Category: Software (Apple)

Get a bottle of bubbly quickly with taxi app Gett

Gett is an app which lets you grab a black taxi. You can download it on iOS and Android. Now, with intense competition from the likes of Uber, Addison Lee and others, they’re diversifying by offering an on-demand delivery service too. It works thanks to drivers and riders …

Coda 2 for iOS is an Amazing Update to a Great App

Earlier this week, Panic – maker of apps Transmit, Prompt, and Coda – unveiled a humongous, free update to Diet Coda, now called Coda for iOS. Panic really wants to stress that that this is no longer an accessory or counterpart to the Mac app, but rather a full …

TVPlayer announces subscription service for extra channels

We’ve already covered a data-free way to get TV on your tablet this week, but if you want streaming TV shows you can also use the likes of TVCatchup or TVPlayer. Both have got mobile apps, but if you want to get access to premium (paid-for) channels, you’re …

Storytime for grownups. Why you should try digital audiobooks

Prologue If you’ve ever taken a class on ancient literature, mythology, or even anthropology, you’ve probably run across “the oral tradition”, mankind’s earliest form of storytelling. Perhaps I’m getting to heavy here, but I’m basically saying that listening to stories rather than reading them was the norm at …

Get a personal coach in your pocket

Cross-training? Out for a run? What you need is a bit of encouragement. Something that’ll make you break out into a sweat. You need to get worn out, and quick. You need to go harder and faster. You need to build your stamina. So how’s about…. Yes, the …

Google Music, now free, with some hefty caveats

Google Music is great, but you need to pay for it. Booo. But wait, you can now get it free via an ad-supported version via the website plus it’s coming to Android and iOS. You’ll get adverts, but apart from that we can see absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t want this. …

MOT Models launch mobile portfolios – A world first

When I applied for my first few jobs I had to sit in a stuffy office while some HR person clicked through my CV. I had a folder with all my qualifications in there too, but fast-forward to today and I’m instead getting job agencies using my LinkedIn …

The Terminator gets added to your navigation

Way back in the day we used to upload voices to our hacked versions of TomTom to Pocket PC devices. Remember someone having Yoda speaking out the directions? Now we’ve got Waze which, if you didn’t know already, is a rather clever community-driven traffic and navigation app. If …

Get your eBooks from.. the supermarket

Did you, my friend, know that Sainsburys do eBooks? No. No. Neither did I. I just go in there for some apples and my special cream. Now there’s a whole new website on www.sainsburysebooks.co.uk filled with the things, and you can either take a preview or go to …

Running a business from home on your smartphone

I spoke to a friend recently who is already selling products from home. They make a little bit of additional cash but, with a smartphone doing nothing now than advertising their business to friends on Facebook, they wanted to know if there was any additional way of getting …

Screen Protector to give iPhone 6 and 6 Plus a back button

I moved to iOS last December and one of the great things about it, particularly compared to Windows Phone, is the wild and wacky world of accessories that are available.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in the varied world of Kickstarter projects.  A new idea currently making …

Learning to print the perfect picture

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 drone that follows you. Lily.

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 …

Track and share your dog walks with Walkies

** Warning. This was typed early in the morning after 3 hours sleep. Apologies in advance. This ain’t the Daily Telegraph. I started this website from scratch some 13 years ago now. All I had was a copy of Microsoft Frontpage and 16 million pounds. It’s been a …

Skype and Sky. Too similar, rules court

Here we go again. Another battle between Sky and Microsoft and, after a lengthy case, the court has agreed with Sky. What’s the problem? Well, somehow, it would seem that Skype .. … could be mistaken for Sky.. This isn’t the first time that Sky have thrown their …

Watch Sainsbury’s Movies and TV via your Chromecast

You knew that Sainsbury’s offered TV and Movie content over your smartphone, didn’t you? No, I’ll admit, neither did I, but I do now. If you use Sainsbury’s Entertainment and have their app, you can now output your favourite content to your TV via Chromecast. It’ll also let …

Google to deliver more secure and familiar age ratings

  It’s been a problem for some time now, and to some extent it still continues. I’ve been banging on about the fact that the “family computer” is now a distant memory. You can’t really keep an eye on your kids when they’ve got small connected gadgets which …

Reduce your London cab ride cost – Share the bill with SPLYT

Honestly it seems like we’re getting some sort of taxi app every week here at Coolsmartphone HQ. Today it’s the turn of SPLYT, who’ve raised our eyebrows by offering shared taxi fares to reduce the cost of getting around and 99p rides for a week, beginning next Monday …

Will smartwatches have the same range of apps as smartphones?

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. No sooner has the Apple Watch been announced and we’re already getting emails telling us about apps that’ll run on the thing. That’s expected I guess, but when betting apps also set to arrive on the thing, you know it’ll probably be …

OfficeSuite Free review

Getting Office documents working on your mobile device can be a hit and miss affair. Sometimes you’ll find an app that opens certain documents but won’t let you edit them. Sometimes you can edit some document types but not others, and you can find that the document will …

Grab the opening hours for anywhere, just head to your pocket.

The people at OpenHours have sent me a missive about their new Android and iOS apps for checking the opening times of stores, banks, restaurants and more. You can give their website a spin now and put in something like “TSB Birmingham“. It’ll then tell you how long …

Compare the (super)market

Don’t get me started about politics. One group tell you that things are great. The other guys say that things are still rubbish. Me? I’m voting Monster Raving Looney. I think they’re marginally better and my local MP is dressed as a chicken. Brilliant. If you’re not feeling …

Lucy Hedges shows how to f’ing save money

Right, April Fools is now over… unless you’re in America, then it’s probably definitely still on. Either way, I’d like to state up-front that this is definitely an April Fools joke. This is the First Direct Swear Jar app. An app that runs in the background and detects …

Hey Cortana, let’s try an open relationship.

The big selling point of Windows Phone, at least in the TV ads, has been the fact that Cortana is supposedly better than Siri. Get yourself a Windows Phone and you’ll have a proper digital assistant, they say. So, the very last thing you’re going to want to …

MWC – Ford looking to solve your city transport problems

In London our underground system works very well considering the age and complexity of it. People commute in and out of the city and leave their cars in expensive car-parks or, if you run a business servicing the city, you have to try and get your big diesel …

Top apps to keeping your finger on the pulse of sports news

After reading Leighs problems with his TV (it had an unfortunate collision with a Nintendo Wii controller), I noticed that it would ruin his yearly get-together watching the Cheltenham Festival. Hopefully he’ll have a new TV sorted by then, but if you’re into your horse racing you’ll no …

YouTube Kids now live. Family-friendly streaming videos

The new YouTube Kids app we mentioned yesterday is now here and, in a pleasant surprise, it’s available for both Android and iOS. Whether kids or parents will actively download this instead of using the current YouTube app (complete with rather dodgy content that may or may not …

Why Nintendo won’t make their games available for smartphones

For years, gamers have been imploring Nintendo to release its older games on smartphone platforms and operating systems. These pleas have fallen on deaf ears, however, current president Satoru Iwata is instead taking an entirely different approach. More specifically, he plans to remake popular smartphone games for the …

How Video Conferencing enables mobility

1995 was an interesting year. The music charts featured the “Outhere Brothers” with “Boom Boom Boom” and there was those unforgettable lyrics… “Boom boom boom now let me hear you say wayoh, wayhoh!” Back then I was too busy partying and wasn’t really concerned with working in IT. …

Getting your app to stand out from the crowd

Creating your own app is hard enough. Learning to code, getting it right, making something popular and then hoping it’ll be downloaded lots is a long and bumpy road to travel. However, if you’ve got a thoroughly enjoyable and addictive game, or a useful and interesting app, it …

Elite for the iPhone – a look at Unknown on iOS

The original Elite is one of those classic games that has gone down in history as being truly groundbreaking. Pushing the 8bit generation of home computers, Elite proved it was possible to generate a massive vibrant 3D wireframe universe, with space battles, multiple ship types, space stations, an …

Two step verification for iMessage and FaceTime

For a while now Apple has had the option of two step security as an additional level of protection for your personal details. Then, last year after those nudes where leaked, they enabled it on iCloud. Logging into iCloud.com, even in a browser, would trigger the verification process …

Teen Developers – Josh Trommel

Thinking of creating your own app? It’s not as hard as you think, provided you put your mind to it. In our regular feature we take a look at teenage developers, how they got started, what drives them and the challenges they face on the way. This week, …

Laundrapp expands. Get your clothes dry cleaned easily

After starting in London, the on-demand laundry and dry cleaning app known as Laundrapp has just launched in Edinburgh too. They’re planning to launch in another four cities over the next fortnight. The idea is pretty simple. Instead of having to carry your suit or smalls across town, you instead …

WhatsApp rolling out voice calling features

The super-popular WhatsApp multi-platform messaging app looks to be rolling out of their highly-anticipated voice calling feature. A WhatsApp user from India has posted some screenshots of the new UI and explained how the whole procedure works. According to him, the voice calling option will only show up once …

NENX Review

Roulette and card games haven’t really ever been my forte if I’m honest. However, I do like the challenge of making an educated guess, so when the guys at NENX gave me some free cash and told me to simply guess which way the financial markets were going …