Category: Android

When you’re the IT guy in the family..

At the weekend I had “that call”. I’m sure many of you will have had a similar call from a friend or relative. It happens when you somehow become the “computer guy” and you seemingly have the ability to fix anything relating to tech. In this case, it …

Tesco launches Tesco Pay+

I’m getting in the habit of not carrying cash much now. There’s several benefits to this. For starters, everywhere I go there’s the “tap to pay” machines and I tend to use my phone. Also, there’s the added benefit of using the, “Oh lads, can you get the …

Want to launch your own tech start-up? Get some tips from these companies.

Although tech can sometimes be a little imposing, it can supply the tools and the solutions for endless business opportunities. Some of the UK’s greatest start-ups have technology to thank, and this is especially true with companies like Uber and Swifkey. The mobile app industry has grown to …

Voda to carry the Moto Z2 Play

Yes, that’s pretty much the entire content of this story, right there in the title. Still, I’ve read the Daily Mail website and, if we now throw in 40 very similar photos with 4 paragraphs of text, it will apparently constitute a story. The Moto Z2 Play, which …

Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact now available on Vodafone

Fancy a new handset with the Sony design skills and a 5.2″ 1080×1920 pixel screen? Want it to be dust and waterproof? Want it to measure 148 x 73.4 x 7.4 mm and weigh in at 155 g? Sorry. I can’t help you with that. ONLY KIDDING! Coming …

Amazon drops new toys into the Alexa playroom

The Amazon Alexa offering got an added bonus yesterday. The Amazon Echo, Echo Plus, Echo Show, Fire TV and Fire HD 10 will all be arriving here in the UK on, of course, Amazon UK. There’s a new version of the Amazon Echo, which will be £89.99, and …

Twitter full of big, fat tweets…. thoughts?

So we all live in a socail media age, and one of the main protagonists of this age is Twitter. Since its inception many years ago, Twitter users have been restricted to getting their musings across in 140 characters. This was both a blessing and a curse. It …

Bill Gates goes Android

It’s not something I talk about much, but I’ve actually met Bill Gates. He’s a bit shorter in real life and had a lot of bodyguards following him around at the time. We spoke about the Microsoft Smartphone because, way back when, Microsoft was actually pretty successful at …

Specialist app store opens up for Android customers

Just last month we covered the fact that Google Play is now listing real-money gambling apps. For quite some time before, the iPhone and Android stores have differed in this respect. On the iPhone, you could download gaming apps that let you transfer your own cash into an …

Honor 9 wins big in T3 awards

Right now I’m carrying around the Honor 9. It definitely ticks a lot of boxes for me. The battery life is decent, it takes great photos, it has a great screen, there’s 64GB of on-board storage and it’s pretty nippy too. The blue or grey one is available …

Sony Xperia XA1 now available on Vodafone

It seems a long time since we first saw the Sony Xperia XA1. It has a bigger brother, the XA1 Ultra, too. The XA1 has now popped up on Vodafone has a 5″ screen 720×1280 pixel screen. It’s powered by Android 7.0 and has a 64-bit MediaTek Helio …

Some of my favourite iOS and Android games

Some of my favourite iOS and Android games I tend to see the same games being played on the bus to college in the morning, but I’m a little different. My choice of apps, and the games I have installed, isn’t always mainstream, but I enjoy them all …

Monqi – A safe smartphone for your kids

A few years ago I worked for an internet provider. My advice, if any parents ever asked, would be to keep the PC in a “family room”. Now, well now you just can’t do that. Kids demand phones, and those phones aren’t “dumb phones” either. No. The latest …

It’s official, Google enters into big-money HTC deal

Overnight Google gave us the official news which confirmed the substantial HTC rumours. It’s loose change for Google, who have almost $100 billion in the bank. They will now acquire the HTC for $1.1 billion. Their announcement is as follows.. With this agreement, a team of HTC talent …

HTC shares suspended as Google takeover rumours persist

With the Pixelbook leaking, we’ve already seen a bit of what Google will be announcing on October 4th. However, there’s much more.. Leaks suggest a new Pixel, cunningly named the Pixel 2. These pictures have been found on the internet and there’s rumours that the HTC-built phone will …

Want a new iPhone, but don’t want to pay a crazy price?

OK yes. The iPhone 8 is a great phone. The iPhone X is an even better phone. But if your son, daughter or significant other wants one of these, it’s a LOT of money to be spending. Take, as an example, the iPhone X pricing we covered recently. …

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 …

The iPhone X …let the parodies begin

As we mentioned earlier on Twitter, new iPhone handsets tend to go through a number of stages during their lifespan. Stage 1 – The iPhones are announced in front of a set of carefully-selected press. Stage 2 – The handsets are derided and criticised. Stage 3 – The …

New Android vulnerability allows fake installer screens

Many of us will probably be getting numb to the fairly regular security warnings that become inextricably connected to our smartphones. There’s an acceptance of risk when we download apps, and we freely skip past that screen which tells us just how many permissions an app requires. Now …

Lindy NC-60 Review

Recently we told you about the Lindy NC-60 Headphones with Active Noise Cancelling technology. They have at last dropped through the Coolsmartphone Towers mailbox. What arrived was a nice glossy black box displaying the NC-60 in all their glory in a nice tight wrapper. Just like Christmas, the …

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 …

EE open up their first Showcase store

EE are showing off a new type of store in Tottenham Court Road. It’s one of their new “Showcase” stores and basically lets you play with and enjoy the range of tech and services that the network provides. You get to experience experiential zones and there’s the chance …

Alcatel IDOL 5 announced at IFA

A full aluminium body, curved glass and it’s 7.5mm thick. Not bad so far and, with a 5.2″ FHD 1920 x 1080 pixels screen at 423 PPI it’s going to be pretty decent to use. Specs on this one include 16GB of internal memory (plus a microSD slot, …

IFA – The LG V30, hands on

We’ve managed to get our hands on with the newly-announced LG V30. It’s a big launch here at IFA for the company, but we’re still not exactly sure whether it’ll be coming to the UK. The closest we have is “key European markets”. We’re hoping.. Anyhow, here’s it’s …

Samsung Galaxy Note8 – Hands on

Did you see the Galaxy Note8 launch? We’ve got all the Note8 details and we’ve taken an in-depth look at the Note8 deals on offer too. But how about seeing the thing in the flesh eh? Let’s see. It’s pricey. Very pricey, so we had to handle this …

IFA – Honor paint the town .. Robin Egg Blue

Play House Plumb. Grape Jamboree. Butterscotch Tempest. Daft names for paint colours. You’ve probably seen those paint shades in your local DIY store and thought, “How do they come up with those names?”. Well, now mobile manufacturers are doing it too, and we’ve got some reasoning and descriptive …

Head back to the 80’s – Golden Axe

Anyone remember Golden Axe? Well, me neither, but this new / old SEGA game is now available for both Android and iOS. It’s free to download and play but you’ll obviously get a few ads to pay for the thing. You can though, if you wish, remove all …

Sony at IFA 2017

This morning I just made it to the Sony Press Conference with Peter Holden of Talk Android. Another event, another incremental series of product launches, or was there more? Read on here on Coolsmartphone.com to find the answer to this existential question… We came in as a German …

LG V30 Arrives. Get all the details.

How does a phone with a 6″ screen sound? How about one with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 CPU and 4GB of RAM? What about the 64GB of storage with a microSD slot? Sounding promising? Welcome, then, the new LG V30, announced just this morning. It’s one that has …

Acer at IFA 2017

Today Acer had a packed press conference at IFA in Berlin where they threw an impressive product portfolio at the market in preparation for the 2017 holiday season shoppers. Acer’s Jason Chen, the CEO and Chairman of the Taiwanese company, was on stage running the show and joined …

Top five ways to store money on your phone

I drive my wife crazy on a weekly basis it seems. It tends to happen when she asks if I’ve got any loose change. I don’t. I very rarely do. At work, the vending machines and the staff restaurant – they’re all “tap to pay”. When I go …

HTC U11 UK pre-orders now live for the 128GB version

If the HTC U11 review sparked your interest, but you want a touch more storage space, today is the day for you. The one we looked at had 64GB, but now you can pre-order the unlocked 128GB version on the HTC website. Now, we should perhaps point out …

Why Sports Betting is suddenly appearing on Google Play

If you’ve spent any time browsing Google Play recently, you may have spotted that something has changed. The Play Store here in the UK, until very recently, not allowed gambling with “real money”  in apps and games. Now though, following an update to the developer policy page, you …

Samsung Note 8 – The deals!

The jury is still out on whether we should actually be calling it the Note8 or the Note 8, but either way you can get all the details here. If you want one, we’ve got you a list of all the offers and deals, courtesy of the various …

Sky Mobile – New £35 deal for bundled Sky TV and a mobile

Sky are pushing hard into the mobile arena, but they’ve now announced a better deal if you want some Sky TV action too. Their newly-announced £35 per-month deal delivers an iPhone SE on a “Swap24” plan. This, along with their appropriately-named “Swap12” offering, lets you upgrade to the …

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 – All the details and the live launch

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Yeah. That didn’t go well did it? It became famous for all the wrong reasons – appearing on warning signs at airports and generally becoming the butt of jokes involving explosions or fireballs. Today marks the launch of the Note 8, and the …

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 …