Living life through a screen

For those who aren’t based on the UK, the artist simply known as “Banksy” is an anonymous activist who displays street art and political messages in graffiti across the country. His stenciled images usually attract high valuations too. Just a few hours ago, Banksy shared this tweet. He’s …

DROCON Blue Bugs 3 Drone – Review

Yes, I’m being sent drones to review now. What I know about drones can be written on the back of a stamp. I’ve had a play with some cheaper ones in the past and, usually, they take off and then crash. The end. My flying skills aren’t the …

Coolsmartphone Podcast 205 The Deuter Protagonists

After the end of the Coolsmartphone Podcast Biterness Trilogy, no one knew where we would go from there. Matteo and Khellan then turned up and as deuter protagonists and discussed the Honor 8 Pro, the Blackberry KEYone (again), the announcement of the HTC U11 and went into Chromebook …

Doro 6050 feature phone now available to buy

Remember Mobile World Congress? I certainly do. Let’s be honest, we here at Coolsmartphone don’t have the same budget as The Times or The Guardian, so I ended up stopping in a camper van, parked up in a local street. It was definitely an … experience. However, we …

EE announced as exclusive network partner for Google Home

We review one of these home helpers recently and, although it still has a little way to go (I still find I have to rephrase the odd request), it impressed me greatly. Now, although the magical Google Home speaker will sit on your fridge and connect to your …

Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus – Review

OK, first things you need to know. This, the Wileyfox Swift 2 Plus, is £189 on the Wileyfox website or (as I type) £164.99 on Amazon. SIM free in both places of course. It has a 5″ 1280×720 screen at 296 PPI with 2.5d Corning Gorilla Glass 3. …

What is a VPN anyway?

Trust me, it’s not a scary thing. Just recently I had a relative ask why I had two WiFi networks at home. I explained that one was a VPN router, and offered me privacy and security. That, if I’m being honest, made their eyes glaze over a little. …

Coolsmartphone Podcast 205 Live

We’ve reached a fundamental episode number: 205. We will be recording live, here on Coolsmartphone.com and on YouTube, this evening at 20:00 BST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqs2usdhYAw Interact with the show and after the crime, on Twitter obviously: Matteo (@todoleo) Khellan (@wubanger5) Coolsmartphone Podcast (@CSP_Podcast) We’ll probably go off the rails, …

HTC U11 Launched. Welcome to your new squeezy phone

Got yourself a HTC phone at the moment? If you have then there’s sadly not enough of you. Earlier in the year I took a look at the current HTC phones – namely the HTC U Play and HTC U Ultra. They’re properly gorgeous things. Polished, well designed …

LG G6 – Review

I’ve gone through some phases with my smartphones. I switched over to Android with the HTC Hero. It was then a succession of HTC handsets before I switched to a Samsung Galaxy device, but since then I’ve been firmly glued to an LG device. The LG G3 was …

Watch the HTC Launch, live

Here in the UK things will be kicking off in just 30 minutes. However, there’s again no physical launch event and no hordes of reports. Instead, no matter where to are in the world, you can watch the brand new HTC handset getting unveiled here on the HTC …

New Chromebooks are close

We here at Coolsmartphone love Chromebooks. There’s at least 3 of us using them as our main devices, and there’s no risk of any ransomware popping up any time soon. They’re a great tool for browsing the web and for quickly producing content for this very site. Leigh, …

Latest Netflix update won’t install on rooted devices

Here at the Coolsmartphone newsroom (which to be honest is normally a kitchen) we’ve heard rumours that the latest version of the Netflix app is showing as incompatible with rooted devices. Netflix has just confirmed that with the v5.0 update adds some special.. ahem .. “new features”. They’ve …

Cutting the cord. Trying to kill off my landline.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m a penny pincher at times. If there’s a cheaper way of doing something, even if it’s a bit geeky, I’ll give it a go. Stick with me on this one, because it involves something that Virgin have just announced which I think is a …

Virgin Media just announced something you should all buy

A few days ago I was logging into my Virgin Media account. However, I got a bit distracted by an advert and ended up on the Virgin Business website instead. Why was I distracted? Well, I’ll show you… Yes. £30 a month for an internet connection which goes …

FaceApp – Another few minutes of fun

We were big fans of the MSQRD app when it first came out. It’s quite a fun little gadget which, with the aid of your phone camera, puts masks and hats on your face via augmented reality cleverness. Now there’s another one to add to the collection, it’s …

Terrapin Huawei P10 Cases Review

Remember me mentioning Huawei P10 cases?. The people at Terrapin got in touch to highlight their P10 cases, and we have a couple here today. They’ve got a range of P10 cases and some for the P10 Plus too. There’s wallet cases, shock-resistant cases and gel cases, and …

ProBox 2 Air PLUS Android TV Box – Review

Last year I carried out a review of a new Android TV streaming box called the Probox 2 Air. You can view it here, which in summary, I was truly impressed with. Well, I’ve been asked if I wanted to review the latest version of this streaming box – …

ICZI 6 Port USB Hub – Review

  It may be that I’m that sort of person, but I’ve always had cables hanging around. Even before I was messing about with computers or mobile phones, there were scart leads and coax cables, RCA cables, speaker cable and the list would probably go on if I …