Category: Android

Got TuneIn? Like using Google Now? Combine the two my good friend, because now you can simply speak to your phone and tell it what station you’d like to listen to. It’ll fire up the TuneIn app and start streaming the station in question. So, if you’re in …

This is just plain cool and for that reason and no other (well I kinda want to play with one) I am going to post something about it. Anyway moving on. WowWee have just announced that they are going to be making and selling some “next robotic innovations”. …

This puppy looks to be a plastic version of the One M9+ for the Chinese market. It’s got the same measurements of the M9+ (150.99 x 71.99 x 9.75 mm) but is obviously lighter (at 155 grams) due to the fantastic plastic construction. The specs also remain fairly …

Kids using technology is a great thing, modern devices are so intuitive that they can be picked up and used by even toddlers, allowing them to play, create and learn in fun and exciting ways. Kids using technology is also a very scary thing as the little horrors …

Back in 2002 I picked up the Orange SPV. It was powered by an OS called “Microsoft Smartphone 2002” and actually had numeric keys on the front. Despite many cheap Android devices flooding the market, there’s still many people looking for a feature-phone. The classic Nokia devices have …

OK, OK, following our post mentioning the Vodafone pre-orders, you guys got in touch to point out that it’s on the Three website too. Prices start at £37 per month with the phone free and 4G is available for no extra cost. Three also has an exclusive on …

If you read about our afternoon with the LG G4 and you’re looking to get it on Vodafone, here’s some good news. The network will be carrying the new handset and will have a network exclusive on the red leather version pictured above. To be honest, I’ve had …

There for me was one feature of Android M that stood out above and beyond the rest – Now on Tap. Why is it so amazing? Well, let’s have a look. We all know that Android can support Google Now which is all well and good, but is …

Here is a brief overview of what went down in the Moscone Centre last night at Google I/O 2015. The conference started with a massive Pong game stretching across the panoramic screen around the venue. Some guy won a giant fluffy Android toy! Last year 8 out of …

Playboy, that great and venerable publishing powerhouse, have collected some interesting statistics about its readers.  Apparently there are 19 million visitors to its website per month – that’s only marginally more than Coolsmartphone gets.  Of those, 80% (15,200,000) use a mobile device or tablet.  Playboy has clearly realised …

Independent UK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has announced that it has started sales of the latest LG flagship device the G4, and the retailer has the black leather clad device as an exclusive, while also stocking the brown leather option as well as the plastic-clad grey model. …

Naming conventions are a great thing. Sony have the right idea, they have a few product ranges differentiated by a letter, ie E, M or Z. Then add a number on the end, ie M4, Z2 or E4 and that’s you sorted for the next 99 years along …

Today Sony announced an edition to its Xperia Z3 range, imaginatively titled the  Xperia Z3+ The newly announced device is both slimmer (6.9mm) and lighter (144g) than the Xperia Z3, and is available in four colour options to meet your individual taste and style. Choose from classic black, white or …

My main concerns, when snapping photos on my phone, is whether the photo is going to be backed up and just where it’ll be backed up to. Usually I store everything on an ever-filling storage card as I snap pictures randomly through the day. Those pictures, for the …

The modern day tablet is used for a whole lot of things, be it multimedia, playing games, browsing the web, catching up on emails, writing blog posts, online shopping or just good old social media. Picking the right tablet for you and your needs however is a difficult …

There are many new phones on sale now with fantastic cameras built in, but are these modern smartphones good enough to replace a standalone camera when going on holiday? The gap has got smaller and smaller as each manufacturer brings out their latest and greatest, and in my …

When you get “into” running a website and it gets a bit of traffic, you start hitting a problem. Paying for some web space isn’t enough. You need a virtual server, perhaps two or three, then when things get busier you’ll be looking at a full dedicated server …

I’m not totally sure who this guy is, but he’s done something a bit mad. The video below is all you need to watch really, and I’m merely here to pad out this article in the vein hope that it’ll get 0.001% of the Google Juice that those …

Periscope has been been finding quite a following recently. It’s all over Twitter and it’s made by… Twitter. The app allows iPhone users to broadcast a live video stream around the world from their phone. However, despite being released by Twitter themselves, the app is only available for …

There’s a possibility, according to Digitimes, that HTC are about to cut their orders for components used in the new HTC One M9. Orders are being reduced by up to 30% “due to lower-than-expected sales for the model”, but HTC have not confirmed this. According to “sources”, the …

If you’re scared by words such as “petite” and “entry level” then you need to stop reading now. This is aimed squarely at those feature-phone customers who just want a cheap and cheerful handset that’ll make calls and perhaps do the odd bit of browsing on the rather …

So this is the bendy version of the LG G3. At least, it is in my head anyway, because as a big LG G3 user, the LG G Flex2 looks initially nothing more than a kinky version of the G3. However, inside the G Flex2 there are some …

The Oppo R7 has just been announced at a big company launch event. It’s powered by ColorOS 2.1 / Android 4.4 and there’s an octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU running the show with 3GB of memory. Inside you get 16GB of storage and there’s a microSD card slot …

MixRadio, the music streaming service previously found only on Nokia Lumia before appearing on other Windows Phones and other Nokias, is now cross platform and available on iOS and Android devices. The service allows you to choose from a selection of over 10,000 pre-selected mixes (10,409 according to …

Our daily dose of Kickstarter pleas usually go into a box marked “meh”. Some are pretty dull, and they almost make us want to add our Kickstarter Campaign for the “Coolsmartphone Readers Beer Bus”. This one, though, jumped out of our crowded mailbox and has caught the imagination …

The LG G4 has barely arrived on our shores and already LG have announced the sibling devices, the G4 Stylus and the G4c, which are a slightly bigger lower spec version with a stylus and a smaller lower spec version with a “Compact” designation. Spec wise they are …

The weather is quite varied these days, you may have noticed! Keeping on top of what the weather is doing is achievable through a variety of methods, be it looking out of the window, actually going outside, using a forecast app or using the Archos Weather Station (other …

The budget phone market is big business these days, with everyone competing to be the “go to” budget device, one big seller these days is 4G and getting 4G on a device at under £100 is a good thing. I’ve been using the Pop 2 for a few weeks …

You’ve probably seen sped up videos online, where the original video is played back at 10X the speed. So the video of a man skiing down a mountain look really smooth and arty. But when you’ve tried to do it yourself they just look rubbish. Well amazingly Microsoft …

Last year we took a look at a company called iMend who repair tablets and phones. We gave them a rather poorly iPad to look at which had a broken button surround and cracked screen. However, they don’t just do iPads. They do iPhones, Samsung and other devices …

We’ve been covering smartphones since the Orange SPV and Microsoft Smartphone 2002. That, along with Microsoft Pocket PC, eventually became Windows Mobile 2003, then Windows Mobile 5.0, Windows Mobile 6.0, Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 6.5 and then we had the whole “Windows Phone 7 Series” launch that …

Samsung have this morning announced a brand new tablet going by the name Samsung Galaxy Tab A. You’ll see it on sale from the 21st of May. Both WiFi and LTE versions will go on sale so customers can decide which is better suited for their connectivity needs, …

Any fans of the Avengers might have noticed a lot of promotion alongside of the Samsung Galaxy S6, with downloadable themes and now there are Avengers cases and wireless charging pad. These official Samsung cases feature some of Earth’s mightiest heroes (Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain America and …

I don’t often plug apps that much because, for reasons best known to developers, we get about 10 “auto submitted” emails every day in an incomprehensible format which tells us nothing about the app or what makes it great. Gianluca, on the other hand, emailed me directly with …

If you remember back a few months we were very fond of the Yotaphone 2 when we tested it, however there were a few things that really stuck in our throat’s. The news today is that these issues may have been negated. Yota have announced that they will …

Let’s set your expectations shall we? This is £149.99. It’s not going to compete with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and it’s not going to challenge the very latest iPhone either. What it does, even with a slightly older version of Android, it does well. This is from a …

Remember this interesting Google Maps “addition” ? What initially appeared to be a dig at Apple actually turned out to be a prank by someone using the Map Maker system. It allows users to add extra detail to Google Maps, such as rivers or parks etc. Trouble is, …

Prestigio might not be a name you have heard in the mobile space before, but sometimes the hidden gems are the best ones.. maybe. The 5550 Duo features a 5.5 inch display with a 13 megapixel camera on the back,  8GB storage which is expandable via microSD cards …

I have a small child and he can be a handful at times. Back when he was younger we were able to pop him into the car and I could guarantee the motion of driving would send him to sleep.  Ahh those were magical days…. However now he …

Despite what LG told us at the launch event, the LG G4 has appeared on the list of compatible Quick Charge devices. Qualcomm Quick Charge is that thing that allows certain devices running either the Snapdragon 810, 808, 805, 801 or 400 to charge up incredibly quickly. Quite what …