Category: Hardware Reviews

Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ – Review

Well isn’t this a beautiful looking thing? Everytime I show this to somebody there is an audible “wow”. You could perhaps put the slowest, cheapest CPU and memory in here and people would still be amazed by looks alone. I have the gold version here from giffgaff and, …

A week with the Huawei P8

James reviewed the handset in May but I wanted to add my own throughts because, at the end of the day, this is a phone which costs less than £350 SIM free. You can get it for less than that on Amazon and you can pay buttons per …

HTC Desire 626 – Review

Think HTC and you’ll invariably think of the HTC One handsets. They’re beautiful. They’re well-built and they’re feature-rich. However, they’re also pretty expensive, so what about those who want a taste of HTC but don’t quite have the cash? The Desire 626 is a device I’ve had as …

Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 5.5 – Review

Something I have been seeing across the industry right now is an emergence of lots of low price flagship challengers. These come from various sources, with the most prominent of these being China. Now, the inherent problem with buying from China is what then happens when it goes …

Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition – Review

Those of you who read the site regularly will no doubt be aware that I have had a couple of Ubuntu devices (including the Bq Aquarius E5) come through over the last few months to review. Now we have another one, and this is the daddy of them all. …

Pebble Time – Review.

It has been a while since I mentioned the Pebble Time. To be honest this is intentional. I had an issue with the first one they gave me, which was resolved by a replacement (more on that later). Now that I have had some time to use it in the …

BBC News on your wrist.

The latest update to the BBC Worldwide News app version 3.2 sees the inclusion of Android Wear support, meaning short news snippets will be sent to your wrist. Articles are presented in a RSS style layout, with the ability to swipe horizontally and vertically: go up or down …

Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition – Unboxing

It feels like it’s taken a long time to get to this place, but finally I have a Meizu MX4. I was very impressed with this when I first had a hands on with it at MWC earlier this year. Since then I have had more of a chance …

Meizu M1 Note – Review

So this has surprised me in a way. When it first arrived the box itself didn’t exactly scream “premium”. I mean, there’s nothing really wrong with the box per se, but I’ve got used to some of the recent review phones turning up in carefully sculpted containers that …

Samsung Galaxy S6 – Review

So here we have the Samsung Galaxy S6. Immediately you can just feel the quality oozing out of the handset. It is well built, slim and gorgeous to look at. There’s a distinct industrial feel to it, especially around the edges of the phone This white version from …

BQ Aquarius E5 Ubuntu Edition – Review

For the last few weeks I have been using an unusual phone. It’s this, the BQ Aquarius E5 Ubuntu Edtion. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if you weren’t aware of this device as it’s not a widely known manufacturer in the UK. Add to that the fact …

Tylt Vu Wireless Charging Car Mount – Review

Although I don’t spend all day in my car, like a lot of mobile aficionado’s I’ve moved over to using my handset as the source of my In Car Entertainment (do people even use the phrase ICE any more?). Between using it for navigation and listening to music etc, …

Xperia Z4 Tablet – Unboxing

Another year has gone by and another Sony Tablet has arrived on our desk at Coolsmartphone towers. Today I have the real pleasure of unboxing the new Xperia Z4 Tablet. We first saw this stunning device at MWC, which we covered live. It was here that we were …

Archos 80b Helium 4G – Review

Using a tablet whilst out and about may seem like an alien idea to some, but for many including 4G in a tablet makes it the ideal companion to take on the train, bus or even to the local cafe. Historically tablets have been Wi-Fi only with the …

LG G4 – Review

Most phones look the same. Big screen? Check. One button up front maybe? Check. Manufacturers struggle to achieve differentiation. LG have tried to stand out from the crowd by keeping the screen large and reducing the bezel, which means a better one-handed experience. It also means that the …

Touchjet Pond Projector – Review

A projector running Android, surely that is the perfect device for use in the boardroom or the meeting rooms across the globe. When I heard about the Touchjet Pond I was rather intrigued, a projector that turns the surface you’re projecting onto into a large touchscreen, just seemed …

Remix Ultra Tablet – Review

I have now had this tablet for a few weeks now and I was holding back on the review until a few software updates had been delivered. Since I did the unboxing video back in April it has been a very busy time for the Remix as it …

Vodafone Smart ultra 6 – Review

Come, take a seat my friends, because something is happening again in the mobile industry. When I was young kid (when) started a little website called Coolsmartphone. It was all about a network-branded smartphone called the SPV. For years after we saw networks branding their logo onto phones …

Honor 6+ – Review

Honor decided to step up their game with the 6+, in a world of fancy curved glass or metal devices they had to release a really good looking device and at a decent price point too. Quite how a relatively new brand make a mark on the mobile …

Acer Liquid Jade Z Review

This thing is incredibly light and remind me obviously of the previous Acer Liquid Jade from some time back. It also kinda reminds me of the older iPod in the design, plus the fact that it’s painfully thin. The phone itself comes in at 110 grams. First impressions …

BlackBerry Passport – Review

The idea that a keyboard makes you more productive has been an underlying ethos for BlackBerry devices for a while now. The thought being that you spend most of the day bashing buttons on a laptop or desktop keyboard so why not do it on your phone. Previous …

Archos Oxygen 101 – Review

The modern day tablet is used for a whole lot of things, be it multimedia, playing games, browsing the web, catching up on emails, writing blog posts, online shopping or just good old social media. Picking the right tablet for you and your needs however is a difficult …

LG G Flex2 – Review

So this is the bendy version of the LG G3. At least, it is in my head anyway, because as a big LG G3 user, the LG G Flex2 looks initially nothing more than a kinky version of the G3. However, inside the G Flex2 there are some …

Alcatel Onetouch Pop 2 4.5 4G – Review

The budget phone market is big business these days, with everyone competing to be the “go to” budget device, one big seller these days is 4G and getting 4G on a device at under £100 is a good thing. I’ve been using the Pop 2 for a few weeks …

Honor 4X – Review

Let’s set your expectations shall we? This is £149.99. It’s not going to compete with a Samsung Galaxy S6 and it’s not going to challenge the very latest iPhone either. What it does, even with a slightly older version of Android, it does well. This is from a …

Prestigio MultiPhone 5550 Duo – Review

Prestigio might not be a name you have heard in the mobile space before, but sometimes the hidden gems are the best ones.. maybe. The 5550 Duo features a 5.5 inch display with a 13 megapixel camera on the back,  8GB storage which is expandable via microSD cards …

BlackBerry Passport – Initial Hands On

Over the years I’ve played about with a variety of phones running fledging mobile OS’s. Be it Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, Firefox OS or even Ubuntu Phone. For the last week or so I’ve been using the BlackBerry Passport and I’m loving it. The BlackBerry Passport is a …

Huawei P8 – Review

The Huawei P8 is one of those phones that look good, damn good to be precise. Some may say it looks a bit like an iPhone, or an Xperia Z3 or an HTC One, but there is no arguing in that it looks good, damn good. We were …

UNU DX-Free case review

On modern smartphones battery life can take a massive hit. Consider all your favourite apps running in the background, emails, tweets and updates plus GPS and Bluetooth connectivity. There are portable chargers available which help boost the battery but these need to be carried around with your phone. …

ZTE Blade S6 4G – Review

Over the past few years we have started to see the emergence of more and more Chinese manufacturers into the Global smartphone market. One of these companies is ZTE, for a while they were happy being the people behind the scenes of dongles and some network branded handsets. …

Honor 6+ – Initial Impressions

The Honor brand seems to have appeared almost from nowhere, Honor started off as the budget sister company of Huawei, with a few low cost devices under its belt, now they’ve released what one could call a budget flagship. One could also say that with the Honor 6+ …

Grace Digital Mondo Internet Radio Review

Beyond accessing radio stations through apps on my iPhone, internet radio was a new concept that I had never really considered. So, when I was given to opportunity to test the Grace Digital Mondo Internet Radio, I was keen to see what it offered. Complete with a catalogue …

Motorola Moto G 4G 2015 – Review

Motorola have their three ranges, each have their place in the world and each arguably succeed in their purpose. The Moto G is their budget midrange device, more expensive and with more features than the Moto E and less features than the Moto X. Motorola however do update …

Remix OS overview.

The other day I unboxed the Remix Ultra Tablet and posted an article with my first thoughts. I have now had a bit more time to use the tablet and I now wish to share an overview of the OS as it is very similar to the Android …

Honor 4x – Video overview

I seem to be bumping into phone bloggers who are getting widely recognised by PR people, networks and manufacturers for adding a few YouTube videos and making a couple of posts on Facebook. No website. No slaving away for hours writing huge reviews. Just a quick video, a …

ZTE Blade S6 4G – Unpacking

It’s another day and the review kit is coming thick and fast. Today we have the ZTE Blade S6 4G, an affordable Android Lollipop phone sitting in the mid level price bracket (currently £189 on Amazon). The phone is available now, and we had a brief hands on …

Remix Ultra Tablet – The unboxing

Today is the day people. The day where I can hopefully get rid of my need for a Windows PC forevermore (well at least out with work anyway). I have been lucky enough to get hold of a Remix Ultra tablet from Jide Technologies. These are the guys …

A week with the HTC One M9 – My final thoughts

Missed our “week with” articles? Here they all are… Day one – The criticisms Day two – The audio Day three – Up close Day four – The camera Day five – Making it your own Dan has also written up an extensive HTC One M9 review but …

Honor Holly – Review

To truly succeed in the budget phone market you have tick many boxes, you have to look good, you have to perform well, you have to have some features from phones two or three times the price and most importantly you have to be cheap. Companies like Microsoft …

HTC One M9 Review

Mobile World Congress is where most flagship devices get announced every year, and 2015 was no different. This year HTC arrived with an upgrade to their popular M8 phone which hopefully filled in the few missing pieces to make this the best phone they ever made. First of all a …