Author: Leigh Geary

EarFun Air Wireless Earbuds – Review

Available for £54.99 as I type, these have a number of attractive benefits. First, the play time is long – some 7 hours before you even consider putting them into the supplied case, which adds another 28 hours of playtime. Also worth noting is that the case, which …

5G Conspiracy Friday

I’ve spoken many times about 5G here in the UK. The conspiracy theories surrounding the safety and health of 5G technology really kicked into high gear as we all went into a prolonged coronavirus lockdown. People spent more time inside browsing the web and getting sucked into Facebook …

More crazy SIM-only offers!

Right! More deals. More offers, but you have to be proper quick on this because they all end in just a couple of days from now. First, these offers are all with Three and you need to join Topcashback to get the cashback, but that’s free and it …

Special Coolsmartphone SIM-only deal!

OK, so this offer is normally £10 on the iD Mobile website. For that you’ll get a SIM-only deal delivering a massive 10GB of monthly data plus unlimited texts and calls. However, here at Coolsmartphone we’ve had a chat with the nice people at iD Mobile and they’ve …

Free Fortnite emote for OnePlus owners!

Got yourself a OnePlus 3, 3T, 5, 5T, 6, 6T, 6T McLaren, 7, 7 Pro, 7 Pro 5G, 7T, 7T Pro, 7T Pro 5G McLaren, 8 or 8 Pro? Well, if you’re into your Fortnite, I’ve got some good news. Right now, in fact as of about 40 …

Another OnePlus Nord leak

The might @evleakshas just dropped some renders of the upcoming OnePlus Nord. These seem to match the brief glimpse we got in a previous leak. The reveal seems to confirm a quad-camera setup and that dual hole-punch selfie camera setup we saw earlier. In addition to all that, …

Huawei 5G – It can’t be ripped out easily

Until now, the UK government have decided to allow Huawei to play a role in the 5G deployment here in the UK. Despite US concerns, the UK allowed Huawei to be used in “non-core” kit. However, GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre has delivered new findings into Huawei and …

Podcast 254 – Blimey! Remember these?

“Sporadic” seems to be the word for these podcasts. If you’ve listened to some of them then you might be aware that they’re usually recorded in the car as it’s the only free time I have. However, these are not normal times. These are very strange times and …

Motorola G 5G Plus appears. Hello again Moto.

You want 5G but you don’t want to be shelling out a load of cash. This, then, is where the Moto G 5G Plus comes in. It’s jut popped up here on the Motorola website. Running Android 10 you get either 4GB or 6GB of RAM and either …

OnePlus Nord on the way. Another “New Beginnings” video online

The second episode of the OnePlus Nord / “New Beginnings” series is now online. They’re really big in India and this video concentrates on that success. If there’s one thing I can hear from these videos it’s the fact that OnePlus really listen to their customers. Focus groups, …

Honor 9X Pro – Review

This is just £249.99 (at the time of writing) and, as usual with Honor, you get a lot for your money. My initial thoughts were consumed by the absolutely awesome rear-end. It reflects light and bounces it around beautifully on this Phantom Purple model – even with the …

Why you should never film in portrait

I always flinch when I see “mobile phone footage” on news channels filmed in horrific portrait style. People tend to forget, then when they get home and want to watch their holiday videos on the TV it appears in a tower-thin strip in the middle of their wide-screen …

Old Skool FM and AM to continue for another decade at least in the UK

Despite the growth of DAB and the increasing choice of radio stations, the government here in the UK has reversed plans to close down analogue stations by extending licenses for another 10 years. It means that older car radio equipment will still receive signals until at least 2032. …

Did the OnePlus Nord just pop out?

Leaks-a-go-go over the weekend, with the OnePlus Nord apparently due to get a dual selfie camera and a very tall and thing aspect ratio. Several tweets picked out this particular image from the OnePlus Nord Amazon India store… The OnePlus Nord looks to be hitting the “Why do …

How smartphones are changing the way we buy

With a number of challenges for high-street retailers right now, taking money from customers really shouldn’t be one of them. Let’s face it, with coronavirus concerns and high rent, you don’t want to be spending cash on extra staff to keep your stock in check and then accepting …

Centreforce radio. This is why I love technology.

I’ve spoken previously about my annoyance with the selection of music available when you’re out and about. In the “old days” we’d perhaps get in the car and have a crummy selection of FM radio stations which all sounded very similar and very dull. Heart FM, Free Radio, …

Oppo A72 now available on Virgin Media

Remember the Oppo A72? Well, Virgin Media are now selling it with prices starting at just £13 per month. For the data-hungry, you can get a whacking 100GB for just £18 per month. No upfront costs on theres and you can get the phone in either black or …

OnePlus 8 Pro wins Best Smartphone

The OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are amazing phones. The Pro is £52 per month with a £29 upfront cost on Three with 4GB of monthly data or you can get the 128GB storage version for £795.66 from Amazon if you want to buy outright. For that …

Belkin Wireless Charging Pad – Now down in price

Like your wireless charging? Want a 10W charging pad? Well, right now there’s a deal on at Amazon, Argos and Carphone Warehouse, meaning that you can get one of these for just £19.99 – that’s a saving of £15 from the normal £34.99 price-tag. The offer runs from now until August …

Honor 9A now available, complete with freebies .. but no Google Play

This is the all-new Honor 9A. It’s an entry-level smartphone but comes with some very decent specs, including Android 10, a 6.3″ 1600x720p screen, 3GB RAM, a 5000 mAh battery, a triple megapixel rear camera arrangement and 64GB of on-board storage that can be boosted with microSD storage. …

Cat Phones Announce the S42 Rugged smartphone

So, you want a hard-core phone that’ll easily cope with the rigours of daily life? You want the new “unbreakable” and rugged Cat S42. It’s just £229 and will be available to buy on July 20th. The S42 adds a long battery life, plus it’s drop proof and …

Massive 200GB microSD card for really not-that-much

£24.99 is already a good price for this massive 200GB microSD card, but if you sign up to the Western Digital Newsletter, you’ll get this for £22.49. The delivery is free and – although we should be storing stuff securely in the cloud, it’s good to have lots …

Meet the new Oppo A72

Starting at a mere £219, this is the new Oppo A72 smartphone. For your money you get a 6.5″ 1080 x 2400 pixel 20:9 screen at 405ppi, Android 10, a Qualcomm SM6125 Snapdragon 665 processor (octa-core up to 2.0GHz) plus either 4GB RAM / 128GB storage or 8GB …

Microsoft to close or convert all retail stores

Goodbye to the high street. Goodbye to the shopping mall. Times are changing and Microsoft is to close or “reimagine” their stores across the world. Across the USA, nearly all stores are closing, whilst the NYC, London, Sydney and Redmond store will instead be converted to stores that …

Sky Mobile partners with Doro. We go up-close with the Doro 8050

We’ve longed covered the elderly-friendly Doro phones. They come with great features such as a friendly and easy-to-understand interface, a step-by-step setup guide and remote help via the MyDoro app. These phones aren’t just all about bigger text and louder sound, but they’ve also tuned audio frequencies for …

OnePlus Lite on the way?

OnePlus have recently given us two absolutely gorgeous phones in the shape of the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro, but not everyone wants to spend several hundred pounds on a phone. With technology advancing, a sub £250 phone can now give a very respectable performance and it’ll …

Curve cards stop working as dodgy Wirecard nosedives

You may have heard about payment processor Wirecard in the news recently. The Financial Times revealed dodgy transactions and a massive €1.9bn of cash missing from their accounts. The company have filed for insolvency but it’s meant that companies relying on their services have suddenly seen a stop …

Why buy new? gifgaff dishing out some great refurbished phones

Last year I bought my son a reconditioned iPhone. I’ve got him on a SIM-only Virgin Media deal and, because I paid cheap for a second-hand iPhone, it’s a low monthly outgoing. If you’re looking to do something similar, just get yourself a refurbished “like new” phone, find …

Review – Volutz USB Cables. Damn, these are good!

USB cables. It’s fair to say that we’ve gone through quite a few of these during our years writing about smartphones. Indeed, just last week one caught fire here at Coolsmartphone Towers so it’s definitely worth getting a good quality one. Head to the Volutz website and they …

Honor 9A – Up close and personal. Is the App Gallery good enough?

A microUSB port, single-band (2.4GHz only) WiFi and a price-tag of just £129.99. This is entry-level, but (as usual for Honor / Huawei), it’s a beautiful design and seems to tick along relatively well on the MediaTek Helio P22 octa-core 2GHz CPU. It’s 9mm thick and comes with …

New more affordable OnePlus phones on the way

The recent OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro are really good phones. We’ve given them stacks of coverage and you can pickup the base OnePlus 8 for £599, which the base OnePlus 8 Pro starts at £799 for an 8GB + 128GB model or £899 for the top-end …

Sony Xperia 10 II and Sony Xperia 1 II coming to giffgaff too

Both the “Mark II” versions, news of giffgaff carrying more Sony phones comes just after Sky Mobile added the Xperia 10 II too. The Xperia 10 II will be available to purchase at a “buy outright” price of just £319. You can also stick just the phone on …