Category: General
Three might be the last of the UK networks launching 4G, but many people have chosen to wait for them. It’s especially due to the fact 4G on Three costs no more than your existing deal and you don’t need to swap any plans or SIMs. Also, you …
Last September HTC announced the Desire 601. It’s a mid-range device with a 4.5″ QHD display and the video montage feature we also saw on the Desire 500. The handset also includes a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU, which – despite the fact it’s called the Desire 601 – actually …
Leigh wrote in October about offers from Cash4phones not being what they ought to be (to put it mildly!), but things have gone from bad to worse. The company is now officially in receivership and the police are looking for the director. If you sent your phone in …
Remember that ludicrous sequence from the first Mission Impossible film – where disaster is averted by a train going into the Channel Tunnel and losing phone signal? Well its going to need a rewrite thanks to EE. EE have announced this morning that they will be providing the UK …
Motorola have sent out press invitations today to an event being held in London next Tuesday (14th January). As is common with these invites, they haven’t told us what the event is in aid of. There were rumours floating about in September about a new Motorola tablet to …
Lets start with a short story. Nokia was circling the drain at the beginning of 2011 and the good ship Symbian was struggling to stay afloat. The anchors of the hefty N8 and E7 were pulling it down into a whirlpool of dispair. The liferaft of the the …
Yahoo! have announced today that they have acquired Aviate, the context-aware smart launcher for Android. The deal was announced by Marissa Mayer during the Yahoo! keynote at CES, and posts were made shortly after on both the Yahoo! and Aviate blogs. Aviate launched their product into closed beta to …
The update draws nearer. Apple today sent out their latest iteration of iOS 7.1 beta. This iteration contains some bug fixes as well as a few UI tweaks. The bug fixes aren’t as visual as the other changes, but they are most definitely there. We can show you …
Today Apple announced that the AppStore has generated $10 Billion in 2013. Guess what, $1 Billion of that was in December alone. That’s some serious spending on the users part. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services said the following about the whole exciting …
Whilst Sony did announce the new Z1 compact, they have also continued the trend of CES 2014 by announcing more wearable tech to go with their Smartwatch 2. The new Smartband and Core are similar in idea to the LG Lifeband but aren’t just about fitness and like the …
The network originally wanted to get one million customers before the end of 2013, but now it looks like growth is accelerating, with two million 4G customers now using EE. The second million has only taken four months to achieve, compared to 10 months for the first million. …
We recently covered some alternative point of sale systems which used your phone as the payment device. Using your mobile, you can effectively shop anywhere, but how about a solution that’ll let you take payments AND manage your entire store – both online and on the high street.. …
So, we’ve got really good mobile games and we’ve got the odd Android-powered console that plugs into your TV. The latter hasn’t quite taken off as yet, but how about a wireless controller for your iPhone? One that’ll give you the classic gaming experience? This is the Stratus, …
Pebble have announced a second model at CES tonight – the Steel Pebble. Containing the same internals as the first Pebble, the outside has had a complete overhaul. Out goes the plastic case, and in comes stainless steel, Corning Gorilla glass and a tricolour LED. Importantly the new …
LG today announced a pair of wearable technology; the Lifeband Touch and the Heart Rate Earphones. The Lifeband Touch is a wearable band that clips onto your wrist in a similar way to the Jawbone Up or Nike Fuelband. It is designed to monitor the users activity …
Hands up who washes their hands after using their smartphone? What about, who uses an antibacterial screen cleaner or wipe on their smartphone or tablet? Anyone, anyone at all? Given that the average smartphone has more germs on it than the average toilet seat it might be worth …
If you’re using today’s super powerful smartphones like me, you are now carrying everything in your pocket, your bank details, your social networks and normally some irreplaceable photo’s of loved ones. So your phone should have some kind of password/PIN/pattern/facelock protection to stop unwanted eyes to getting to the …
Nvidia have started CES a little early by announcing the K1 family of chips for mobile devices. However, they won’t just be in mobiles, they will also be appearing in 4K TVs, consoles and cars (more on those later). The K1 is Nvidia’s attempt to reclaim lost market …
We recently heard how O2 saw a 62% increase in data usage over the New Year festivities. Vodafone have now been in touch and they’ve seen an even greater increase – their smartphone customers used 80% more data than New Year last year. It seems that texting, although …
Following our full HTC Desire 500 review last month, Three have announced availability online and in-store. Prices are pretty good too, with just £18 getting you 100 minutes per month, 5000 texts and unlimited data (24 month contract). You can choose to notch up to 500 minutes and …
Yes, I’ll confess to watching a TV show about scams last night. A lot were scams that you’re probably already aware of, such as the card skimmers on cash and ticket machines and 419 scammers trying to fool you out of your money. However, I’d not heard of …
With everyone starting to settle back to daily lives and Christmas and New Year over once again, we start to get figures on how networks handled the ever increasing demand on mobile services. O2 have given us some information on how they performed. The information given to us …
The festive season is definitely a good time to “people watch”. On Christmas Day you’ll see tablets and smartphones getting unwrapped and, as the new owners get online, you’ll see a surge of traffic onto major websites around the internet. This year and last I have witnessed a …
It’s an often discussed topic as to whether iPhone users are more intelligent than other smartphone users, or the opposite as they need a simpler phone. Well now there is “proof” – iPhone users are more intelligent. Now before you all head straight to the comments section to …
It’s January 1st, New Years Day 2014. The very last thing I should be doing is SHOUTING but, on a dreary wet day when your hangover is making your head feel like a football, I figured that a competition was in order. If you’re lucky enough to own …
Audi and Google are teaming up to bring you Android in your car. Not only are these two giants at it, Nvidia are making the hardware. Audi plan to introduce Android to power it’s Navigation and multimedia systems in new cars but, as always, if it fits older …
Yesterday I went to watch the Harry Hill Movie. It is, I’ll confess, utterly insane. The kids seemed to like it, although there weren’t a great of laugh-out-loud moments. I was just utterly puzzled about the whole thing and how on earth it had got into a movie. …
Welcome to the Coolsmartphone Award Ceremony, coming to you, prerecorded from Coolsmartphone Towers. Our team of experts (and Simon) got together yesterday and decided on the best and worst bits of 2013 in order to entertain you and reward/shame those responsible. As with all good awards ceremonies we’re …
Those who purchased the Oppo N1 before the CyanogenMod news (we are talking about you here Ronnie ) will be excited to know that the official CyanogenMod ROM for the device is available to all users. As promised the official package is available for installation on any version of the Oppo …
When it comes to data access in the UK, many customers flock to Three due to their great pricing and high data allowances. Oh – plus the fact they have a very fast DC-HSPA network offering 3G speeds of up to 42Mbps. This new dongle, made by ZTE, …
Sorry, the competition is now closed and we’ll have the winners available soon. If you don’t win, why not get a Lumia 625 on pay as you go from EE.
ScreenshotCleaner is a handy little app for bloggers and developers alike. As a blogger I take a lot of screenshots on my phone which, obviously, always have the status bar on. This isn’t really a problem, but often it has notifications and icons that are irrelevant and messy, …
The world’s largest mobile provider is China Mobile but Apple have never had access to their customers… until now. The iPhone 5s and err.. that other one that some people have thought about buying (the 5c) are arriving onto their 4G network. We half-knew it was happening after …
The 4.4.2 update to the Moto G was originally promised for early 2014, but Motorola says it’s “thrilled to start delivering on that promise early”. The Android 4.4.2 KitKat update is now available to Moto G handsets purchased on Motorola’s website and Amazon in the US. Motorola says the Moto …
Oppo teased the N1 to death before its recent launch, and now it’s Cyanogen’s turn as the CyanogenMod Edition nears release. The newly launched CM YouTube channel is now sporting a taster video so we can see why we’d want to opt for this non-standard version. http://youtu.be/VV-BPYgWDqc Focusing …
Google Play Music development has always been ahead on Android, unsurprisingly, but the iOS version has taken a big step forward to catching up with the latest update. The first thing you’re likely to notice is the slightly updated user interface. This is to bring it in line …
Here’s a pretty interesting story from The Atlantic (no, me neither) with some revelations from Chris DeSalvo. He worked with Andy Rubin at Danger before switching to Google to work on Android. It was 2005 and Android was in the early stages, but by January 2007 and – …
The new Finnish company / phone Jolla announced yesterday that their first ever handset is ready to order if you’re based in EU, Switzerland and Norway. The phone was initially only available to pre-order earlier this year and the first production run orders ended in July. A second …
The Jolla phone is finally here! Despite an attempt to deliver to my home literally the day I moved out and missing me then being re-delivered to work when I had that day off I finally got hold of the new smartphone that the Finnish nation are tentatively …
Samsung and LG seem to be having a competition at the moment to produce weird and wacky phone designs, with the LG Flex and Samsung Galaxy Round leading the race at the moment. Samsung’s next step is to patent the design of a folding dual display smartphone, which …
