Category: iOS

Apple Pay coming to UK

  Currently confined to the US Apple Pay, (the tap to buy service that uses the NFC to beam your relevant card details to the vendors terminal, similar to “contactless payment we already have fitted to some UK credit/debit cards.) might not be US only for much longer. …

Hitman Sniper Explodes onto Mobile – Review

Hitman is one of the big name brands in gaming and provided one of the smash mobile hits of last year with Hitman Go, and now Square Enix Montreal brings Hitman Sniper to the small screen. Sharing similarities with the PC game of the same name and taking …

Apple Watch in stores from 26th June

Apple have announced that their latest product type, the Apple Watch will be available to buy in some stores from 26th June. All orders before now have been for delivery only, leaving the in store experience for trying on the different versions. The company also announced that Italy, …

WowWee Reveal MiPosaur and REV robots with apps

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”. …

Spark – Lightning Fast Email on your iPhone

  I’ve always been a big fan of Readdle’s apps, and they’ve been a supporter of iOS since the beginning days. Spark is their latest project, and one that aims to once and for all make email enjoyable. Maintaining your email is a hassle. There’s no doubt about …

Apple publish official workaround for text message bug

Earlier this week we reported on the fact that you could reset an iPhone and generally annoy the owner by sending them a simple text message. The workaround, as we mentioned then, is to get Siri to respond to the text, or you can turn off message notifications. …

Playboy app now available

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 …

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 …

Crash an iPhone with a text message

Fancy totally upsetting your iPhone friends? Well, send them a text. It seems that if that text has a certain Arabic character sequence in it then it’ll totally ruin their day. Good huh? Well maybe. Something like this… لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗 ..will totally crash their …

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 …

Broadcast Yourself with Stre.am

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 …

MixRadio now available on iOS and Android

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 …

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 …

Archos Weather Station – Review

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 …

A look at Beamz – A Musical Instrument for Everyone

Playing a musical instrument can be a fantastic creative activity and a fun pastime, but the level of skill required can make it non-inclusive. Enter Beamz, a smart laser beam driven MIDI device that connects to your PC or iOS device to provide a simple & interactive way …

Broken phone? No insurance? No time? Try this..

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 …

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 …

Could an iPad replace a laptop?

In a time when every news site and blogger wants to be first out the door with news, having the right equipment is more important than ever. As a mobile blogger myself and someone who likes to share news,  I normally take a mobile phone for tethering use …

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 …

Apple Watch – First Impressions

OK, thanks to another member of the team I’ve been able to get my hands on an Apple Watch. Dover Street Market had stock of the White 38mm, so that’s the one I’ve got. What do I think? Well, getting it out the box is a pleasure. The …

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 …

The Apple Watch. What’s it like to wear £12,000 ?

Arriving for a meeting in London later in the day I had already decided to visit the Apple store in Regent St. However this was for no ordinary everyday browse, this time it was to try on their new VERY limited ‘Edition’ Watch. This starts at £8,000 for a …

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 …

Skyscanner, who are they and what do they do?

Those of you who are regular listeners to the CSP towers podcast will no doubt have heard of Skyscanner and its resident mobile guru Matteo. Although it sounds from his name that he would be a resident of warmer climes, he actually harks from my neck of the …

WWE 2K released on iOS

Big brand names are starting to become commonplace in the App Store, but adapting home console games for the mobile arena presents challenges, on both a technical and gameplay level. Different developers have chosen different methods to face this conversion challenge. From identical ports such as BioShock and Skylanders trap time …

Apple Watch – Day one orders hit 1 million

That’s right. A million. On day one. There are always going to be some people who aren’t into wearables, and there will be others who can’t quite buy into the Apple way of doing things, but there are enough people who think differently. In a report from Sllice …

Microsoft Band Hands On

Yesterday I was at a Microsoft  event in sunny Glasgow where I was lucky enough to get hands on with the Brand new Microsoft Band, which is launching on Wednesday. I am very impressed with it and in the short time I wore it, it felt quite comfortable. The Band …

Arctic P324BT Bluetooth headphones – Review

Taking a pair of headphones out with me running is quite an undertaking, controlling my music whilst I’m out running is also fiddly. The fit is usually not quite right, the volume not quite right, the cables flap around and catch on stuff, the Bluetooth connection to my …

Hannspree SportWatch fitness tracker – Review

The fitness wearable market is quite a varied one. With many manufacturers creating all different shapes and sizes of wrist bands or watches. A few weeks ago Hannspree announced the Sport Watch which seemed to have the ideal combination of features. They’ve sent me one which I’ve been …

EE switches on Wifi Calling

We knew it was about to happen. Apple announced EE would be a partner for WiFi calling back in Sept 2014 and with the announcement of support for Wifi Calling on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge from the 10th April, it was only a matter of time. …

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 …

iPhone Task Managers Mega Review

Update #1: Added GoodTask, Gneo, Zippy on 07/04/15 First published on 08/11/14 Unlike most app reviews, this one is going to encapsulate several task managers for iPhone. Instead of reviewing every single one under the sun, I will pick apps that I feel are worthy of being on anyone’s …

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 …

Piper NV – Review

Home automation is something that is only really limited by your imagination, possibly what accessories you can buy and possibly also by how much money you have. You get the idea though…. One of the more intriguing things I saw at MWC was the Piper NV, it is …

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 …