Tag: hands-on

I have been using a folding phone for quite a few years now but up until the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 5G was available (and a nice tax rebate came my way), I had not been able to find one that stuck. The problem was that here …

I have just had the pleasure of attending another Honor event in Old London town. This time we have a triple header with the launch of a High-end phone in the form of the Honor 70, a tablet in the form of the confusingly named Honor Pad 8 …

The day has arrived when I can unbox the newest Honor flagship the Honor Magic 4 Pro. I am unfortunately a bit late to the party and the pre-order window for this phone will be coming to an end very soon (26/05/2022), but if you are still looking …

We have a new phone in for testing and this is an important one for the company launching it. The phone is the Honor 50 5G and since Honor and Huawei are now no longer the same company this one comes with the thing that I found to …

This is the one we’ve all been waiting for, and the handset that could potentially start turning the smartphone world on it’s head. This is a phone which is affordable but carries a lot of the tech and specs you’ll normally see in those crazy-expensive £1,000+ phones. This, …

It’s a lovely sunny day and I’m out in the garden to take the OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro out of their boxes. This really was my first unboxing of both and, as we’re on lockdown, my quietest place right now is the garden. If you want …

Here’s two smartphones from a company that has been around for almost seven years now. During that time OnePlus have achieved a cult following but, with handsets like the OnePlus 7T (reviewed here, here and here) they’re now gaining more mainstream traction. Today marks the launch of two …

So, the launch has happened and it’s now time to get up close and personal with the Honor 20 Pro. Now, before we get into this fully, I would like to thank Ricky West from TechTalk. He has provided us with the close-up shots of the device. I …

Normally when we get a phone to review, one of the first things that we do is an unboxing. However, with the P30 Pro we decided to mix things up a bit. Dan was able to use the phone for a short period of time before he departed …

Right, if you’re at the end of a contract or thinking about buying an additional phone, the Galaxy S10 range could well be on your radar. We’ve covered all the Galaxy phones during Mobile World Congress, but I think it’s worth looking again at the hands-on overview we …

I have been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get a little bit more hands-on time with the Huawei Mate X. I thought I would take some time to give you my initial thoughts. Before I dive into that first thoughts I must remind you that …

About a year ago I reviewed the £99 Unihertz Jelly Pro. It had 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a microSD slot and ran Android 7 on a quad-core 1.1GHz chip. Oh, and did I mention? It was tiny. Only around 9cm tall and about 4cm wide. The …

Want to see more of the Huawei Mate 20 lite? It was announced at IFA and is the first look at the new Mate 20 Series from the company. The handset is fairly cheap at £379, and is powered by a Huawei Kirin 710 octa-core + i7 microprocessor …

Well, it was only a matter of time wasn’t it? Sure, it’s felt like an age since the phone was first released, but now the Essential Phone PH01 is available to buy for us in the UK. The Essential phone got a lot of media attention as it was …

The Introduction Sony have had a mixed reaction to their phones. The design has changed very little since the launch of the Xperia Z, and even with a high megapixel numbers in their camera, some people have had varied results. In comes the Xperia XZ1, which takes the best …

The glitz and the glamour are done, so now it’s time to get the real work done. The unboxing of the P20 Pro. So, let’s dive into the video first and then we can analyse the phone further.. Let’s start at the top of the phone and work …

Iron Bru, Scotland, Matteo Doni. They all go together brilliantly, so we decided to add an Honor 7X into the mix too. We’ve already had a full hands-on with the device in November and it then appeared in December. However, the price has gone down a bit now …

I decided to take a bit of a wander down to the Essential Booth today to go and find out about their phone. Also, the burning question that I wanted to ask. Just when will we will see them in the UK? Unfortunately, I was unable to get an answer …

Right, here’s what you need to know. You can pop over to Banggood and get one of these for £155.13. For your money you’re going to get a 5.99″ 1080×2160 Full HD screen (18:9) with a 403 ppi pixel density. You’re also going to get a dual 16 …

Fancy the Pixel 2 or the Pixel 2 XL? Well, if it’s size you want, the Google Pixel 2 XL has a bigger 6″ screen and a higher price-tag t’boot. £799 will get you a 64GB version, and it’s £899 for the 128GB model. It’s got a pOLED …

We’ve managed to get our hands on with the newly-announced LG V30. It’s a big launch here at IFA for the company, but we’re still not exactly sure whether it’ll be coming to the UK. The closest we have is “key European markets”. We’re hoping.. Anyhow, here’s it’s …

This was tucked away around the back of the Alcatel stand but there was no shortage in interest. It’s a bit of a heavy thing at 180g and we’ve already posted a BlackBerry KEYone gallery after it leaked all over the place last Saturday morning. This one is …

We’ve given the press people at Kodak quite a few emails now. We’ve still not been able to borrow one, so during our trip around the Mobile World Congress we finally got a few minutes to have a look at the Ektra in the flesh. It sells for …

If you’re in certain areas of the world you can buy this InnJoo Pro 2. InnJoo are base in Dubai and seem to produce everything from TVs to hoverboards. This handset, which sells €359.95, has some very admirable specs and looks good too. Powered by a MediaTek MT6757 …

Available in May, this will cost you €149 (£127.74) in either black or white. It’s another phone from TCL and this is a pretty entry-level affair. The Alcatel A3 actually has a higher resolution camera than its bigger brother, the A5 LED. Here you’ll get a 13 megapixel …

Standing out from the crowd here in Barcelona is particularly difficult. I’m not talking about the stands, because it’s already tricky enough in that respect. Money (a lot of it, think millions of pounds) buys you big floor space and a bigger impact. Some companies resort to sweets, …

This morning I talk a walk to the China Mobile stand and there, amongst the robots and networking kit, was the Xiaomi Mi MIX we covered last year. This, though, was my first time seeing it in the flesh and .. woaha… A 6.4″ display oozes right to …

We posted the news yesterday that HP are re-entering the mobile market with a Windows 10 device. Now we’ve had some time to get hands on with one of the devices. I am very impressed with it but instead of reading my thoughts on it lets see what …

Acer had lots to talk about at IFA, so I decided to pay them a visit and get some hands on time with their new products. Now, traditionally we tend not to see that many Acer phones in the UK – with the exception of their M220 that …

Gary Weldon (he’s UbuntuBoy on Twitter by the way) was kind enough to give us his first impressions of the new OnePlus 2 handset. He’s had it in his hands for a good few days now and has been kind enough to send us his thoughts. He also …

I’m going to start with a brief bit of background. Those of you who visit the site regularly will be aware that I have had the chance to test the BQ Aquarius E4.5 Ubuntu Edition. I was using the phone for a short time and something with it …

I have one. That is all see you later! Only joking… 🙂 I am now a proud owner of the brand new Pebble Time and I thought I would share some of my thoughts about it. I’ve now had it for a couple of days. Bear with me …

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 …

Whilst I was trying to find the Asus Zenfone Zoom I found a whole stand of Zenfone 2 phones to have a play with, the Zenfone 2 is a great looking piece of kit, equipped with a 64 bit Quad CoreIntel chip, a fancy design and a rear …

I was recently invited to London to get hands on with some new devices made by HTC. The main device that everyone wanted to get their hands on was of course the Nexus 9 tablet. A tablet from HTC. This is something we’ve waiting a long time for as …

Here is a quick selection of hands-on photos from the event in Paris. Don’t forget that you can get full Huawei P7 details in my earlier post. I will get an unboxing video up later on today, but until then enjoy! As you can see it is lovely …

There’s more pre-order deals than you can shake a stick out there. The S5 is a device we’ve been tracking for some while now. We got a hands on with the device minutes after it was released, but it’s now arriving in stores, so here’s an unboxing video …

We were at the HTC event in London today and, with the press area so busy and loud, we really couldn’t get proper shots. Luckily enough we were given a handset to take away and review for the next few weeks. The device was announced and available on …

Yes, we know, we only looked at this last week and we even had someone on the stand squashing the thing but it’s arrived here at Coolsmartphone HQ so I figured it was time for just a few more photos. Coming to EE here in the UK it …

Dan has already brought you lots of information into the Nokia foray into Android here but I’ve just been running around their stand to get some early hands-on video and photos for you. What we have here is three new Android phones from Nokia. They’re colourful, a little chunky …