic …
Today it’s March 1st. Can you believe it! Where does the time go eh? We’re still in Barcelona though, catching up on the biggest phone show around. Yesterday we ran the Hall 1,2 and 3 Video Special so today, as you’d expect, we’ve got … umm… Hall 8 …
The one device we’ve not seen here is the much anticipated Samsung Galaxy S8. Although Samsung did have a press conference, and although they have a massive stand here, the S8 hasn’t shown up. Until now.. Serial leaker @evleaks has just posted this image, which has the date …
A couple of years ago I had the idea of filming my walk around this expansive event so that you guys could sort of see it from my perspective. The whole place is really rather large, and it takes a long time to get around. This year I’m …
As I mentioned earlier today, I’ve borrowed the Doogee Y6 Max 3D. It is, and let’s not lie to you here, a bit big. The dimensions are 89mm wide, 171.3mm tall and it’s 8.95mm thick, weighing in at 250g. Powered by a MediaTek Octacore MTK 6750T CPU, it …
Imagine a pebble. One of those really cool pebbles that you find at the beach. Those ones that you use for skimming across the water. They’re brilliant aren’t they? Here at Mobile World Congress I’ve managed to get some time with the Honor Pebble Magic. It’s very pebble …
This morning I talk a walk to the China Mobile stand and there, amongst the robots and networking kit, was the Xiaomi Mi MIX we covered last year. This, though, was my first time seeing it in the flesh and .. woaha… A 6.4″ display oozes right to …
I tend to follow a wide selection of people and organisations on a Twitter. One is the National Police Air Service. Don’t ask me how I started following them, but they do lots of good work keeping us safe from the skies. They also have a website where …
Taking part for the first time here in Barcelona is BMW. They’re showing off their driverless car experience outside between Halls 3 and 5. Despite people walking around the demonstration area and a lot of other obstacles, the remote control parking worked brilliantly on these little electric powered …
Here at Coolsmartphone we live and breathe mobile, so we figured that being shackled to a LAN connection just wasn’t the thing to do, especially when you’re in Barcelona covering the biggest mobile conference around. So I decided not to spend all my time in a hotel and …
Whilst walking around the expansive halls here at Mobile World Congress, I couldn’t help but think about the re-release of the Nokia 3310. Why? Well, here in the Fira Gran Via it’s all about the future of mobile, not the past. Stands are pushing “5G” (even though nobody …
This morning we covered the Sony press conference live. They announced a new Xperia XZ Premium handset which we’ll be telling you more about shortly. They also announced a couple of mid-range devices – the XA1 and XA1 Ultra – and some open-ear headphones …… but our attention …
Last year, way back in Hall 8, I spotted the Panzer Glass people showing off their screen protection kit. The demo involved a hammer and a knife, and the pain felt by everyone watching was palpable. Sadly, I never uploaded the video, so I’m back again this year …
These are definitely very nice looking gadgets indeed. The paint job on the back is particularly stunning and reflects and shimmers the light around as you move it. Available from March, the U Ultra is the larger of the two phones but both run Nougat 7.0, have microSD …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSc1YQqRrG0 Both powered by Nougat 7.0, these will be shipping next month. The two handsets are well built and there’s a definite focus on a clean and premium metal finish here. The G5 has a 5″ Full HD display (1920×1080) display whilst the G5 Plus has a slightly …
In reality the Nokia brand should be worthless. Microsoft grabbed the mobile arm of Nokia and then either.. (a) Performed a number of changes in order to make it more successful (b) Completely destroyed the mobile side of the company after launching devices like the 930. ..it depends …
Following on from the EE announcement, we’ve had confirmation that both Three and Vodafone will be ranging the Huawei P10 and Huawei P10+ too. Three have confirmed that they’ll be taking the black and gold models. The P10 and P10+ will be available pricing from March in Europe …
Well, when we saw the launch of the LG G6 we thought that having Google Assistant on it was something special, but not so. It turns out that Google Assistant is coming to Android 6 and 7. Google tell us that .. The Assistant is already available on …
