Tag: play

Google Play serving up a 99p movie rental

It’s sunny outside but, if you fancy putting your feet up and catching a movie tonight, Google Play is the place to go. Here in the UK they’re offering up ANY movie for just 99p.. You can then either watch it on your phone or pipe it through …

Blow away the Monday blues with a couple of great deals!

It’s the start of the week. Your boss is still being a tool and you’re wondering where the heck the weekend went. Wasn’t it Friday just a few minutes ago? It was. Don’t worry though, because I see blossom on the trees here in the UK. Sure, our …

MWC – Hands-on with the HTC U Play and U Ultra

These are definitely very nice looking gadgets indeed. The paint job on the back is particularly stunning and reflects and shimmers the light around as you move it. Available from March, the U Ultra is the larger of the two phones but both run Nougat 7.0, have microSD …

HTC U Ultra and HTC U Play announced

Fancy a handset that will help you through your day? With artificial intelligence and voice assistants becoming a big thing in tech, HTC have chosen to deliver a new helper in their two new handsets. Called “Sense Companion”, it can advise you to charge up if you’ve got …

In-app purchases on Android. This is broken. Sort this out. Now.

I’ve just wasted an hour and a half trying to get a refund on an in-app purchase that my son mistakenly made within Real Racing 3. It’s a great EA game and you can improve your experience by purchasing items for varying quantities of cash. Writing about smartphones …

Moto G Play now available on Vodafone

The Motorola Moto G4 Play is a handset you can buy right now on the Motorola website. £129.98 gets you a 5″ 720p HD screen (1280×720), Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with 16GB of on-board storage and a microSD card slot. Whilst the 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core CPU and …

IFA Berlin 2016 – Lenovo Press Conference

Coolsmartphone.com, represented by the Chief Pixel Density Enthusiast, is at the Lenovo Press Conference for you. You may be gutted Matteo is not on the Podcast, but it is all to bring you the latest from Berlin. Lenovo start by speaking of hardware testing and then Moto Mods. …

Fancy playing your MP3’s in an 8-track player from the 1960’s?

Well no. Not many people have thought about doing this, I’m sure, but I’ve got in the rather geeky habit of following the Techmoan YouTube channel and his most recent video features a rather old piece of technology from the 1960’s called the “8-track”. The 8-track cartridge or …

Android distribution numbers for the week to August 1st

Google announces distribution numbers for the Android devices that connect to the Play Store on a monthly basis. The Android distribution numbers for the week up to August 1st are now out, and they make for interesting reading if you like that sort of geeky number subject. Android …

How to download Pokémon Go on Android in the UK now

OK. It’s turned into a dream for the PR company this one. Everybody seems to be talking about it, even here in the UK where you can’t actually download the thing just yet. Pokémon has returned and the ’90s have come back too (Robot Wars was on TV …

Waiting for the Google Play store on your Chromebook?

Good news, at least, if you’ve got the Asus Chromebook Flip and you’re using the developer channel. A quick update will deliver the Google Play Store to your device, making compatible Android apps downloadable and useable. Developer channel 53 is the one to watch for, so if you’ve …

Fancy 90% off your Google Play prices? Listen up

Paying for your apps in Google Play usually involves your credit or debit card of some sort. However, Vodafone have come up with a plan to make it a bit simpler and, for six months, you get a whacking 90% off some Google Play apps and games t’boot. …

New data reveals contrast between Google Play and iOS app stores

Statistics can often be skewed to serve a particular purpose, but new data just released about the relative numbers of downloads and amount of money generated by the Google Play and Apple iOS app stores make for interesting reading.  The most obvious points from the above graphs, which …

Google Play Music family plan now available in the UK too.

If you like your tunes and the rest of your family does, have a look at this. Right here in the UK you can now get the Google Play Music family plan. You become the “family manager” and basically become responsible for the billing. Then everyone in your …

Black Friday – Moto handsets dropped in price

Moto have kicked off their Black Friday offerings with deals running through until Monday. You can get cheap Moto handsets at a lot less than you’d normally pay. As an example, the Moto X Play has had a £60 reduction, knocking it down from £279 to £219. Meanwhile, …

Amazon – permission much? – opinion

Oh Amazon, what are you up to? Why do you want so much from us? If we say yes, what are we letting ourselves in for? These are some of the thoughts that flew across my mind when my phone wanted to update the Amazon app. Granted, I …

I demand a refund!

Back in the good old days you could buy an app from the Android Market, as it was then, and have a whole 24 hours to make your mind up if you wanted to keep it or not. If it turns out that is was actually totally useless …

NEST lands on Google Play store

Some of you may know what NEST is, however there are a large amount of people reading this who will be wondering just what we are talking about. No, it’s not where birds live. Not in this instance anyway. NEST is a clever self-learning thermostat for your home that allows …

Nexus brand stopping in 2015?

The big rumour today is that Google plan to cease using the ‘Nexus’ branding in 2015. Instead they’ll begin to offer ‘Play Edition’ handsets, thus merging both the Google Edition and Nexus range. This hot tip comes from a very reliable source – Eldar Murtazin. He is widely …

Google Books Updated…brings mobile uploading

Google today released an update to the Google Books App. The update now brings additional functionality including giving you the ability to upload EPUB or PDF files to your library from your phone or tablet. The full changelog is as follows Books open more quickly and smoothly. Upload …

Google Play Music updated. Offline music storage added

The Google Play Music app has received a bit of a refresh this morning. Download it and you’ll get KitKat SD card support, which gives offline music capability. Not only that, but there’s the ability to shuffle songs in the “All Access” feature and Google have made it …

HTC One Play Edition gets an update

Following on from the recent announcement of the latest incantation of Android, version 4.4 Kitkat, the Google Play Edition of HTC’s flagship handset is receiving it’s OTA update. Multiple sources have said that the update is rolling out now and weighs in at over 300mb so if you …

Google Play Music All Access reach extended

  It is a continual frustration for those outside of the United States that Google tend to release all of their services for the US first, sometimes leaving the rest of the world to fend for themselves or wait a ridiculously long time for said service to become …

The Android machine plows on and on.

7.4 million phones in 3 months.  That is 2.46 million phones a month. The figure above details Nokia’s handset sales of Windows Phones in 3 months.  not bad going that eh!? Now lets take the city of Birmingham in the Midlands, UK.  At the last census in 2011 …

Google Play Books is updated

As part of Google updating everything last night they updated the Play Books app. Not only have Google updated the interface to be in-line with the other Google Play apps they have also added some new features. What’s in this version: Support for reading your own PDF or …

Go on, Play with your Nook

Today it’s been announced that the Google Play store will be available for both the Nook HD and Nook HD+. You don’t have to wait either, just ensure that your little Nook is firmly attached to WiFi and an over-the-air patch will roll out to give you all …

New Google Play version slips onto video

It was called Android Market at one point, then it all changed and became Google Play. Now a new version is about to hit your Android-powered phone and the boys at Droid Life have sneaked a look at the all-new version… The fourth iteration seems to be cleaner …

Google Play celebrates first birthday with another sale

Can you believe that it’s already been a year since Google relaunched the old Android Market as the Google Play Store? To celebrate this momentous event, they’ve decided to have (another) big sale. It’s already started over in Australia as I write this and should hopefully be on …

Pocket Casts 4 debuts on Android

It’s not often that you see an (non-Google) app launch on Android before iOS. However Shift Jelly have today released Version 4 of Pocket Casts for Android, with its iOS cousin nowhere in sight. And it’s a fairly dramatic update at that. Gone is the tired old iOS …

Wireless Nexus charger appears on Play Store

Well well well what do we have here!  Looks like Google are about to start selling the official Nexus 4 wireless charger on their own Play Store as the website has been updated recently and the charger now appears under Nexus 4 accessories. However at the moment in …

More hacked apps appear on Google Play

We’ve seen too many headlines mentioning cracked, hacked or infected apps appearing in Google Play. Sadly we’re adding this one to the list as Google appear to be reacting too slowly to the continuing problem. In this case we’ve had an email from the guys at Root Uninstaller. …

Google Play now lets you redeem gift cards

On Friday Dan told you about Google gift cards and how they’re headed to the UK. Yesterday I did a check and, sure enough, there’s the chance to Redeem gift cards in the menu of Google Play. There’s one problem though. You simply can’t buy Google gift cards …

Google Play UK gift cards incoming?

If you purchased one of the original Nexus 7 devices from Google direct on launch you were given some free credit to use for any items from the Google Play store.  Apart from this free gift all other purchases have been made on a PAYG basis with your …

Are magazines coming to the UK Play Store? Update – Yes!

For a while now UK Play Store users have been unable to get their hands on digital magazines. Unlike our friends over in the US. I for one have been using Zinio for a few years now and I’ve survived. Well during the night we got a tip …

Google Play Music – Review

As discussed on our latest podcast, Google Music has finally arrived here on the shores of the UK and finally for all of those who didn’t know about or care to use the workaround can get a taste of what those on the other side of the pond …

Google Music coming to Europe – 13th November

As well as the trilogy of Nexus devices just announced, Google have also confirmed that their Music service is coming to Europe at the same time. This means a 13th November launch for Europe, bizarely slightly before the US. Not that we’re complaining! You will be able to …

Google Calendar is now available on the Play Store

But it’s already installed on my phone, I hear you all cry. Well not if you own a Samsung device. They have their own app called S Planner which still syncs with Google Calendar, but it leaves some people a little upset and hunting for alternatives. Google have …

Celebration: Google Play 25p Sale!!!!

Google Play, Google’s app store has hit 25 billion downloads according to the Official Android blog. As a way of celebration Google have decided to have a sale and offer various apps, books and films (as well as music if you are in the US) for only 25p …

Flash says goodbye to Android

Love Flash? Got apps and streaming TV players that depend on it? Well, don’t get comfy, because it’ll vanish later today. Even if you grab the APK, it won’t be supporting Jelly Bean. Adobe state that… Flash Player will not be supported on any Android version beyond 4.0.x. …

Jellybean coming soon as Android 4.1

Just days ahead of Google IO, news of the next version of Android has leaked via an unlikely source: Google’s very own Play Store. Jellybean will officially be Android 4.1 and will apparently be with us soon, according to the listing for the HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus. Not much …