Category: Website news

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod. How good is this eh? This man played Darth Vader. I mean sure, they got James Earl Jones to do the voice (y’know, with great lines such as “The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force”). Anyhooo.. This, my friends, …

It’s still in beta, but it’s hope for those who can’t install the relevant Skype client. This should be good news for those wanting Skype on a Chromebook, but to be honest we’ve already sorted that one and I couldn’t get the Skype for Web beta working on …

I mentioned fairly recently that you could get some pretty sizeable online storage from a variety of places but Amazon wasn’t included. It’s worth considering though, because they’ve now added the ability to upload an unlimited amount of photos if you’re using their Prime service. Unlimited? Is that …

If you’re a fan of our weekly podcast then you’ll probably already be aware about the delights that can enter your ears on a regular basis. However, if you’re on the bus, in the car or stuck on a train and want to even more audio entertainment, how …

Whether you’ve got a big microSD card in your phone or you’ve got plenty of on-board storage, backing your stuff up to the cloud is always a good idea. There’s a big selection of online storage providers, or you can get yourself a NAS drive and backup those …

I absolutely love the PocketCasts app, I must use everyday and I have installed it on every device I own both iOS and Android, to be honest it’s one of the few app’s I can’t do without. If you don’t know what PocketCasts is, it’s a podcast aggregator …

We had a great stack of articles online yesterday, but unfortunately our magical Twitter rabbit failed to post any of them. If you’re following us on Twitter then you’ll have presumed that we were all asleep. Truth is, we actually added a stack of items. You can check …

It seems a little strange to see this announcement.. Retirement? Of the most trusted and well-known leaker in the smartphone world? It seems confusing, especially after there’s no mention on the fairly new website he created. The conspiracies so far are.. 1 – Twitter account hacked. 2 – …

Remember earlier in the summer when I kept posting about my charity bike riding? If you missed it, I basically had too much to drink and kinda agreed to get fitter and do some mental rides to raise a bit of cash for charity. After riding a mountain …

This weekend, following quite a bit of advertising by the company, I gave the Music Magpie app a try. The company buy DVDs, CDs, games and electronics plus clothes, but their app lets you snap barcodes and you get an instant price on your stuff. So, armed with …

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week or so, you’ll have seen a DeLorean whizzing across your TV screen in ad breaks. Now me, I rewound the TV when I first saw it, and thanks to the fact that it’s for Phones 4u, I …

It’s not often that you’ll see the owner of a website saying this. It’s even more rare to see that person explaining what happened or going into detail about how the site got compromised and what steps were taken to rectify the situation. However, I wished an article …

Are mobile phone sites safe? We’ve quickly moved away from desktop PC’s and, instead, we’re browsing mobile sites on tablets and smartphone more than ever. These sites are no longer a simple gimmick as they provide a vital source of income, business and simple traffic for those businesses …

Welcome to the live audio stream of Episode 99 of the Coolsmartphone Podcast. This live broadcast will start at approximately 7.30pm bst. This weeks topics are the whole Google I/O thing and the fact that we’ve all got an LG G3 to play with this week. The final …

OK, I’m going to take some airtime and abuse my position just one last time. Don’t turn off just yet. I’ll make this brief for you. Later today I’ll be heading for London. I’m not attending a fancy press launch with miniature food, no. I’m going to get …

In just a few days time I’m planning to do a cycle ride for charity. It’s in aid of the the Douglas Macmillan Hospice. I have a grand total of £0 in sponsorship on my JustGiving page. I’m dedicating it and doing it in memory of my father. …

You’ll no doubt have seen our new look by now but, as we do every few years or so, here’s a quick update on how you can get involved here at Coolsmartphone.. If the video wasn’t enough, here’s the rundown.. Podcast You can get a full listing of …

Easter is a time to eat lots of chocolate eggs and spend huge amounts of money in DIY stores in a vein attempt to make your home look all pretty. So, with that in mind, we’ve been doing some painting and decorating. Coolsmartphone has been online for nearly …

I am writing this whilst travelling down to Birmingham from south of the border. Why would I willingly come south of the border? Well there is only one reason gadget fans – a show dedicated to gadgets! As you will have no doubt established, I will attending Gadget …

We know you love technology, we know you love your smartphones, your accessories and everything in between. How’d you like to cover it? To add your opinion and post your thoughts on the latest games, apps and mobile happenings as they occur? Coolsmartphone is on the hunt for …

Each week the Coolsmartphone crew sit down, huddle around and share a big bag of Cheesy Puffs. It’s a bonding session. Perhaps even a therapy session in a way, and it’s all recorded onto this D90 cassette. When we’ve all shared our pain, our joy and all those …

We held a top level meeting recently to plan the future of Coolsmartphone. After a game of darts and several beers, we decided that we needed more pictures of kebabs on the site. To be fair, it wasn’t the most productive meeting we’ve ever had, but we did …

I could just dress this up and tug on your heart-strings like those daytime TV adverts asking for “just £2 per month” but I won’t. I’ll instead tell you a story. A few months ago I’d visited a friends house. It was just after Bonfire Night and I …

Morning all. Now, if you’re one of our fantastic podcast listeners, I have an apology to make. Unfortunately the latest podcast isn’t here just yet. The reason involves a pot of white spirits and some paint. My laptop, that poor Vaio I mentioned only yesterday, ended up with …

Social media is a big thing these days, finding a way to fit Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ into the working day without contravening the workplace rules is sometimes a struggle. But we’ve sussed the latest social media craze and we now have an account on Google+. …

My lunch break has become increasingly interesting in recent years. I meet new people and literally bump into them as I head out to grab a sandwich. It’s the “phone zombies” – those people who walk down a street staring at their phones. They put walking and avoiding …

The festive season is about to hit us head-on, so if you’re looking for present ideas you’ve come to the right place. In the last few weeks we’ve already added a number of reviews and features, but there’s more to come. If you’ve missed the ones we’ve published …

Hello. I’m going to borrow your eyes for a minute. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief, but today it’s Children in Need. If you’re not aware, this is the BBC’s big charity event and it supports disadvantaged children all across the UK. As an example, just up the …

It’s at times like this that I feel humble. Y’see, it’s you lot that keep us here. It’s you guys that keep us posting this stuff. Reviews, covering product launches and keeping up to date with all the latest information, it’s not easy and it’s quite time-consuming too. …

The summer, at least here in the UK, is well and truly over. I’ve had to stop sitting around in my garden wearing just shorts, especially now that the police have told me that my front garden isn’t the best spot. It’s too cold, and it’s getting dark …

So, thanks to you lovely people we’re pretty much there now. Only £40 stands between us and our spanky new server. We’ll be announcing the winners of our prize collection tomorrow, but I just wanted to say another rather massive thank-you to those who’ve chosen to donate and …

I’d like to say a massive thank-you to everyone who’s donated so far. It’s warmed the ‘ole cockles and we’re already in the final few days of our donation drive by the looks of things. We’re trying to buy ourselves a powerful new server which will keep the …

We’re over half-way to our goal now and, again, I must thank everyone for helping towards our new server. Coolsmartphone has been going for well over 10 years now and we’ve grown to be more than just a “blog”. We have a dedicated team of knowledgeable writers and …

I want to say a big thank-you to everyone who’s donated towards the cost of our new server so far. You’re all amazing, and we’ve already got £116 in donations. There’s still a long way to go though, and we need £699 for a more powerful server to …

Morning all. Hope you’re all well. Recently we’ve struggled somewhat with the increasing amount of visitors on Coolsmartphone. After the issues last year we, thanks to your help, moved to a new co-lo provider with ample bandwidth and we’ve recently increased capacity, but the outage during our live …

You may have noticed issues the other night during the iPhone coverage. We’re also experiencing load issues again now and we’ve decided to take a two-pronged attack to fix this. Starting tonight at 11PM CEST / 10PM BST / 9PM UTC we’ll be doing some maintenance to one …

At the minute I’m spending a lot of time on my phone. This means that every time I visit a website I’m getting a completely broken experience. Some websites show me the default desktop version, some show me a mobile variant. That’s fine, I can cope with that, …

Do you remember Snake? Back in the days of the earlier Nokia handsets I remember playing the brand-new “Snake” game in the pub… oh, no sorry.. err.. I mean I was in Primary school. Yes, that’s where I was. Now, just a couple (ahem) of years later Carphone …

Flickr the original photo sharing website has had a bit of an upgrade during the night, as part of Yahoo’s new direction Flickr has had a refresh and the main selling point here is a whole Terabyte of storage. That’s a whole lot of photos, Flickr have actually …

I’ve got a couple of annoyances when I browse websites on my phone. The first is the fact that some idiotic person working in Government decided that we should all get warned about cookies. Unfortunately there’s no set way to do this, so various websites have different ways …