Category: General
Join the Coolsmartphone writers at 5PM British Summer Time for today’s Breakfast with Sundar Pichai event by Google. We’ll be bringing you all the news, opinions and reactions from this event. We expect to see some more information on Android and Chrome, particularly Android 4.3, a new Nexus 7 …
Rubber keyboards. We’ve seen them kicking around for a bit now, but the myType Bluetooth keyboard is easily folded down into your pocket and has keys which are spaced for touch typing, unlike most portable keyboards. When you need it, the myType keyboard connects to your device via …
Today has seen EE (formerly Everything Everywhere who were formerly T-Mobile and Orange) release their interim 6 monthly results which takes them to the end of June 2013. Main story here, they ain’t half bad. With turnover of £3.2bn and pre tax earnings of £734 million, EE seem …
The latest beta version of Swiftkey is now available, and it brings cloud support to spread predictions between all your devices. Swiftkey is a third-party keyboard that predicts what you type, as most Android users will know by now. The way it does this is by analysing what’s …
Popular video and text messaging app Tango has been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. You remember the SEA, they’re the ones who hacked the Sky apps so you couldn’t control your Sky Plus box from your garden. We reported earlier that Viber – an app for making …
The support site for the popular chat application Viber appears to have been hacked today by the Syrian Electronic Army, with their support page defaced and an extract from their user database extracted. In a statement made on the defaced page, the SEA wrote: Dear All Viber Users, …
The Ubuntu PC operating system has been around for a good while now, the free computer OS that is open source and helps make cheap pcs possible, especially for developing countries. They have been working on a smartphone OS for some time and now that work has been …
Sometimes I try to hide it, but quickly people realise that I have a bit of a “thing” about phones and, invariably, I get asked lots of questions. “What phone should I have next? Is this one any good?” This. This I get asked a lot. Once I …
We do get some slightly strange requests here at Coolsmartphone. BeeWi have sent us a car. Yes, an actual car. There was a bit of a fight to review it. Sadly it wasn’t a full-sized motor but a remote controlled Mini Cooper Coupé. Now, while we wait for …
Getting the Nexus 4 the other week left me a little nervous, I’ve seen more pictures of shattered back panels than any other phone ever. Needless to say I wanted something to protect it, whilst looking through the dozens of different styles I decided that this time I …
Intro I’m a dropper, a slipper, a butterfingers, the type of person who knows if the phone can drop at the worst time, it will. So testing the snappily named Spigen SGP Google Nexus 4 Ultra Thin Air Case for my Nexus 4 was something I took seriously. …
Let’s be honest, times are hard. The next smartphone you buy will probably be bought in one of two different ways. You’ll either get an unlocked phone or you can get a contract handset and sign up for two years or so. Getting out of that contract, by …
There are some of us who think that bigger is not always better. There are some of us who can remember back when the Ericsson T28 and T29, The motorola V70 and V90, even the Nokia 8800 family were some of the most luxurious and desirable phones going. …
The Moto X phone should be great, an important evolution of the smartphone in some substantial ways and a resurgence for Motorola. How have I come to this conclusion? Let me explain… A couple of weeks ago I bought the Motorola RAZRi which we reviewed here. This phone …
Regular readers will know that I’ve ditched my long-standing Orange contract mobe and switched to a rolling monthly deal instead. The benefits are that I’m not hooked into a 2-year deal, I’m spending less because I’m not subsidising that “free” handset, and I can hop to another network …
I don’t normally do this, but I have to issue an apology to Natalie. She’s the PR lady for Kensington and I did tell her that I’d review this product a good three months ago. “Pah, it’ll only take a few minutes to review that”, I thought. Wrong. …
I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for a couple of years now, and overall I’ve been pretty happy with their service. Crucially, the plan has unlimited data with a ‘fair usage policy’ – which turned out to be 500MB. Naturally, being a blogger, I go over that limit within …
Headphones. Everyone has them. Whether it’s the subtle white in-ear ones or those trendy over-the-ear jobbies that people sport on the way to work, it shows our love of music or podcasts. There’s a problem with these though. Unless you only have one ear plugged in, you’re going …
A case made of bamboo. It’s not something you hear of every day, but that’s what he people from The Snugg have loaned us. It’s currently £29.99 or $29.99 (don’t get me started on that currency conversion) and here’s a look at it. First up. Yes, it’s very …
A survey of 2,000 Americans has revealed that our TV viewing habits are definitely changing. The “Television and Advertising Survey” shows that more than a third (34%) of TV “viewership” is on a mobile device now. It also shows that 47% of Americans now watch TV programming on …
Nokia has just announced it’s financial results for Q2 and they aren’t pretty reading for fans of the Finnish manufacturer, with a loss of 115 million Euros ($151m) in the last three months alone. Ouch! Whilst this is an improvement compared to the 150 million Euro loss last quarter, …
Batteries in phones are still a massive weak point in mobile phones and in Bristol they’ve started to really take the p*** with their new invention – a charger powered by urine. It all works by using microbial fuel cells which, when peed on, produces enough charge to …
You know all about the HTC One Mini by now. As a Coolsmartphone reader you’ll have already seen our hands-on pictures and videos, but what you might not know yet is that it’ll be hitting both the EE and O2 network too. We’ve just had confirmation that the …
Samsung seem to be attempting to get into the Guinness Book Of Records for “the largest number of screen sizes in their portfolio” record with a different phone for each and every increment from 3″ up to 11″. Nokia increasingly seem to be heading off down that worrying …
Google Glass, yes we have to mention them in this article. It’s basically a pair of glasses you stick on your face and, visa a magical miniature screen, you get helpful bits of information fed into your vision as you go about your daily life. But wait, there’s …
At what point in history did the camera become the most important on a new smartphones spec sheet? Don’t get me wrong here, I love a decent camera phone, but increasingly I’m seeing manufacturers chase the “best camera ever” type of tagline and other specs or form factors …
While the Optimus G Pro (we mentioned here) has been available since February in LG’s home country of Korea, it has made a slow but steady march out to other countries around the world and is ready to reach a whole lot more in Q3. LG is announcing …
It’s an MVNO that almost needs no introduction – giffgaff. They’re known for unlimited data, bargain-basement prices and no-frills SIM-only goodybags. However, they still don’t sell phones. If you want a phone, you need to go and grab a SIM-free handset yourself and then get a giffgaff SIM …
As I’ve mentioned earlier I’ve switched networks recently and, whilst looking around, I checked into my usage habits. Streaming. That’s a big one. I love TuneIn because, put simply, every single station I find on FM radio is very samey and full of similar-sounding DJ’s saying similar-sounding things. …
We’ve covered a number of virtual network operators recently but perhaps the most well known is giffgaff. Sure, let’s be upfront, they’ve had a couple of bumps in the road with outages and the fact that a small selection of customers abused their “unlimited” data packages, but what …
Overnight it looks like the Google Play store has been updated to match the look and feel of their latest Android phone and tablet app. We’ve all used the new-look app on Android got a while now. We saw a sneak peek at this new design back at …
Don’t worry, this is not a cry for help from the impoverished staff here at CoolSmartPhone! Continuing in our irregular series of articles about MVNO’s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) we turn our gaze to charities. There has been such a large uptake of mobile phone usage in the …
Blimey, this was quick! So HTC announced this morning that the 4.2.2 update for the HTC One was being rolled out to the UK today, and now Three have tweeted the same for their phones. I think that’s one of the quickest updates from a carrier so …
What do you want from your smartphone? The answer to the above question is different for every single smartphone user but there is are some common trends. Decent battery life, a wonderfully bright screen, a one thousand megapixel camera, a full qwerty keyboard and so on and on. …
WhatsApp is one of the worlds most popular apps for messaging over data networks, yet the Windows Phone 8 version has been lacking, and a little flaky recently. Luckily it’s now had an update to address all of that. I message via WhatsApp on a daily basis, without …
The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a gorgeous bit of kit that will survive a dunk in a bath, but it’s far less likely to survive a drop on the floor. This is why any owner should be looking at cases. I have a couple of cases that …
Security. It’s something that concerns all of us. Just recently I went away on holiday and we left our cat in the house with someone popping in to feed her. Call me daft, but I wanted to keep an eye on the cat, the house and just ensure …
The updated Google Maps has finally appeared on the Play Store. Featuring the new stripped down UI first featured on the iPhone, it’s quite a change from the previous Android versions which were fairly Chrome heavy. There are also a number of other changes. UI The new UI …
Coorrr… Topless and exposed. Yes, it’s a phone case. This one is from a company called Dog and Bone cases, and it’s apparently a world-first topless waterproof rugged mobile phone case with an exposed touch screen. There’s even a patent pending on the waterproof technology that basically uses …
Global leader in flash memory storage solutions, and memory manufacturer SanDisk has a new product in their line of microSD cards, the SanDisk Extreme microSDHC and microSDXC UHS-I cards. These cards have been designed for users who need fast storage for their smart phone, tablet or camera, the …
