Category: Reviews
The Olloclip falls into a category I’ve never reviewed or even used before. It’s a 3 function lense that clips over the camera on an iPhone 4/4S and adds three new functions, Wide Angle, Fish Eye and Macro. Read on for my thoughts and some sample pictures. The …
The bottom of the range is never a good place to be. Not if we’re honest. If your budget will “only go” as far as the One V then you might think that you’re losing out. Sure, when it comes to specs this isn’t as F1-fast as the …
I was preparing to go on holiday the other week. As always I end up with a big pile of phone chargers, camera chargers, mp3 player chargers, my wifes proprietary cables for her antiquated phone and sometimes even the charger for one of my tablets. It always soon becomes a …
Modern smartphones are a wonder of technology at times. They have Cameras, GPS, Artificial Intelligence but the one thing that lets them down is that battery technology hasn’t improved at the same rate. This results in poor battery life, especially when using the aforementioned features. The Incipio …
As promised, along with Dan’s initial HTC One X review, here’s another and more detailed look at the flagship One handset. It aims to turn around the perhaps “disrupted” image of the brand recently. Many thanks to Handtec for providing us with an additional review unit. The HTC …
One of my favourite iOS features is Airplay. The ability to send Audio and/or video wirelessly to a device such as an Apple TV or something like a Gear4 Airzone Series 1 speaker dock is pretty useful and handily I have been using the latter for the last …
It’s here, it’s really here! I was so excited to see the ‘missed delivery’ card from the postman, knowing what was in the packet. I had been anxiously waiting for the delivery from Clove since I first read about the new version of the SmartWatch, hoping Sony had improved …
Further to our previous article we can confirm that the app does work on an android phone, in this case a Samsung Galaxy S2, as you can see from the attached screenshots. In tests I couldn’t get every channel to work but I’m not sure that is the …
As beautiful as modern technology can be at times there are situations where you want to ensure the protection of your pride and joy. You’re left with a choice, you can either invest in a rugged device, like the JCB Pro Smart we previewed or you can get …
If your day job involves a lot of outdoor work then you might not carry a smartphone. They need charging quite a bit, they’re fairly delicate instruments and can be fiddly to use with big, dirty, working hands. JCB have moved from just sticking covers on other handsets …
The other day we mentioned that Demolition Inc THD had been released onto the Play Store and I said that I would do a little review of it for you. Well yes here it is. Demolition Inc is not like any other game I have ever played. The closest I …
The Targus Click-In is a case which, from the front, resembles Apples leather smart cover but where it differs is that it also offers protection for the back of the device for the same price. I’ve been using it for over a month, here are my thoughts. The …
If you’re anything like me, sometimes you want somewhere to put your iPad when it doesn’t need to be in your hand. I’m always concerned if I lay it down somewhere that the back will get scratched or it’ll get knocked over. Both of those problems are solved …
The HTC One S is the slimmer, ever-so-slightly-less-powerful brother of the HTC One X. It’s got a 4.3″ screen with 960×540 pixel screen. I say “slightly less powerful” but heck, a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU is still ruddy good. Powered by Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, it uses …
Recently I realised I had a problem. I listen to a lot of podcasts and the built in iOS way of handling these is problematic. They are downloaded from the iTunes app and listened to in the podcast section of the Music app which is confusing from the …
Two recently released high-end smartphones from Sony and HTC, namely the Xperia S and One X are both touted as top-class camera phones. Imaging specs are pretty impressive – the Sony Xperia S sports 12-megapixel “Exmor R” sensor, while the HTC One X has 8-megapixel shooter backed by …
In the world of Windows Phone there are quite a few Twitter apps. Most of them are ill thought out, barely functional, awkward, slow, laggy and unpleasant apps. My first big challenge when I started off down the Windows Phone path was to find something that did not tick …
The HTC One series was announced at Mobile World Congress in February and with so much to see I really didn’t get much time at all with the One X. Add to that all the rushing around and not being 100%, I came away from Barcelona not really …
You’ve probably seen those Keep Calm posters around. Originally used during the war to raise spirits, but now these days they appear on a huge variety of things like posters and collectables. Well this app lets you create your own posters. You can choose from a selection of …
So, we reviewed The Oona recently and filmed a hands-on video. However, we pretty much ruined the original video so I set about re-filming it today. The result is below but I wanted to see just how versatile this stand actually is. The Oona is a pretty unique …
Another stand for you now but this one is a bit different. It’s not just one stand, it’s many, many stands all in one. A multi-purpose stand that you can construct and adapt to your needs. Their Oona website has just one video to show it in action …
The Sony Xperia S is quite an important smartphone in Sony’s lineup following recent break-up with Ericsson. We have already covered Xperia S here at Coolsmartphone in a review by Dan a couple of weeks ago, but we have also decided to take another more detailed look at …
Stands. They’re always a touchy subject here at Coolsmartphone. There’s usually a couple of things you have to put up with when you’re looking for one. For a start there’s a selection of stands and base units which you may have to carefully select to suit your specific …
Here at CoolSmartPhone we love peripherals and accessories for our devices. As Leigh’s recent videos on device stands have shown, we love those that are simple but effective even more! Enter the ZooGue Stylus. This device is primarily sold for iPad devices however can be used on any …
Ice Cream Sandwich has for a while been flaunted as the pinnacle of Android development. Yes many problems with the Android OS did indeed get fixed with the release of Android 4.0. But I keep coming across new problems. I have been using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for …
This diddy little gadget is called the Tivizen Digital TV receiver. It’s surprisingly small, about the size of a credit card and the thickness of a normal smartphone. Put simply, this just grabs TV signals and then pumps them out over a WiFi hotspot that it creates. You …
One thing I have wanted for a while is a widget that lets you browse your files. I have had to resort to opening up another app and browsing through the file structure until I find the files I want. Well luckily I came across something that lets …
Just in case you did not know, recently Sony Ericsson decided to part ways with Sony buying up the Ericsson part of the business. This means all future phones will be Sony branded and this Xperia S is the first of this new batch of android powered smartphones. …
So, you know how it is. Charging your phone can be a pain. You’ve probably got more than one charger, and there’s bound to be tangled cables everywhere. This is the IDAPT i4 Universal Charger. It’s called the i4 because you can charge 4 devices at once. It …
Keeping track of a project team can be a tricky business, with monitoring tasks, expenses and the like – not to mention dealing with the clients you’re delivering to. It’s hard enough doing this for one project and one client. But get involved with multiples of those (as …
Stop motion is cool. <End of statement>. We all appear to be transfixed whenever a stop motion production is realised, it lures us in with it’s time lapse photography and catchy background music…. why is that? Well I thought I’d investigate, and in particular look at a fairly …
I am a fan of big screen phones. There I admit it, so why I may here you ask do I have HTC‘s latest offering in the Rhyme sitting in front of me for review. Well the reason couldn’t be simpler, if you are a regular reader of …
The lovely people at Clove loaned us a Huawei S7 Slim recently so we’ve had a good week or two to test it. The IDEOS S7 Slim, to give it the full name, is available in a WiFi-only and WiFi / 3G combo version. Just like it’s name, …
Here’s a nice little surprise that’s been around a while …. More Online Music than you can shake a stick at too! Deezer! For those of you familiar with Google Music, Spotify, etc will probably know and love the ability to listen to anything you fancy without the need …
I have been using the Tab 7.7 now for about 3 weeks and thought it may be time to do a follow on from my initial observations. As those of you who read the previous article are aware I have had my reservations about a few of the …
The Explorer is a fairly diddy device. It feels almost square in the hand and is a petite 102.8mm (about 4.05″) by 57.2mm (2.25″). The screen is 3.2″ but the resolution is only 320×480. I say “only” because I’m a techy geek at heart. To be honest that …
First of all thanks to the guys from Mugen for sending us this battery to review. It came all the way from Hong Kong I was amazed. My experience of spare batteries for phones has basically been buying a replacement when the original started to misbehave. Within a few …
So, we’ve got a tablet here that you’ll probably not see on any other tech website. It’s the LeapPad! This doesn’t run Android or any other OS we’d normally cover here but, back in July 2011 the LeapPad started something new. Does your child play with your smartphone …
I have had the Asus Transformer Prime for a few weeks now. I’ve bought some accessories for it, I’ve plugged in my xbox controller to it, I’ve downloaded a load of tablet specific apps and I think now is an ideal time to review the thing. The Prime …
Last week we had the initial impressions post about the Viewpad 10e, I was quite impressed with Viewpad it surprised me with what I could do with a device that didn’t have Google apps. The Viewpad is a budget tablet at £200 and is available from places like …
