To say that this is a”tech’ chair is a stretch but it does have some cool features that make it a great spot for me to get work done. The X2 is of the armchair style and comes delivered in four different parts. The chair does require some minimal self-assembly but it is completely toolless which is nice. After I had unpacked the two massive boxes in which the chair was delivered I was able to get the chair put together in about 10 minutes.

The first section which occupies one entire box is the base and this has all of the electrical and mechanical components of the chair on board. It is by far the heaviest part of the chair which is where you want the weight to be located. The seat base itself is a width of 45cm across and 54 cm in depth This is plenty big enough for even the most ample of bottom size! The seat height is 49cm which is par for the course when compared to normal recliners and you can easily put your feet flat on the ground without any discomfort.

The next step for the assembly is to add the armrests which slide easily into two rails on either side of the base section. This is probably the trickiest part of the assembly as the padding makes it a bit tricky to line up the rails. hover once the rails are aligned then you simply push them down and they are solid. Once the ar rest are on the the overall width of the chair increases to 89cm. The top of the armrests have a good wide amount of padding which equals 22cm width on either side. The armrests are wide and they are flat enough to rest a phone on without it risking a death plummet to the floor. On the right-hand side of the armrest is where we find a bit of hidden tech alongside the controls for the recline option. I will cover the recline function more later on.

In between the two recline buttons is a USB Type a port which will work as a charging port for various USB devices. The port will output when charging my Pixel Fold at 1310 mA peak which is fine for a nice slow charging rate to keep the strain on my battery down to a minimum. It also means that I am able to charge other USB gadgets like my Vape or Bluetooth speakers etc. The charging port is capable of delivering higher power when needed for example when i plugged in my wife’s Realme 8 Pro which can charge much faster than my Pixel Fold was able to get a third more power 1570mA which is due to the phone having the better charging rate.

When I use a base voltage of 4.5v as the charging voltage for both devices we get a charge rate of 7.06W for the Realme and 5.89W for my Pixle Fold. This explains why when I tried to charge my MacBook Pro I was unable to get the laptop to charge as it detected the power from the USB being too low.

All of this power is being transferred via the inbuilt circuits that are routed internally and are very easy to connect together. The main power supply for the chair is from a UK (market-dependent) three-pin plug that connects to a small power brick via a standard two-pin connector which will provide at 58W.

This power will be split between the motors to drive the reclining mechanism and the USB port with the majority of the power going to the motor as and when it is requested.

As you can see the power brick and cables can be hidden away quite easily behind the back of the chair which has a velcro flap that will drop down to cover this section when access is not required any further.

As for the next assembly step, it is just a case of lining up the guides for the back rest with the tangs that are poking out from the base section and pushing the mi to place and there you have it a fully assembled Flexipsot X2 recliner.

So How does the recliner mechanism work? It is a motor-driven multiple linkage design which will control the various moveable components of the chair. A simple press of the button will allow that footrest to start to move out from its resting position to around 110 degrees. for its resting point. At this point, the base of the vahri will have moved a few centimetres forward. From this point onwards the backrest will start to recline. You can hear an audible change in the motor and drive mechanism when the change between the footrest rising and the backrest reclining happens. If you keep the button pressed then the backrest will continue to recline un tl it reaches its limit which is 142 degrees of recline. This position is also known as the “Zero Gravity” positioning. it is a bit too far back for any work to be done. However, it is quite a nice position for getting a bit of cat-napping done I have actually fallen asleep in this reclined position during the past week on more than one occasion!

 The reclining motion is very smooth and quiet as well. it is very easy to find your preferred position and this is aided by a neat little trick on the footrest which I have not encountered before with other reclining chairs that I have used. Under the footrest, there are springs on either side of the base plate that are linked to the linkages. These springs act as a kind of damper that will allow the footrest to have two positions. If the recline is initiated when there wi weight on the footrest it will remain locked into the lower position, however, once that weight has been removed the footrest will “spring” into the higher position which is required for the aforementioned Zero Gravity position. I prefer to drop position as this will allow my feet to be at just the right angle where my feet are comfortable. I find that once it goes into the high position I start to get pins and needles in my feet. Your experience may vary on this and will entirely depend on your own physical make-up.

I feel that the linkages or going to be solid and will work well for a decent amount of time. I have had another recliner sofa that uses a similar style of linkage and indeed motor system however this has been manufactured to a much lower quality. The links on the X2 mechanism are all solid in feel and there are no strange noises or clicking and grinding audible in use. The same can’t be said for my sofa which feels a lot ropier in it working as fluidity of recline motion. All of this is backed up by a 5-year warranty for the chair from Flexispot. 

Here are some images of the dimensions below;

So that is a description of the mechanics and the assembly of the chair. However, how does it feel in use?

I have found that the chair is supportive in a variety of positions, my favourite position is where the backrest is about 10% reclined and the footrest is fully raised. This allows me to have my laptop rest on my lap in a comfortable position for typing without too much load upon my legs. Another one of my favoured positions is actually with my legs crossed up on the chair base which is deep enough to this. If I wish to just rest then I will recline the char back further and go back to nearly 50% of the full recline to allow me to still see the TV or read comfortably. This will still give me plenty of support for my back and due to the angle to the footrest, my legs are also supported well. I have sat in this position for several hours in the evening and I have not had any sore spots I dont need any extra pillows or cushions as I have on other chairs.

My wife has also used it on occasion when she has been unable to sleep at night and apart from her noting the footrest can be a bit too high when in the fully reclined position, she was very comfortable. She found that the backrest was particularly comfortable when fully reclined and she was able to sleep better on the chair than the bed.

Overall I am very happy with the Flexispot X2 recliner. I have found it to be very well built and the construction from the manufacturing is very good. the faux leather finish is a nice feeling to the touch and hopefully will last the true test of time over the years, if it doesn’t then I would like to think that the 5-year warranty will be able to address this if it were needed. As I mentioned above this isn’t really a tech chair but it does allow me to take advantage of the use of my tech in comfort and also allows me to relax when I am not working.

If I had two minor issues with the char then they are both relatively simple to resolve as well. The first issue is with the colour, I would like to see this recliner offered in other colours as at the time of writing this, the Flexispot X2 recliner is only available in White. it would be great if this were to be offered in other colours, to fit in with other decors.

The second issue relates to the sprung footrest, Whilst I find this to be a really nice feature I would like the ability of the spring action to be disabled. it is fine for me as I can push the footrest back down however the mechanism is a little bit too strong for my wife to push down. if this could be locked in one position then it would be great for her as she wouldn’t have the issue with getting that pins and needles feeling when she is fully reclined.

At @£499 for the chair, it is a bit pricey but in my opinion, it is worth it and when compared to other single-seat powered recliners on the market it is the same sort of market segment as the higher-end options from the likes of LazyBoy Winchester Power Recliner Chair which retails at £1375.00 but will sometime be on sale for just under £1000.

If you wish to upgrade your seating situation and you want to know more about the Flexispot X2 recliner then you can grab on from their website now.

The post Flexispot X2 Power Reciliner – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Projector brand, Emotn, has launched its latest Netflix officially licensed projector, the Emotn N1. Packed with native 1080P full HD clarity, 500 ANSI Lumens and a maximum projection size of 120 inches, the Emotn N1 instantly enters the extensive Netflix library after booting and presents its rich content in a crisp, clear and vibrant way. Combined with Dolby Audio and dual 5W speakers, the Emotn N1’s excellent picture and sound quality makes viewers feel as if they’ve stepped inside the movie.

Officially licensed by Netflix, the Emotn N1 offers new ideas and viewing locations for easier and clearer enjoyable viewing of Netflix films, TV shows, award-winning originals and more. The Emotn N1 transports users to Netflix immediately upon power-on, exposing them to a world of their favorite content. Unlike watching Netflix on smartphones and tablets, the Emotn N1 gives users the freedom to choose from a large screen size of 60″ to 120″. Different to watching on a normal TV, the dedicated light, rich color and crystal sound of the Emotn N1 provide viewers with more immersion and a cozy vibe. The Emotn N1 comes with a remote control that features hotkeys for the three main video services – Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube – allowing consumers to access their go-to apps with a single press. From films to educational documentaries geared for kids, from anime to TV shows, there’s something for everyone.

With native 1080P FHD quality, the Emotn N1 invites viewers to watch all their eye-popping favorites. The remarkable HDR 10 technology brings vibrant display with incredible contrast for bright whites and true blacks. With 500 ANSI Lumens, the Emotn N1 empowers every user to enjoy bright and rich content in dim environments. It’s a feast for the eyes, and a refreshment for the ears. Enhanced with Dolby Audio and dual 5-watt built-in speakers, users can hear every detail in crystal clear clarity. This combination of breathtaking images and rich sound allows the viewer to feel like they’re right there in the story!

In the quest for intelligence, simplicity and ease, the Emotn N1 employs a super easy setup with the cutting-edge ToF(Time-of-Flight) Laser Autofocus and Auto Keystone Correction, to free the
user’s hands to a great extent. The ToF Laser Autofocus prevents the projected images from staying blurry for more than a few seconds, and the entire focusing process is nearly seamless to the users. With the exceptional Auto Keystone Correction, viewers can always get a clear rectangular picture and peace of mind to get into the mood for their favourite episodes. To put it simply, the Emotn N1 gets everything ready to go.

Emotn is committed to exploring the endless possibilities of its compact projectors, and that’s why the Emotn N1 is designed with versatile connectivity, including HDMI, USB, WiFi and Bluetooth, empowering every user to connect it to various devices in any way they like to jazz up their work and entertainment. When the Bluetooth mode is on, users can get a high-quality speaker to let the users hear every note of the music. The built-in stand on the bottom enables viewers to adjust the angle of projection in a breeze by up to 12 degrees. The Emotn N1 is also long-lasting with its large 30,000-hour lifespan, and a 26dB noise level makes it a quite quiet companion at the same time.

The Emotn N1 is now available at the price of $399.99 on Amazon US. To celebrate the launch, Emotn is offering a $50 discount coupon.

It will also be available on Amazon UK in the coming months

The post Emotn launches the N1 – A Netflix Officially-Licensed Home Projector for enhancing the viewing experience. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

My old Flexispot E1L Standing desk when I first set it up

The desk is massive so much so that it takes up nearly half of the room it is in. So when I was offered the opportunity to get another desk in to review in the form of the new Flexispot Q8 8 in 1 standing desk I jumped at the opportunity. It also coincides nicely with the fact that my son i going into the last few years of primary school and he was going to be needing a desk for homework and working on his Lego projects.

So out with the old and in with the new here is the new Flexispot Q8 Standing desk with Bamboo desktop.

Flexispot Q8 and BS 8 Chair

Design-wise the same basic principles are applied here as they were in the previous one. However, there is one very significant difference in the frame, the rails that stretch between the legs are no longer angled and are also not adjustable as they were on the E1L. This makes for slightly easier assembly for the frame. The feet are slightly different in that they are curved this time around and this gives it a softer feel to the desk which could very easily end up looking quite industrial.

Frame rails and cable tray

This theme is continued up into the legs which are oval in shape and feel very smooth in their movement when they are being lifted up and lowered.

Underneath the frame, we can find another very welcome feature, a cable tray and cable channel cover, to keep all those unsightly cables tucked away out of sight. It makes for a clean-looking setup on the underside.

Moving up again we now come to the desktop frame itself which is a significant difference from the E1L as the frame is screwed straight into the desk. This time there is a frame that has already been assembled and mounted to the underside of the desk.

Built-in wide drawer

The reason for this framework design is to allow it to support the desktop properly and securely. It also allows for a slide-out drawer to be built into the frame which is something I missed on the old desk. I have found the addition of a wide drawer with a good depth to it has been invaluable for storing stuff that I need during my working day. There is one other thing that is tucked into the frame and this is the control panel for raising and lowering the desk. In addition to the normal panel that I had on the E1L, rather handily this control panel also include two USB Ports one type A and one Type C.

I have not had the need to use them yet but they would be handy for quickly suing to juice up a small battery in something like a wireless mouse or pair of Bluetooth headphones. The outputs are rated at 18W for the Type A port and 45 W for the Type C, so not too shabby.

Convenient place for charging your phones

So with the availability of these two chargers on the front of the desk why have I not used them? Well, that is where the other hidden secret comes in, this is kinda part of the frame but also part of the desktop itself.

I am, of course referring to the built-in Qi wireless charging pad that sits just under the desk on the right-hand side just behind where the control panel is located.

Qi Wireless charging pad

Unfortunately, this is one of the few places where I was left a bit disappointed. This was found to be disappointingly slow. I tested the charger with my Pixel 6 Pro which is not the fastest phone in terms of wireless charging. The charge is rated for 10W but I am not convinced that this is the actual speed that is being transferred to the phone. I found that the phone was inexorably slow to take on power so much so that it is not really something I use that often.

Underside of Qi Wireless charger

I did look into whether this pad could be upgraded for a slightly faster unit and I would be very interested in trying a more powerful unit if Flexispot ever offers one.

Now onto the most important part which is of course the desk surface. This is a joy to work on and it doesn’t seem to be as easy to mark as I found with the black surface on the other desk.

The Bamboo desktop life

I really do like the way that there are subtle curves on the corners as this makes it feel a little bit more suited for the home. One side effect of the way that this desktop has been made is that it is quite thick. This did present an issue when it came to attaching my monitor arm but I was very fortunate to have had a small desk which sits to the side of the standing one that still allowed me to for the stand to be used. This has allowed me to have quite a spacious setup when everything is in place on the desktop as can be seen below.

Everyone likes a clean setup

So that pretty much covers the design and functionality of the desk, but there is one feature that I have not covered yet. It is called anti-collision and it is very important to the function of this desk. I did cover this feature in the review of the E1L as i actually ha da lower desk situated underneath the desk with that setup. It was essential that these desks did not collide as this would put the whole system under far too much strain and would potentially cause one of the two motors to fail or to strip the gears on the legs. Well, I am pleased to say that as on the E1L the tech works in exactly the same way and it works really well. Here is the video from the E1L.

Overall I am extremely happy once again as I have a great standing desk which actually fits into my workspace this time around. I have got exactly what I was looking for, it is a comfortable surface to work on the desk rises and lowers in near silence and the extras of the drawer and the extra charging ports are very much appreciated. I can’t even be too annoyed with the charging pad which is a bit slow but is nice to have on board so to speak.

If you are interested in getting a Flexispot Q8 or indeed any other desk from Flexispot then do check out their site as soon as you can as they currently offer significant discounts on their lineup of desks and office chairs. head over to Flexispot to check out their tech day offers between the 7th and the 9th of September 2022

The post Flexispot Q8 8-in-1 Standing Desk – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

My old chair

So the hunt for a new chair began and I was determined that I would get something more suited to what my needs were. I had previously explored Flexispot’s standing desks in the form of the E1L L-Shaped Standing Desk and I was very impressed with it. I was aware in the back of my mind that they also offered chairs and as chance would have they had recently reached out to me regarding some newly released products. So a few days later a massive box arrived at my house with a BS8 chair inside. I was going away on holiday later that day so it ad to wait until I got back for the unpacking.

So roll on a week and as soon as I got back I was straight into the box like a kid at Christmas to see what I got! After about 15 minutes of assembly, I was greeted with a very pleasing to-the-eye Grey chair, that I was looking forward to using on my first day back at work. Now two weeks have passed and I can honestly say that they have been a very comfortable few weeks. i have been predominantly at home for the whole time and have been doing 8 to 9 hours a day in the chair. I have been comfortable and I have had no back pain at all.

Let’s go into the features of the chair a little bit further. As you would expect the chair has all the normal features that would be associated with an office chair.

Staring from the base you have a six-armed base with smooth rolling wheels. This then goes into the support pole which has a very smooth motion in the rise and lowering motion. it slides into the base plate very easily and is a toolless fit which made for an easy fit. This plate then screws into the seat base with four sturdy screws to give a secure, strong fit. The seat base then acts as a mounting point for the backrest and the arms which are very simple to screw into the seat base with three screws for each armrest and three longer ones for the backrest which is reassuring in terms of durability. These are also adjustable in terms of height but have no lateral movement at all, which is not a problem for me as they are very rarely used when I am at my desk anyway.

Also to be found on the seat base is the lever to allow for height adjustment which has an ergonomically shaped panel on it. Lift it to allow the seat to go higher and push it down to lower the seat simple and easy and the movement feels smooth.

In front of the post mount is the tension screw for the back recline. I did not see if this had any indication as to which way tightens this tension spring so I went with the old “righty tighty lefty loosey” school of thought and this seemed to work. The back will stay vertical until you lean back in the chair which ensures that you keep good posture whilst you work. If you wish to recline then you have to make a conscious effort to do so which is a good thing as it encourages you to be in the correct position when working and recline when you are relaxing.

The back rest is an interesting design in that has inbuilt lumbar support which is in this case not adjustable but very comfortable and gives a good level of support to your lower back without overextending that area. From the lumbar support, we then move further up the back rest and this is curved to line up with the natural shape of your spine.

The back panel is also a mesh fabric, which makes it breathable which is essential in the heat that we are currently in the UK at the moment especially as I don’t have the luxury of air conditioning at home. Above this, we have the built-in headrest which is great for those of us that are a little bit taller as it gives your head a nice spot in case you need that extra support. I find that like a car seat headrest I don’t really use it very much, but I am glad it is there if it takes my fancy to lean my head back.

The other thing of note about the backrest is that the whole section can be adjusted to a comfortable height by simply sliding the section up and it has a built-in ratchet track to hold it in place.

The last thing I wish to mention is the section you actually sit on. It is a fabric seat which has a significant firmness, whilst retaining a sufficient level of comfort. I have never had any pain when sitting in the chair and don’t get any numbness from sitting in place for long time frames. I am of course referring to the numb bum syndrome and this is a real thing that those who are office bound will be more than familiar with. I did find that this happened on my old chair and resulted in me adopting a lotus-esque position which became even more alarming when the recline mechanism would fail!

So overall I would say that yes I am very very pleased with the BS8 Flexi-Chair Ergonomic Office Chair and I would be more than happy to recommend it to you if you are looking for a good quality office chair that won’t break the bank. You can get one from Flexipsot right now for £299.

If you are looking to get a bit of a bargain then I would advise that you keep an eye on this link, As you will be able to get a discount of up to 27% if you buy between the 7th of September and the 9th, as these are the date’s during which Flexipsot are celebrating their 6th Anniversary. If you want to check out the offerings and also potentially win some prizes then head over now for more info. Your back and the rest of your body will thank you!!

The post Flexispot BS8 Flexi-Chair Ergonomic Office Chair – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Standing desks have become quite common along with open plan offices in workspaces up and down the country. They are now also becoming something that the home-based worker is starting to look into. The flexibility of being able to adjust the height at the press of a button is a real benefit and makes finding that ideal work position very easy.

I have quite a small home office that has a maximum width of about 1.9m. My previous office set-up was one that was a hodgepodge of IKEA desks and shelves that I had accumulated over the years. It worked but it was far from perfect. I need something new and it needed to be able to support a few different machines and monitors.

To fulfil these needs I decided to go with the L-Shaped desk EL1 and this thing is massive as you can see from the picture below. It does however fit just!

The desk itself comes in a few different pieces and they were delivered separately by different couriers. Feedback has been given to Flexspot about this and it is something that will be looked into changing. What this did mean is that I was able to get the first part of the desk setup and in place before the really heavy part arrived which for me was the next day thankfully.

Assembly is pretty straightforward and it is a simple case of following the instructions and screwing in a few bolts and some grub screws. As this is an L Shaped desk you can see that one side of the desk is longer than the other. This is to allow it to support the weight of the L. In the photo above I have actually got the orientation around the wrong way as I was not aware of the size of the tops of the desk. It had been my plan to have the desk oriented with the bottom of the L to my left. However, as can be seen in the image above this was not possible due to its sheer size.

I have taken some measurements of the desk for you and these are included below.

• Length 1200mm
• Width 600mm
• Depth 25mm
• Length in total when assembled 1800mm

These dimensions mean that the desk just fits into the space where you facto in the radiator. It gives an expansive work surface on which I am able to spread out my kit quite nicely. As you can see from the pictures I have included. The minimum height of the desk is 710mm and the maximum height is 1200mm. It will hold up 100kg and offers a dual-motor lift mechanism to allow for super-quiet operation at under 50 dB which I have tested. The raising and lowering of the desk is controlled by a simple control panel that can be mounted onto either side of the desk (depending on orientation). I have managed to affix mine to the desk on the left-hand side and it feels like a natural place to have it. This is one of the spots where there are no marked screw holes, So you will need to drill out your own. Here is a video showing the desk lowering from a standing height position.

In addition to the standard desk, I have also added a drawer which I have attached to the underside of the desk. Most of the desks do not come with this option and you do have to pay extra for it. The drawer is very good quality and comes with brackets to make for easy fitting. Again there are no holes that are pre-drilled for this add on so you will need to add your own but the designers have thought about this to make it as easy as possible for you. It took only a few minutes to mark up the holes with the included template attach the brackets and then slot the drawer into place. Once in place, the drawer sits a little bit lower than the desk about ?? mm which actually work out to be quite handy as the top of the drawer casing make for a handy shelf, the fact that it has a felt surface makes it very useful.

As for the drawer, it is lockable which is handy for storing your secure bits and pieces. The inside of the drawer is also lined with the same felt as on the top so you can put things in this space without having to worry too much about them being damaged. Like the desk, the drawer is composed of Steel like the rest of the frame which is reassuring if security is a concern for you. I feel that it does justify the extra cost especially if you need the extra storage.

Another option you get is the keyboard tray but I did not need this one so I did not have the opportunity to test this one out. There are a few other bits that you get to add to the desk setup such as bike style seats. foot mats, drawers etc. They are all reasonably priced and will be certain to work with the desk setup.

Coming back to the desk height adjustment as I mentioned earlier the desk can be used at various heights between 710mm and 1200mm. The controls are very easy to use and as you see in the image below the control unit has got some programmable presets that can be adjusted to your needs. It also has the option to give you reminders when to sit or stand depending on a predefined setting that you can adjust. Out of the box, this came preset at 45 minutes. After this time it will prompt you to either sit or stand depending on which position you are in! Another feature that I really liked is the fact the desk has the ability to detect obstructions that are in the way underneath the desk when lowering it. I have recorded the video below to demonstrate this feature for you.

I have found the material used for the construction of the desk to be very good and it is solid. I see no reason why this desk will not last a long period of time and I am very happy with it. I have found that the desk helps me in my work and makes being at my desk more enjoyable for longer periods of time. The ability to change between sitting and standing at the touch of a button I very useful and allows me to be flexible in the way I work when I am at home. I also found that it has helped to reduce some of the physical pain that can occur with sitting at a desk for a long time. I have recently been suffering from a sore neck from a trampoline-related injury caused by me thinking I was much younger than I was! Having the ability to change my position while working has been very helpful while working. I was finding that sitting was proving to be uncomfortable whereas standing was much easier. having a desk that allowed me to do this has been extremely helpful and I am very grateful that such a thing now exists!

Yes, they are a bit more expensive than a standard desk but i do feel that they are worth it if you have suffered from any pain in your back or are working at a desk for long durations it really does help. Also now is the best time to be looking at getting one of these for your home office as prices have been reduced for Black Friday For the setup I currently have it should have cost me £627.97 however with the current Black Friday deals this has been reduced by 10% to £566.97. 

There are more deals available for desks with up to a massive 50% off some desks these deals can be found at Flexspot’s Website between the 26th and the 29th of November.

The post Flexspot Standing Desk – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Things started off quite well at Coolsmartphone HQ. We’d put the final touches to the Home Office / Gaming Room setup, with details on wiring up Freesat, plumbing in an Ethernet connection and basically hammering the flip out of the walls in my house.

Then it started turning when we had to say goodbye to the ever-excellent Garry Clark but then, for reasons I’ll go into shortly, he returned again in August!

Here’s my little look back at 2020. As ever though, I want to thank you all for reading, watching and listening. Have a peaceful and happy Christmas and a great New Year for 2021.

January saw us reviewing the Honor MagicWatch 2 (which I later bought because it was so good), some screen-friendly gloves, creating a half-price Google Pixelbook and the rise and rise of 120Hz screens.

February should’ve seen us heading to our private jet so that we could bring you all the Mobile World Congress action. Sadly, a pandemic started appearing and it all got cancelled. Then, well, you know how that all turned out. Everything became virtual and life is still far from normal even now. In recent days we’ve seen even tighter regulations kicking in, and many will now be spending Christmas alone or without the wider family they’d hoped to see.

If your mental health is struggling over this festive season, do reach out to any of the following..

Samaritans 116 123
CALM 0800 58 58 58
YoungMinds 0800 018 2138
ChildLine 0800 1111
No Panic 0844 967 4848
SANE 0300 304 7000
Get Connected 0808 808 4994

March saw us getting into lots of home activity and, for a bit, it seemed like fun. I grabbed an old exercise bike out of the shed and, as a way to dodge the crazy Peloton prices, stuffed a phone-holder in the front to give me a similar experience.

With all the new time at home, I then cleared up some finances, ditching Sky seemed like it’d be a big jump, but in the end it turned out rather well and saved me a load of cash.

April brought us the OnePlus 8 Pro and OnePlus 8, both fantastic phones and covered in detail here. We also had a look at the Wireless Warp Charger 30 and accessing Google Stadia on my cheap-but-powerful “Chromebook”.

May saw us delving into the rather confusing mess of age ratings in streaming movies, plus a review of the Moto G8 Power and the Netgem TV box

June, and OnePlus were up to something. It would end up being the excellent OnePlus Nord handset. I still can’t get over how many people come up to me when I’m using a OnePlus phone and say, “Hey, I’ve got one of those, great aren’t they?” It’s like being in a cool club.

We reviewed the Volutz USB cables and we started seeing more Oppo phones on UK networks.

July saw yet more reviews – the VanTop H610 dashcam, our expansive OnePlus Nord coverage, the OnePlus Buds, Tribit Flybuds, EarFun Air Wireless buds, Honor 9X and much more.

August is when my world, quiet literally, fell apart. This post details my first memories of the “event” which then got added to after I’d spoken to my family. It’s still hard to put all of this into words and, as I type all this, I’m still in hospital, still having chemotherapy, over 4 months after being told that I was about to die.

It’s something I still struggle to process. There I was, finishing off some DIY, feeling fine, then – just one week later (and after my stomach had ballooned to look like I was 9-months pregnant), a consultant was telling me there were growths inside me and there was nothing they could do. I had days to live. My family were told. My son was told. That, it seemed, was it.

Coming to terms with that and being told to get things “in order” is something I will never, ever forget.

I was on morphine. Heck, when a doctor came up to me and told me I was going onto “palliative care”, I just nodded. The drugs took the edge and the reality of the situation away.

There’s a podcast about the whole cancer diagnoses too if you’re interested. The short version is that, with really not much time remaining, the biopsy results started coming back and showed that I instead had a type of blood cancer, rather than the “hard cancer” they were seeing on the CT Scan. I felt like I’d won the lottery a million times over because it was treatable and, with luck, lots of chemotherapy and the absolutely amazing staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham; I could lead a normal life. Now, in December, I’m hopefully on the last run of chemo and I can look forward to a better year in 2021.

Well, that was the plan anyway. I’ve just caught the coronavirus too. More on that in a minute.

The TCL 10 5G

September. We had a look at lots of new tech, including the Mi Watch, the Zepp E smartwatch, the Honor Magicbook Pro, the Moto Razr 5G, the TCL 10 5G

OnePlus 8T

October and it’s the big OnePlus 8T review, Honor Watch ES review, the Blurams security camera plus a look at the Nubia Watch. We also took a look at the Taotronics SoundLiberty 92 headphones, the Honor 20e and a pair of socks.

Vivo X51 5G

November saw us reviewing the Vivo X51 5G, which was really very good, the BlitzWolf TS1 Phone holder and the 70mai Jump Starter / Phone charger. We also took a look at the various ways to get music in your car.

December. We’re here! Nearly Christmas and there’s details of the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, the Realme 7 5G, the Syncwire iPhone car charger, Oppo Enco X headphones and a simple guide to switching networks.

What will January bring? Well, I’ll still be here in the hospital sadly. I’ve now got the coronavirus to add to my problems, so Christmas and New Year will be celebrated in my hospital bed. What, though, will the 19th year of Coolsmartphone bring to the table? Let’s see!

Again, a massive thank-you to everyone who hits the site. Everyone on Twitter, listening to the podcast and those emailing us. You keep us going, you keep us smiling. Have yourself a very Merry Christmas guys.

The post Christmas 2020. Oh, what a year that was! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Back in the late ’90s, phones looked very different. The internet, my friend, was just a dream.

WAP technology, remember that? I think we can all agree that it was royally terrible on so many levels. Imagine a stripped-down version of a website which has then been stripped down even more, perhaps to a page with 4 links on it, and you’re almost there. Dial-up for your mobile phone.

Honestly, don’t listen to people who talk about how much of a revelation it was, because the GPRS (anyone remember that) connection was hilariously slow and the overall experience was duller than you could possibly imagine.

This YouTube video gives a little taster of what 1999 was like if you used a monochrome WAP phone (around 20 seconds in)…

..and that guy was drunk when he filmed that. No way was he that happy clicking through 14 pages to get his cricket scores. No way.

Oh and if you’re really interested to find out more, this unbelievably dry YouTube demonstration will display the full horror.

Back then, these were the phones being offered, but already we were also starting to see lower-priced handsets getting more functionality. This Currys ad shows some of the non-contract phones of the time…

Look at that – you could talk to your phone and it would make the call for you. That, let me tell you, was a revelation in 1999!

Not that I remember any of this you understand…

The post Don’t moan about 4G or 5G, you guys don’t know you’re born! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

A recent batch of 60 more satellites continues to add to the final fleet, with thousands beaming broadband connectivity around the world. Delivering the satellites into an elliptical orbit ranging between 132 miles and 227 miles up, they will join the string of satellites flying over our heads. You can learn more about seeing them and then just look up into the sky at the right time to see them flying across. We also covered it in even more detail in October.

As the system grows, latency is expected to drop and speeds are set to increase. The satellites communicate with each other via laser and communicate with stations on the ground to hook into the global internet. What, though, about the customer experience? Well, right now it’s in beta and, in the US (and if you’re in the right place), you’ll be paying $99 (£73.22) per month for speeds which currently range from 30-40Mbps on average.

That might not sound great, but it’s early days and both prices and speeds could alter. For those testing, though, having an internet feed which is faster than a trickle is something of a revelation. In the video below, a guy living far away from normal internet connectivity tests out the Starlink system and the “Dishy” dish. Very interesting if you’re into this sort of thing..

The post Starlink on test. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Yes, having all these online services is great. We can have items delivered to us in double-quick time, we can choose all the TV and movie content in the world and have it delivered to our screens. Likewise, we can have fast-food dropped off in double-quick time and we can contact friends all over the world for free using WhatsApp or Facetime.

However, it’s all screen-based, and the lack of real social interaction is something we’re all suffering from. That, sadly, isn’t something we can fix completely. Sure, we can stand a couple of metres away from each other at the supermarket or in a park, but it’s not quite the same.

So, we’re back to interacting via the web, and we have to rely on services like Hulu’s Watch Party. It’ll let you experience movies and TV shows with friends and family that have a Hulu subscription. It’s almost like being in the same in the same room. You can perhaps fire up a WhatsApp video call to keep in touch throughout the movie and then, once everyone joins and the host starts the show, Hulu will sync the media for all viewers. If you don’t fancy a WhatsApp or Facetime call, there’s also a chat panel for communicating within the Hulu window.

Getting it all sorted is easy enough, although Hulu’s Watch Party sadly doesn’t currently support Android, iOS, iPadOS, and other mobile apps. So you’ll need to be looking at a Windows, Chromebook or Macbook, oh, and you need to ensure that your Watch Party doesn’t have more than 8 viewers.

To get started, login to your Hulu account, talk to your friends, agree on a movie or TV show, then click the “Watch Party” icon if it’s listed next to that show. You, as the host, then need to hit the “Start the Party” button in the pop-up window and wait for everyone to come onboard. A special link will be sent out, and you can choose to share this on email, WhatsApp, texts or social networks if you want to open it up to more “virtual” friends.

Everyone joining the party will simply need to click on the URL they’ve received, then fire up the Party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CayqQUPKFM

Although it’s not going to totally bring us back to our “fully connected” world, it goes someway to making us feel like we’re enjoying something together, and it allows us to enjoy a shared experience. This, in the coronavirus world we’re living in now, is hard to emulate. In previous years we would’ve had to agree to sit down and watch a TV show at a preset time on a preset channel – perhaps calling each other as the show is on. Now, however, there’s the choice of far more content and we can enjoy it whenever we want.

The post Now you can watch Hulu with friends. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Which network should you choose?

Well, it’s important to learn more about each one, including the plethora of “virtual” networks. The latter are known as “MVNO’s” (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) and use the masts and infrastructure of one of the main “big four” UK networks.

The main UK networks

• EE – Previously Orange and T-Mobile, they’re now combined and owned by BT. EE is the largest mobile network operator in the UK, with 27.5 million subscribers.
• Vodafone – The second-largest mobile phone company on the planet and the third largest in the UK (behind EE and O2).
• O2 – Owned by Telefonica, they have around 26 million subscribers and many moons ago were called Cellnet.
• Three UK – Launched in 2003 as the first 100% 3G network, it’s owned by Hutchison Holdings. They have around 13.3 million subscribers.

Coverage

Each network will promote their coverage, their speeds and how much 4G / 5G infrastructure they have. A great way of getting this info in one place is via the Ofcom mobile coverage checker. You simply add your postcode and it’ll show how good the coverage is, both indoors and outdoors. This is all-important if you’re thinking of switching to a different network.

Virtual networks

Back to those “MVNO’s” then, and you’ll be aware of some or all of these. They will use the infrastructure and masts from one of the “big four” providers mentioned above, and they’ll offer cheaper, more simple plans which appeal to a wider market. There’s many SIM-only plans offered too, as people increasingly choose to buy phones outright and switch networks instead of being tied into a long-term contract.

However, not all of these virtual networks are equal. Some are owned by the parent network and they will have a very similar level of quality as the “main” network which owns it. There’s a full list of MVNO’s on Wikipedia, but here’s some of the main ones…

• SMARTY – A sub-brand of Three. It uses the Three UK network and offers monthly rolling SIM-only service with online support.
• giffgaff – Owned by O2 and using their network, giffgaff offers a simple set of “goodybags” for talktime and also provides mobile handsets.
• VOXI – Owned by and using Vodafone, VOXI is now promoted directly by Voda. They offer great deals on SIM-only plans to all ages of customer.
• BT Mobile – Using the EE network, the MVNO is owned by the same company which owns EE.

In addition, there’s…

• Asda Mobile – Uses the EE network. They previously used Vodafone and will switching back to them again soon.
• FreedomPop – Using Three, they offer a “free” IP mobile service.
• iD Mobile – Owned by Dixons Carphone, you’ll see this network heavily advertised in Carphone Warehouse. Uses the Three masts.
• Lebara Mobile – Uses the Vodafone network.
• Lycamobile – Famed for cheap international calls, it uses the O2 network.
• Plusnet – Owned by BT, it uses the EE masts.
• Sky Mobile – Like Plusnet, Sky are keen to push their “quad-play” service and use the O2 network for their mobile service.
• Superdrug Mobile – Using Three, you’ll find this network advertised in stores.
• TalkTalk Mobile – Using O2, they offer a range of SIM-only plans to customers.
• Tesco Mobile – On O2, this is owned by Tesco and O2 in a 50/50 partnership.
• The Phone Co-op – Using EE, you might find your local Co-op offering this network.
• Virgin Mobile – Using EE currently, Virgin Mobile are due to switch to Vodafone masts soon too.

How to switch?

Although some networks insist on extra info (as an example, Vodafone want you to also send your 4-digit account PIN if you text them), moving networks is now easier than ever. Details are on the Ofcom website, but it boils down to the following choices. For the most part, you’ll be wanting a PAC code, which means you’re moving but keeping your number.

Option 1 – Get a PAC code. This lets you switch to another provider whilst keeping your existing number.

To get this, just text “PAC” to 65075. Another option is to use your online mobile account or app to choose “mobile switching” and generate a PAC code that way. You can also call the customer services people but you’ll then probably end up talking to someone who’ll encourage you to stay (more on this in a minute).

Option 2 – Get a STAC code. This will terminate your current number and will end your contract. You can then simply join another network and get a new number.

Text “STAC” to 75075. This is a nice clean break, but you should only do this if you’re happy killing off your existing mobile number.

Option 3 – Get information about your current contract.

If you’re unsure about possible contract charges, text “INFO” to 85075. It’ll tell you how much you’d have to pay if you’re ending your contract early.

Now what?

Even when you’ve got your PAC code, you don’t need to use it. It’s valid for 30 days and, if you don’t give it to another provider, you’ll continue on with your current one.

What you will find is that, once you’ve created / requested a PAC code, the “retentions team” from your current provider will be calling you to convince you to stay. You can simply ignore the calls and give the PAC code to your chosen new network, but it’s important to know the following…

Making your choice!

If you’re going to switch networks, you need to do your research. Follow these steps…

1 – If you’ve chosen an MVNO or a “major” network, check their coverage. If you’ve chosen an MVNO, use the details above to see what parent network they’re using, then check that with the Ofcom mobile coverage checker. Check that the places you’re in the most are covered – home, work, school, college, university and so on. Ensure that you’re not going to regret switching because there’s no signal!

2 – Have a look for mobile deals. Decide whether you’re going SIM-only or you’re after a new contract and phone. Ensure that you write down the reasons why you’re moving – is it price or your monthly allowance? Perhaps it’s something else. Write down your reasons so that, if you do speak to the retentions team, you’re armed. Don’t be forced into staying with your current provider just because they’ve said something that “sounds” good on a call.

3 – Check the contract length. You may have found a great deal, but it might tie you in for three years when you thought it was two years. Double-check to be sure.

4 – Don’t go overboard! Do you really need unlimited data and that free Spotify / Netflix account? Check your usage over the last few months. You may have only used a few GB, so paying over the odds isn’t worth it.

5 – Plan ahead. Is your life about to change? Are you heading to university or changing jobs? If so, you might need a whole lot more data. If you’re not sure what’s going to happen, maybe use a SIM-only 30-day or 12-month plan to see you through until you’ve got more certainty.

My crazy flow-chart

When I’m switching, I usually use this to help me decide what to do. Don’t forget, if you call your network or they call you, don’t roll over – don’t be pushed into accepting a shiny new phone and a long contract with extra frilly bits unless you’re sure that it’s the right option for you.

Hopefully this will help with your decision-making, but do get in touch if you have any advice or questions.

The post Switching and choosing – UK mobile networks explained. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

This looks similar to the existing Virgin Media V6 TV Box and indeed, it is. Although built by a different supplier, the hardware inside is broadly the same in the new Virgin TV 360 set top box.

There’s also a new “Virgin TV 360 Mini” which is essentially the same box but without the hard disk inside. Ideal for additional rooms. Announced on the Liberty Global site, the new Virgin TV 360 box has a new user experience and a new remote control. There’s a clear navigation system, HD, 4K and all the streaming apps you can shake a stick at.

Record six programmes at once while watching a seventh, plus you can now watch on demand show and live TV in one room, before pausing and continuing in another room.

Here’s a look at the new box…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SwYSfKZmFU

The Virgin TV 360 has a voice search, voice control, family profiles and the ability to restart live TV shows.

David Bouchier, Chief TV & Entertainment Officer at Virgin Media, told us..

Virgin TV 360 is our most impressive TV service to date, providing one of the most complete and comprehensive viewing experiences available in the UK. Backed up by our ultrafast broadband, our new service allows TV lovers to watch all of their favourite channels, apps and on-demand content in one place or on the move. This really is game-changing TV and we are know our customers will love it.

Users of the Virgin TV Go app will also get on-the-go streaming and a new revamped experience. The new box runs the Horizon software, which was originally launched in 2012 and has been developed by Liberty Global themselves.

The post Liberty Global announce new Virgin TV 360 box is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So how do you afford a phone and pay for it out-right? Well, there’s a few ways.

Saving
I brought down the cost for my son’s phone by getting a reconditioned one and simply saving up for the thing.

As a way of saving, I simply pretended that I was paying for a monthly contract – putting about £25 away each month before he received his first ever phone. This was soon enough to pay for the phone, which I got reconditioned (more on that shortly), and then it was just a matter of getting a monthly SIM-only deal to get him connected. Pop the SIM-card in and, boom, it’s all done.

Get a reconditioned phone
If you don’t mind receiving your phone in a plain box, having a reconditioned or refurbished phone can save you a whole load of cash. These are usually sold in various conditions, categorised depending on the way they look. If you get an “excellent” one then you’d really find it impossible to tell the difference between the phone you unbox and a brand new handset.

Take a look at these if you’re looking to save some cash, as there’s more and more handsets being kept in high-quality cases. This is good for the reconditioned market and the for the initial owners. It’s worth more when sold (because it’s in such good condition) and it means there’s more unspoiled handsets on the market.

Trading in and selling old kit
Older phones can either be sold on eBay or sold to handset recycling companies too. Indeed, some handset manufacturers, such as Samsung and Apple, will offer money off a new phone if you have a phone to trade-in. Even if you don’t think it’s worth a great deal, off-loading handsets from that secret drawer in the kitchen could see you earn a little money towards a new handset.

Start with your newest and most scratch-free phone, then just head to a phone recycling website to see how much you can expect to receive. It’s a quick way to earn cash and usually you’ll just need to send the phone off via Freepost. However, if you want to potentially earn a bit more, you can head to eBay and sell your phone there instead.

Paying in instalments
Buying a phone without entering into a monthly contract is a big cost and yes, even the companies selling phones this way realise that fact. It’s for this reason that many are offering monthly payment options to finance the phone. Some use PayPal credit or their own credit facilities. Whilst the mere mention of a loan might be off-putting to some, it’s no different to the traditional phone contract.

Getting a phone via any of the above methods also means you’re not tied into one supplier. You can switch networks easily depending on cost, coverage and benefits. As an example, in recent months I’ve switched my son twice and – with 30 day deals available – you have that freedom to move without any contract clauses or payments.

Don’t forget, however you fund your next phone, do keep a case on your new handset and treat it well. You can use it as a trade-in or to sell when you want to upgrade to the next shiny phone.

The post Buying a phone without a contract – making it easier. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Heck, who am I kidding? I come from a world even earlier than that. From cassette decks and high-speed dubbing, but I quickly moved into that rather “unofficial” path of buying MP3’s from car-boot sales and computer fairs. Anyone remember that? You’d walk into a computer fair and there’d be a guy with folders open on a table. You choose the album you wanted and then it’d magically appear from a bag under the table. Some were standard copies, others were MP3, and back in the day my car stereo didn’t play MP3, so I’d have to convert them back to audio CD’s so that my car CD player would play them. Totally illegal of course, and it was quickly stamped on by the various officials until everyone realised that you could do it on the internet even easier.

A faff? Yes it was. Lots of blank CD-R’s, a CD/DVD burners and a glove-box stashed full of CD’s with random words scribbled on them in permanent marker. “Todd Terry Mix #2”, “Alex P Mix”, “Ministry of Sound Album” and so on.

I did buy “proper” CD’s too of course, and my garage is still full of them if I’m honest. They’ve travelled thousands of miles in the cars I’ve owned, sliding around foot-wells and glove-boxes.

Now though, times have changed. Multi CD-changers and face-off car stereo kit seems like a thing of the past. Now we’re into DAB stereo kit, 3.5mm and Bluetooth audio inputs.

What, though, if your car isn’t quite as new as all that? What if you’ve got a CD player and a standard FM radio? Well, there’s a few options..

Get a new stereo / head unit

Pricey, yes. You’ll probably also have to consider the fact that your dashboard needs to be adjusted and perhaps that the new unit may not “talk” to the volume controls on the steering wheel (if you have them). You’ll be heading to a car audio centre and parting with quite a bit of cash, so perhaps consider one of these other options.

FM Transmitter

Pretty simple idea this, and cheap too. eBay has a lot of options. Just stick it in your car power port (ye olde cigarette lighter), tell it to broadcast on a free FM frequency, pair it with your phone and then tune your FM radio to that channel. Boom – you’re done. Now you can stream your Spotify playlist, your streaming internet radio station, your Mixcloud tunes or your personal MP3 collection simply by hopping in the car and waiting for it to auto-pair.

Prices start at around £6.

3.5mm Bluetooth Receiver

If your car stereo has a 3.5mm audio port you could, if you want, put a cable from your phone into your car. It’ll work, but it does mean that you’ll need a phone with a 3.5mm audio port and there’s going to be an unsightly cable dangling across your car. So, instead, try one of these. It’s basically a 3.5mm plug which accepts a Bluetooth connection. You then just pair it with your phone and, you’ve got streamed-audio direct into your car stereo without much faffage. Cost is about £6 again.

A Bluetooth speaker

The only minor issue with the above two solutions is, if you’re happy with the Bluetooth calling solution in your car, then the FM transmitter or Bluetooth receiver will intervene, and you may not be able to use the Bluetooth calling buttons on your steering wheel or whatever. Instead, audio will come out of your car speakers and your microphone might be different too.

OK, so there might be another minor problem..

Yeah, someone got paint on it…. definitely not me, honest…

If your existing car stereo setup is a bit naff, and the speakers are rubbish, nothing will change that unless you go back to the first suggestion and swap out your head-unit and all the speakers. For this reason, my wife has recently started using the infamous (and highly rated by us) Tribit X-Boom / StormBox Speaker. It fits perfectly into the Mini and produces far better sound than the existing car speakers. It charges off the car and pairs up when the phone gets near.

What about data usage though?!

Streaming audio while you’re moving is great. I love doing it. You can stream radio stations and music that you can’t normally get – such as Spotify tracks, DAB stations or stations that are out of your area. I’ve written about this before and a good rule of thumb is to work on 1MB of data consumption per minute when listening to streaming radio.

When I listen to CentreForce Radio, which I can’t get on DAB because it’s out my area, I listen for about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening on my commute. That’s 120MB (60MB each way) out of my data package, 5 times a week. That’s 600MB per week, or 2.4GB per month (based on 4 weeks).

Keep an eye on your data usage, ensure you’ve got a data package that’ll cover it.

To bring your data usage down, you can always download Spotify tracks locally or (through various means on the internet) download Mixcloud or Soundcloud tracks too.

The post Getting your music in your car. The easy way. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Even 7 miles up, your phone can lock onto the odd network mast as you fly over countries. I’ve accidentally had queued text messages sent this way, and yes – it works.

So… how about doing that in reverse?

Well, that’s what the guys at Cambridge Consultants are planning, and they already have Deutsche Telekom on board and funding the project. Working in conjunction with Stratospheric Platforms Limited (SPL), it’s a wireless antenna unlike anything seen before. Put simply, it (currently) involves sticking high-capacity 5G mobile masts into a fleet of “High Altitude Platforms” – currently these are planes, with test flights being conducted in Bavaria using a H3Grob 520 aeroplane which is remotely piloted and flies at 45,000ft.

However, the end goal is to deploy a fleet of zero emissions HAP aircraft at around 65,000 feet (that’s a smidgen higher than Concorde used to fly at), flying effectively in hold patterns for more than a week at a time.

Each “HAP” plane will provide coverage over an area of up to 140 kilometres (87 miles) in diameter. That would remove the need for hundreds of “normal” 5G masts on the ground. A planned fleet of around 60 HAPs could blanket the whole of the United Kingdom with speedy 5G connectivity.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t this all a bit… mad? A bit .. costly?

One “HAP” pushing 5G to everything in the M25

Well, first you’ve got to consider how many mobile masts are needed to keep our phones going. As an example, here in the UK, Vodafone have 21,000 masts. Each one needs to be built on some land or placed on a building. That costs money and a rental has to be paid. It’s somewhere between £5,000 and £11,000 depending on the location. Then there’s power. More money. Then there’s a high-capacity backhaul (fibre). Loadsa money. Cheap it isn’t.

Imagine being able to turn them all off and instead use some remotely-controlled (or, in the future, computer-controlled) aircraft using zero-emission hydrogen power. It would, according to Stratospheric Platforms Limited, “operate at a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining normal terrestrial masts and infrastructure, with minimal environmental impact”. It would completely rewrite the economics of providing mobile telephony and data.

So, the proof of concept is complete. Once fully ready, the 5G antenna will be large, powerful and lightweight. It’ll sit below the HAP measuring three square meters and will weigh around 120kg.

Best of all? Not much will change. Your current phone will connect to the 5G signal (which will be coming from above instead of alongside you), and the backhaul will be handled without thousands of complex and expensive fibre-optic links.

Imagine just how costly and difficult it currently is to cover Wales with current ground-based masts.

Stratospheric Platforms Limited tell us…

With radically cheaper costs, this new platform has the potential to connect the unconnected in the developing world, to fill gaps in coverage across the developed world and to ensure rural areas aren’t left behind anywhere across the globe. In addition, the hydrogen power system creates a long endurance, low environmental impact aircraft, with low noise, zero CO2 and zero NOx emissions.

Rollout of the first commercial service is anticipated to begin in Germany during 2024.

The clever mobile “masts in the air” will effectively be a modular design which can scale seamlessly. Within the antenna is 480 individual, steerable beams, creating patterns that can be “painted” onto the ground to cover specific areas such as roads, railway lines or towns. Here you can see that the beam has been altered so that the sea isn’t covered…

With the 5G rollout and heavy investment already happening across the UK, the big question is – will networks wait until 2024 and use this instead?

More information on StratosphericPlatforms.com.

The post 5G …. from a plane! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Luckily though, a lot of phones now have dual SIM trays, so – even if you don’t want to leave your current provider – you can have a different SIM just for your browsing and streaming needs.

I looked at this SMARTY offering because …

1 – It’s a 30-day deal.
2 – I get a massive 30GB of data per month.
3 – I only need to pay £1 for the first month.
4 – It’s only £10 per month after that.

They also do a 50GB plan for a mere £15. Both have unlimited texts, calls and they use the Three network. If you want to fully move over, this is super-simple. Just text your provider to get your PAC, give that to SMARTY and you’re done.

In my case though, I’d run into the “out of data” problem. I’m happy with my current provider and didn’t necessarily want to move, but I didn’t want to wait until my data allowance rolled around. Also, I didn’t want to pay the relatively high “one off” cost to have a bit more data added.

An extra 1GB of data on my bundle is £8

As you can see above, I could simply boost my current monthly allowance, but I figured that the £8 cost could be better spent elsewhere.

So, this led me to spend just £1 on this SMARTY SIM for a massive 30GB. It arrived in the post a couple of days later. Then, during my brief visit back home, I simply opened the double SIM tray, put the new SMARTY SIM into the second slot, then clicked “Activate” on the SMARTY website.

Once done, you get a dashboard showing how much you have spent (just £1 !) and your remaining data. There’s no app for SMARTY, so you just login via their site to get an update on your allowance.

Next, I set the phone to use the SMARTY SIM for data. Everything else (calls and texts) is going to be kept on my normal SIM. This is easily done in “Settings” and “WiFi and Network”, then into “SIM and Network”..

That’s pretty much it! I should also mention that you also get an extra SIM card to give out to friends or relatives. Nice touch

A typical SMARTY 4G speed test

To get more info, just head to the SMARTY website to choose the SIM that suits you!

Update – Even if you do run out of data on SMARTY, the cost of adding more data is really reasonable…

The post SMARTY – On test is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

In fact, there’s now even more. A launch today is increasing the satellite count to 800, with a total expected deployment of 1,440.

What does all this mean? Well, if you’re unable to get 4G, 5G or decent fixed-line broadband, you may be in a remote area and you may have considered “traditional” satellite broadband. The problem, though, is the latency. Getting your request up there, getting it down again – it takes time because the satellites are over 1000km above you. Here, with Starlink, they’re seeking to offer not just an alternative for satellite broadband, but for anyone wanting an alternative or cheaper web connection.

Their website states…

With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable.

Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near global coverage of the populated world by 2021.

Their satellites are far lower – spinning around the globe at 550km, with high throughput and lower latency. There’s also a promise that data can be pushed around the Earth faster than it currently can via undersea fibre-optic cabling. Private beta testing is expected to begin later this year, followed by public beta testing, starting with higher latitudes. However, it’s already being used for emergency situations, with Starlink and SpaceX helping out during wildfires in Malden, Washington last month with this ground equipment..

When systems are available, the consumer units are expected to be a little flatter and more compact. A Starlink box needs to be able to see the sky, then this will communicate with the satellites as they pass by and, in turn, the satellites will communicate with each other via lasers.

The post Starlink – Now 800 satellites up in orbit is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

My son and I headed to Wembley a year ago and, while I was in the area, I decided to check out the new 5G connection that had popped up on my phone. Getting 5G back then was a hit-and-miss affair, and it was really only to be found in certain parts of major cities.

The test, which I will admit didn’t benefit from a full signal, resulted in 4G speeds of 71 Mbps and 5G speeds of 130 Mbps.

Today though, I find myself back in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham (due to all this). I’m having more chemo and, although I’ve got free WiFi, I spotted that – right outside my window – there’s a stack of mobile masts on the top of a tower block.

After checking via OpenSignal, I confirmed that my phone was indeed connected directly to that tower. This is something I detailed in my earlier post, and you can find your local mast easily with the app. The mast is, after checking with Google Maps, just 500 metres from me and – because I’m on the sixth floor of the hospital – I’ve got direct line of sight.

So, let’s do the speed tests again shall we? I’m using Vodafone and the Fast.com speed testing site for this. As usual, there’s a stack of caveats – traffic management, the test server and capacity can impact the results. Also, I wouldn’t recommend doing too many speed tests yourself as it’ll soon eat into your data allowance.

My position is at the bottom, looking out of the window. The masts are on the upper left. Not far away at all.

Test one then, and I’m going to force the phone to stick to 4G. You can do this in the settings. I’m not sure why you’d ever want to do this, but you can..

A 68 Mbps download speed on 4G really isn’t bad at all. The upload on this 4G+ connection was around 10 Mbps. Now, let’s do the same test on the 5G connection which is being fed from the same location. Speeds really jump up here, and we end up with a speed that normally would only be seen by people on fibre optic connections at home. A massive 290 Mbps, and I’m sure if I’d done more tests it would’ve nudged a bit higher.

I’ve shown the additional detail on the screenshot below, and you can see that the upload speed has doubled to 20 Mbps

The upshot? Sure, on 4G the 68 Mbps speed is absolutely fine. It’s faster than a lot of home wired connections, but 5G gives a lower latency – a faster response, a bigger capacity and the ability to get things done much more quickly.

The post Another real-world 5G test is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Of course, this is different for everyone, so always head to the Ofcom mobile coverage comparison to see who’s strongest in your area and the places you’re going to be the most. Check indoor coverage too, because with COVID-19, we’re all going to be inside most of the time.

You can also get a map to see how each network fares..

So, in the places I’m going to be the most, Vodafone is strongest. To get my Vodafone SIM-only deal, I Googled just that. You’ll end up on this Vodafone page, presented with some decent deals and 6 month half-price offerings which definitely looked interesting.

There was a lot of choice but the well-priced unlimited data plans were a bit unnecessary for my needs. The other data-limited plans were a little out of my price range and had extras that I didn’t need, so I ended up heading to the Voxi website instead.

I only needed about 12GB of monthly data and this Voxi deal seemed like the ideal solution. It was the one I was going to go for..

However, as I’m a bargain hunter, I went across to the Uswitch website to double-check and do some comparisons, and that’s where I found this 12GB data offering for the very same £10 price on Vodafone. Wait a minute, I hadn’t seen that on the Vodafone SIM-only pages?

Sure, the Voxi offering is better because it throws in unlimited social media, but in this particular case I chose to stick to Vodafone even though Voxi uses Vodafone masts. So, I headed to the Vodafone website to find the 12GB deal I’d found on the comparison site. I just couldn’t find it. I Googled, I Googled some more, but it was no-where to be seen.

Eventually, after going via a completely different website, I found it.

The deal is part of the Vodafone Basics range. This is a set of SIM-only deals which don’t deliver 5G and don’t deliver roaming. However, they are cheaper because of that. Here’s the differences…

Getting to these “Basics” SIM-only plans can be a bit tricky, so if you’re having trouble, head here to get the Vodafone Basics SIM-only deals.

Here’s a look at all of this in video….

The post The hidden Vodafone SIM-only deals you need to know about is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Anyways, stop motion filming has long been used in animations and movies such as Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run and so on. It’s basically a process where you move a small model, take a photo, move it a bit more, take a photo and then continue until your footage is done. Put all those individual photos together and the result is rather lovely, but to save the animator going insane, you’ll usually find that the amount of frames (photos) per second is reduced.

However, now – with a completely free bit of code and a sprinkling of AI – you can fill in the intermediate frames. This means that a relatively jerky bit of footage suddenly looks silky smooth.

As an example, here’s a Brickfilm animation from LegoEddy using the code..

To grab the code and try it yourself, just head right here. A network called DAIN interpolates your footage, and you can grab the source code from Github.

To see the difference, here’s the original movie..

…and the enhanced interpolated version…

The post Everything is awesome, at 60fps is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It wasn’t always this way though, and although many companies were setup for remote working, there was a lack of trust between management and workers. After all, without a global pandemic, it would’ve been a very rare to see a CEO send their entire workforce home to work from their spare rooms and kitchens. How could productivity be monitored? Would meetings be the same? Could services and goods be provided in the same way?

In reality, the enforced “work from home” has been something that has surprised many companies. Output from workers has been the same, or it’s increased, and thanks to a wide range of online collaborative tools, your teams can continue to work – no matter where they are.

Business software to help with your accounts means that you can do all your company finances online or on your phone. Meanwhile, Microsoft software has been widely used – Teams, Skype, Outlook and the entire Office suite is now available over the internet and online video meetings are the norm. Other video calls, like Zoom, have not only helped with online meetings but have also ensured that friends and family can keep in touch after work too.

Fast internet connections and the ability to switch from your laptop to your phone in order to keep on working – this is key. If your internet feed is stable and quick, you can do everything that you’d normally do in the office. Plus, with 5G on the rise, the traditional landline requirement is no longer the only option. A web connection from a mobile provider can now be faster and more available than a wired connection.

All of this – faster connections with more coverage, more capable smartphones and online collaborative business software – means that the world of work has changed forever. Getting back to the traditional way of working – sitting on a train, grabbing a sandwich, rushing into the office – may never happen.

The post The new normal has been forced upon us, but it’s here to stay. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Back in 2011 we started looking into this, and back then the mobile networks were reporting where all their masts were, however as time went by things changed. Over the years, we’ve looked into this again (2016) and again (2017) and again (2018) and again (2020).

However, today I stumbled over a fairly easy way of locating your local mobile phone mast. There’s a small caveat here, in that you can only see the mast for the mobile network your phone is using, but I think it’s really quite a good solution.

101Mbps on Vodafone 4G. Not bad at all.

It comes in the form of the OpenSignal app, which is available for Android or iOS. The app already tells you how good the signal is in your local area, plus you can do speed tests and report your own signal strength etc.

However, there’s a “Find Signal” tab now which, if you hit the “Cell Towers” button, shows all the local masts for the network you’re on. It shows you which mast your phone is connected to and the Cell IDs, so you can see exactly where those local masts are…

More here…

The post Find your local mobile mast – 2020 Update is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

My wife, for example, somehow ended up with a £59 per-month package for her Samsung phone. She had far too much data included and she somehow got Spotify plus mobile phone insurance added into the mix too. After a “robust conversation”, I’ve now switched her across to a Virgin Mobile deal for £12 per month, and she strangely gets more data too.

Switching networks is now super easy. Just send a text message to your current network and give the provided code to the new network. Bosh. Done.

Less than £300 for this locked iPhone X on eBay

Also, if you’ve come to the end of your contract and you’ve paid everything you owe, you can usually unlock your phone easily by merely asking your current network to do it. They usually won’t charge you for this either. However, if you got your phone from somewhere else – eBay, Gumtree, Shpock etc – you could find yourself buying a phone which is locked to a specific network. Plus, because you’re not the person named on the original contract, you can’t get it unlocked for free.

Cheap reconditioned phones on MusicMagpie

If you’re looking around for a used smartphone, you’ll find that locked phones are generally cheaper to buy. This is because you’ll need to do a bit of extra work to get it unlocked so that you can use it on the network of your choice.

So, when I was buying an a reconditioned iPhone 7 for my son, I spotted quite a few really cheap ones that were locked. Fast forward to today and I’m at it again, this time looking for an iPhone X. If you have a good look around, you can get one for less than £380, however, that’s for a locked one. The next step is to simply hunt out a decent company who will Unlock iPhone X handsets.

Usually you’ll just need a few things…

1 – Details of the network that the phone is locked to.
2 – The IMEI number (which you can get by simply dialling *#06# on your dial-pad)
3 – Payment.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll receive an unlock code which just needs putting into the phone. Don’t forget, if you’re getting an Apple phone, this is just the network unlock code. If your iPhone is locked to a previous owners iCloud account, you will require an iCloud Unlock prior to unlocking your device.

The post Let’s face it, locked second-hand phones are cheaper, and unlocking is so easy is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It’s used in nearly every US-made movie because, if you try calling it, nothing happens. However, did you know that here in the UK there’s something very similar?

Yes, Ofcom actually blocked out certain sets of numbers here too. They go no-where, but they’re used in UK TV and film productions, plus they add a little more realism because they look more… errm… real.

In London, numbers starting 0207946… are for “dramatic purposes” and elsewhere there’s an entire area code which has been “created” – 01632. So, if you ever want to confuse one of those cold-callers, tell them to call back on your 01632 number – it’ll never work.

For UK mobiles, the prefix 077009 is used, and any digits after that can be added to make it look like a real number in films and TV dramas. Numbers like 07700932323 can appear on TV and, if viewers call, nothing will happen.

The excellent Tom Scott has a brilliant video on all this below..

The post The mobile numbers that will never, ever work is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Many previously saw home working as an ideal solution to the stresses and strains of commuting, early starts and late finishes. However, if your home isn’t that large or you’re sat alone for most of the day, the weekdays and weekends merge together. You long for video and phone calls with colleagues – a little bit of contact with the outside world – but you’re sat in your pants and slippers.

Keeping your mental health in check during these very strange times was the reason for us to start our “Home Active” feature, but this particular site passed us by.

Called “Sound of Colleagues” there’s the usual background of colleagues chatting, printers, coffee machines, phones, traffic, keyboards and more. You can alter how loud each sound is and you can even get entire albums on Spotify with similar sounds. If you’re working at home alone, it can be quite a nice bit of background noise to accompany your work day.

The post Working from home still? Get the sounds of the office is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I started the switch because Sky had increased their subscription charges earlier this year. Now customers who may have missed these increases will see their bills go up in August.

Prices will go up by £2 on the Sky Broadband Essential package, £2 on Sky Entertainment, £1 on Sky TV Multiscreen and £1 per month on Sky HDTV.

Have a read of my leaving Sky TV feature to read more on how you could possibly come out of the contract or reduce the monthly price.

The post Sky TV to increase prices again is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Right now I have the Honor 9X Pro on test and it’s yet another brilliant smartphone. Pop-up selfie lens, a 48 megapixel triple rear camera, 6.59″ 2340 x 1080 screen with a near-400ppi resolution, 2.2GHz Kirin CPU, 4000mAh battery, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage and a microSD card. All that for just £219.99. Boom. You can’t go wrong.

It arrives, you drool over the beautiful design and the fantastically reflective rear-end. It’s a whole world of good but then…

..then you turn it on.

Most Android users want a fairly familiar setup sequence. They have an expectation. However, when I got this booted up my face starting screwing up. There’s no Google Account setup screens, no Gmail, no YouTube, no Google Pay, no Google Drive, Play Music, Google Calendar and – worst of all – no Google Play.

Instead you’ll find the Huawei Browser and the AppGallery – the Huawei / Honor app store. Then, when I opened the browser, I found that the default search engine was Bing. Nobody uses Bing. Nobody, and I can say that with confidence. I was in Seattle a few years ago at a Microsoft conference. There were people from all over the world there – thousands crammed into this huge conference centre. Steve Ballmer got on stage (OK, this was a few years ago) and asked everyone who used Bing to put their hands up. Not one person did. Best of all, these guys were all Microsoft fans.

So, how do you make your new Huawei / Honor phone a bit more “Googley”? We’re going to go through a couple of options.

The Huawei Browser and Bing

• Option 1 – Keeping the browser but changing the default search engine. 

Go to “Settings->Search Engine” in the browser and switch the search engine to “Google”. In all honesty the Huawei Browser is pretty decent, and you won’t find too much difference between this and the Chrome browser.

• Option 2 – Installing Chrome. (Entails side-loading an APK)

On your new shiny phone, head to https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/ and enter the Google Play URL for Google Chrome (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome&hl=en). It’ll generate a download link, then you need to download the APK file.

Your phone will warn you about installing an APK this way, but you can go ahead and install it.

It’ll install, but you won’t get updates as this particular app isn’t available in the Huawei AppGallery and you can’t communicate with the Google Play store to receive updates.

YouTube

In all honesty, the browser-based version of YouTube isn’t too bad. You can upload videos and watch them in HD, plus you can go full screen and watch videos in landscape orientation too. Sadly there is no “option 2” for this one, as you’ll see in a second…

• Option 1 – Setting a shortcut and placing it on your Homescreen. 

In the Huawei Browser, head to https://m.youtube.com and then select “Add to home screen” from the menu..

As you can see in the third picture above, you end up with a YouTube link on your homescreen.

• Option 2 – Installing the YouTube app.

Sadly this simply doesn’t work because it needs the Google Play Services, and even if you side-load these, it still doesn’t work.

Gmail

Again, the on-board mail application works very well and you can add your Gmail account in seconds. A lot of the functionality is there…

• Option 1 – Use the on-board mail app. (No risk)

I’ve used this and, although the “sync frequency” is 15 minutes, mail seems to arrive very quickly.

• Option 2 – Head to the GMail website and set this as a shortcut. (No risk)

Use your Huawei Browser, go to https://gmail.com and login. Then go to the menu in your browser and choose “Add to home screen”

Again, you can’t load the Gmail app if you try and side-load it because you’ll need Google Play services, which isn’t supported.

Google Maps

The mapping and navigation functions work well from the browser, and again – the app needs Google Play Services so you can’t side-load it in with an APK.

• Set a shortcut to your Home screen for the web version.

Again, go into the Huawei Browser and load Google Maps that way. I found that the GPS location didn’t seem to work, which was a pretty big problem. If you don’t need it for that, you can at least add a shortcut to the web page on your home screen by opening your Huawei web browser and setting the Google Maps web page as a shortcut.

• Use “HERE WeGo – City Navigation”.

Download this from the AppGallery. It has traffic details, transport types and – although there’s no Street View and stuff like that it’ll get you to your destination.

Google Calendar

I had a good look into this one. Google Calendar, if you side-load the APK, just doesn’t seem to fire up at all. You can do the “shortcut the web version to the desktop” thing but your reminders won’t be integrated into the phone and you’ll potentially miss appointments etc unless you’re on the page. So, perhaps the bets and only option here is to go into the Android calendar app which is already pre-installed on your Honor / Huawei phone.

It won’t, though, intergrate with Google. I’ve not found a way around this.

In summary

Right now, although there’s “ways around”, if you’re fully plumbed into the Google world, then moving to an Honor or Huawei phone may require a bit of a rethink.

However, if you just use Google Mail and a bit of YouTube then things probably won’t feel too much different in all honesty. Yes, you’re going to feel some pain when that Google Play link advertised in a shop or online doesn’t work for you, but the general operation of the “No Gapps” Huawei / Honor handsets is bearable. With a few tweaks here and there, and a homescreen looking like this, you’re most of the way there..

The post Huawei or Honor phone? No Play Store? No YouTube? No Gmail? No YouTube? Well, there is an answer is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

There’s various services and, as I covered during my “Leaving Sky TV” feature, I swapped the Sky subscription for streaming services. Shows we’re chose from my phone or through the Netgem TV system, and you can have a read of my Netgem TV review I put up to find out more.

However, one thing I’ve noticed about those services is that, when you have been able to find which streaming service is showing a movie or TV series, there can be confusion of the age rating.

Last night, as an example, I was trying to figure out if my son could watch “The Terminator”. The classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is a must-watch but whether it’s “age-appropriate” is another matter.

First, I had to find a service renting / streaming it. If you head to the Justwatch website then you can easily find these but you’ll notice that the costs (shown above) vary from £2.49 up to £8.99. That’s a bit nuts for starters, and I’m taking the HD / SD quality into the equation.

However, we then get to the age ratings. YouTube movies clearly shows is as an “18 rated” movie…

Google Play Movies, likewise, shows it as an 18 rated movie…

Plex, meanwhile, shows it as an “R Rated” but, here in the UK, there’s not a great deal of people who know what “R Rated” means. Our rating system is different.

Then, just to add to the confusion, Amazon, Rakuten and Netflix show The Terminator as a 15 rated movie…

Confused yet?

Well, it could be that certain streaming services have dropped certain scenes to perhaps make it more acceptable to younger audiences but, why do that? That would surely annoy movie aficionados who’d purposefully subscribed to a certain movie streaming service in order to see an “unspoiled” movie. I checked through a few services and the running time is the same – 1 hour and 47 minutes.

Why the difference in age ratings? Who’s right?

This, then, is where I resorted to the same fix that I always use. I went to the BBFC website. The British Board of Film Classification are the guys who rate films here in the UK, so I use their decision and nothing else.

After a very quick search, it turns out that The Terminator is indeed rated 15. At least, the “shown to UK cinema audiences” version is.

Why the heck there’s an “R rating” and an “18 rating” I’ve no idea. Either these are different editions of the movie or the streaming service in question have made up their own minds. I think, at the end of the day, it’s up to the parents to make the final decision.

The post Is a film age-appropriate? Streaming services can’t agree. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Recommended in a report prepared for Glastonbury Town Council, and mentioned heavily in the 5G conspiracy forums / Facebook groups, 5GBioShield is said to protect you from the “impact” of 5G. You can buy one bioshield for £283 or a pack of three for £799.

Sure, that seems a bit much, but it’s a shield which (and I quote) prevents the “devastating effects caused by non-natural magneto-electric waves” including 5G. The product name makes you think of a personal forcefield and the images on their website add to this idea.

The manufacturers are certainly good at throwing complex and scientific-sounding words at you. It’s almost like watching a shampoo advert…

A breakthrough quantum holographic nano-layer catalyzer technology

Wowser. These guys should be working for NASA. What the hell are they doing selling these holographic shields to normal folk for only £283 !?

They’ve only recently made their “quantum nano-layer technology” though, as their company was registered in January of this year. Polish national Ms Anna Grochowalska and Italian Mr Valerio Laghezza are the people who have stumbled on this “unique” solution to “electric oscillations” and, with their 5GBioShield, you can remove the “fog induced by all (electronic) devices”.

The list of benefits seems almost endless. It can “balance electric fields, geo-biological disturbances” and restore “harmonisation” to “all biological organisms, such as animal, plant and/or human”.

Using the shield will help to prevent you coming into contact with the “highly toxic and ultimately lethal” electric fields.

Trouble is, of course, the “shield” isn’t a shield. It’s a cheap USB stick and nothing more. Requiring power from one of those nasty “electronic chargers”, it’ll apparently balance all electric and “geo-biological” fields within 40m metres.

Wait though, because the “inventors” have gone one step further. In their product description, which is laden with grammatical errors and barely makes sense, they state that…

When not plugged in, the provides an active field-effect of permanent protective ‘plasmic shield’ within the sphere of minimum 8 meters in diameter.

Woaha! Forget NASA! These guys should be billionaires overnight! They’ve managed to create a USB stick / BioShield which operates without power or batteries. Not only that, but instead of blocking your WiFi and phone, it converts those frequencies into “life-affirming” frequencies. Wowsers! Why don’t they just plug these things directly into mobile phone masts? We could all be bathed in life-affirming goodness!

So, I could go into further details about the complete nonsense listed in the product description or the rest of their site (the USB stick creates an “array of balanced life force frequencies ensuring full-spectrum harmonisation of the body, which adjusts according to the resonance effect”) but believe me, all you need to know is that this is total and utter bollocks.

Pen Test Partners have taken the thing apart and it’s basically just a 128MB USB stick (yes, 128MB!) inside a branded bag.

Now to make some serious cash!

We decided to try and work out how much “BioShield Distribution Ltd” are spending to make these things. What are their costs, and what profit are they making?

After all, Pen Test Partners have revealed that the USB stick simply contains a 25 page PDF version of the material from the 5GBioShield website. The tear down reveals no additional electrical components or circuitry, aside from a small sticker placed on top of the USB stick. This, I’m assuming, may have been a way to track which USB sticks BioShield Distribution had copied their PDF’s onto.

OK. Let’s get the stick. We headed to USB2U.co.uk. You can upload a logo and add it to a USB stick so it looks like the below. BioShield have done the same – uploading their (pinched) logo and perhaps ordering a hundred or so. We asked the guys at USB2U.co.uk how much it would be to have our Coolsmartphone logo whacked on a hundred 128MB sticks like this..

They came back within minutes with the following quote…

OK, so £2.62 per USB stick. We could no doubt get it cheaper if we ordered more, but hey – let’s not go crazy. Now we need a fancy bag. The people selling these things are putting them in branded bags like this..

We headed to Made-in-China.com and found the exact same bags. Again, you can upload a logo to the maker and they’ll slap it on the bag…

The price again depends on how many you order, but for less than 5000 of these it’s 30c per bag. That works out at 24p per pouch / bag depending on the exchange rate. Let’s order 100 of these – that’ll be £24.

So, our expenditure so far is £262 for one hundred USB sticks plus £24 for one hundred fancy bags to put them in. Grand total is £286, making the cost of each product £2.86.

Now, I think that the people behind this operation may have bought a few more and possibly got it down to £2.83 per “product”, then – just as a “laugh”, they stuck some zeroes on the end to make the retail price £283 each.

OK, back to our £2.86 cost though. I’m going to add in £5 for postage, packing and the time taken to copy the files. Let’s call it £7.86 per stick. To sell them for £283 means you’re making more than £278 per sale.

I mean sure, I haven’t added in the cost of running their website or the office / warehouse costs (if they have any), but still – that’s a massive profit. If they work 5 days a week and sell 10 per day, that’s nearly £14,000 straight profit per week. I’d be interested to see their first accounts filing on Companies House… if they do indeed declare all the earnings.

Madness. Absolute madness. Even factoring in postage and the time spent writing utter nonsense on their website / PDF material, this is nothing more than a massive con. It’s preying on those who believe that 5G caused the coronavirus. There’s nothing in this for you as a customer – it’s all about making someone rich.

A fool and his money are soon parted. Avoid.

The post The 5GBioShield. How to make money easily. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

This, then, is where I started to get distracted. There’s boxes and boxes of random stuff in the loft that needs to be moved so that I can put the cabling and light fittings into place. First, I moved box number one and got covered in Christmas decorations. Then I moved box number two and lots of old photos fell out.

My Peugeot 205 GTi. Still wish I had it.

Yeah, I spent over an hour looking at them, then another hour. These were photos from the pre-digital era, when you only ever took photos on film and had them developed. They’re not stored on a hard drive anywhere, so I become massively peoccupied.

Many hours later, I moved onto the next box, and it was heavy. Very heavy. I couldn’t understand why, but after digging down I found this Compaq Armada 1510 laptop.

It’s from many, many years ago – originally launched in 1997. Powered by a 120MHz Intel Pentium CPU and fearturing an IDE PC Card (PCMCIA) this was my laptop once. In fact, I used it when this site first came into being back in 2003 (yes, we’ve been online over 17 years).

Windows 98 runs (just about) on this – it’s got a massive 32MB of RAM and was sold, back in the day, as “the laptop for users who require maximum performance in a mainstream Laptop”.

It’s hugely thick. It’s really heavy. The screen is terrible (it’s a bit broken) and it takes forever to boot. So what would a 12 year-old kid think of it? Well, I gave it to my son to find out…

Whats your thoughts? Bin it or keep it?

The post What does a kid think of a laptop from 1997? is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

The initiative comes as new research shows that two-thirds of the general public are “embarrassed” by huge gaps in their knowledge – blaming the choices they made while in education. Indeed, research from giffgaff shows that 25% of Brits would like to have learned how to master coding.

With 40% “embellishing” their CVs, the new online hub focuses on teaching digital skills. All lessons are free and have been created in partnership with influencers like Giles McMullen and Ania Kurbow. You can learn how to build a website or how to start coding – perhaps even begin making your own game.

With 64% of the population feeling “left behind” by rapidly advancing digital technology, it’s a great time to dive in and get back up to speed.

A giffgaff spokesperson told us..

The great thing about humans is, you’re never too old to learn a new skill or further hone the ones you’ve already got. At the moment we’ve all got a little bit more time on our hands and people are looking for new ways to fill that time. It’s the perfect opportunity to try out learning something new.

The giffgaff Academy is all about providing snackable, easy online content that people can dip in and out of when they have the time. They don’t need to commit to a new course to learn new skills.

Just head to giffgaff.com/hub/academy/ to learn more.

The post Boost your digital skills with the giffgaff Academy is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So, if your horn isn’t up to scratch, here’s something I tried yesterday (I think the coronavirus lockdown is getting to me). There’s a huge amount of caveats here, but I was bored and I’m running out of jobs.

Whilst filming another “in car smartphone review”, I found a relatively cheap way to pimp up your car horn. It involves a Bluetooth speaker and one of the random apps available on Google Play or iTunes which are filled with air horns, truck horns or some other noise sound.

This is generally a bad idea unless you know what you’re doing.

If you were to do this properly, you would..

1 – Properly mount a Bluetooth speaker in the engine bay of your car, ensuring that you place it away from anything that is likely to leak, get hot or move.
2 – Connect the Bluetooth speaker to an “always on” power source to ensure it’s charged or powered up.
3 – Replace your horn “button” on your steering wheel with a Bluetooth activation which plays the sound.

I was literally just mucking about, so grabbed a Bluetooth speaker and filmed this.. It might at least give you some ideas if you’re struggling to find things to do on the lockdown

If I had my first car and I was 17 again, I’d definitely be doing this – just for a laugh. However, now I’ve got a grown-up car and more electronics and safety stuff to worry about, I don’t think I’ll be strapping anything in the engine bay.

The post Pimp my horn! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

However, we consume TV differently now. There’s a huge batch of streaming platforms and subscriptions available. Although Sky are trying to make it all available in one place, you certainly pay for the privilege.

Leaving Sky
That cost led to me leaving Sky TV. It was a big decision, especially after being so familiar with the user interface and the Sky box, but the monthly cost just kept on increasing and things had to come to a close.

My plan was to continue using the satellite dish fixed to the side of the house, but get Freesat instead. Add in the on-demand apps (like BBC iPlayer, All 4, ITV Hub etc) and get a replacement satellite box that added the recording facility.

Netgem. What is it?
Then, I stumbled across Netgem TV. It gets TV from your rooftop aerial, grabbing all the digital TV channels from your local TV transmitter before layering on all the internet on-demand content you can shake a stick at. Freeview with bells on basically.

The box I have here, the NetBox 4K, is the centrepiece of the operation and is £10 per month. It’ll deliver high-quality images and Dolby Atmos sound plus an endless stream of content. Right now, as I type, Netgem are giving existing customers access to the enhanced Netgem TV service free for 3 months. Excellent lock-down entertainment and new customers get a month for free anyways.

The £10 per month gets you access to 20 exclusive HD channels, including Premier Sports, Music, Kids, and Nature channels.

To kick things off though, you get over 100 free live TV Channels plus 15 in HD. Added to that are catch-up apps including BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, My5 and many more. Then there’s YouTube sections with the hottest new videos, including BT Sport and ESPN and 17 exclusive channels included in your £10 monthly subscription. Added to all that is Prime Video, Rakuten TV, hayu, Hopster, Deezer and a whole load more. Those extra bits may require an extra separate subscription (such as Prime Video) etc, but it’s all available on one box, which is the good thing.

Also, you get to do the whole pause, rewind and recording of Live TV too.

The box doubles as a YouTube receiver, so you can cast from your phone to the box. There’s Alexa compatibility, a pretty cool remote control (which turns your TV on and off automatically) and an app which connects to your box so that you can control everything that way.

I’ve taken it for a serious test drive these last few weeks. I thought I’d be a bit “lost” without my Sky TV fix. Sure, initially I was a bit confused – the user interface was quite different to the Sky one, but it’s very quick and you do find your feet.

Video review
I need to show you exactly what this is like, so a video seemed like the best way to do it…

Up-close
As I mentioned in the video, the setup is relatively simple – plugging in is easy. It’s just adding your login details to all those players (ITV Hub, BBC iPlayer, All4, Prime and so on) which is a slight pain when you first get everything set up.

Adding in your credentials via the on-screen keyboard. You can at least use the numeric keypad on the remote

What I did like is how Netgem took some of my favourite shows and highlighted them on the Home screen. I also like the way that you can do a search from the top left search box and it’ll search… everything. No need to keep jumping around and trying to remember which streaming service is offering your favourite show. Oh, and I should mention that this really comes into its own when several streaming services offer the same show.

Ethernet, aerial, USB pen and power lead

Around back then, a USB port for the USB pen that you’ll be using to record shows, a HDMI port for the output, an Ethernet port, aerial port and power lead. There’s also an optical audio output connection. Don’t worry too much if you don’t have an Ethernet cable nearby, you can use WiFi too.

My thoughts..
I’ve used this as my main TV box for weeks now. All through lockdown. There are a couple of little things I’ve spotted. Firstly, the additional Netgem channels appear to be presented over IP but they are very high quality and show up as quick as the normal terrestrial channels. They are classed in the Netgem Support section as “Snackable Channels” and include…

903 Football TV – Best of European Football Highlights – Discover the best highlights from the top European football leagues right here on Football TV.
904 Sports TV -Sport around the globe- Keep yourself in the know with the top European sports stories at the click of a button.
905 Failarmy –
906 DJTV – Music heaven – Discover the best music from around the world on DJTV. Always live. Always streaming.
910 Tastemade – Food, Home and Travel – From quick recipes to original series enjoy cooking and travel stories from around the world.

I didn’t really watch these to be honest, but they might be more suitable for yourself. I also found that recording from live TV would block me from switching to other live TV channels, which was something I wasn’t really used to.

One further thing – and this is really tiny – is that there was a slight delay in the audio when casting YouTube content from my phone to the box. This didn’t happen with any other content.

There doesn’t seem to be any Netflix either, although BritBox and Prime Video is here alongside lots of other apps.

Other than these very small quibbles though, this is a fast and well-put-together solution. This isn’t your standard “Android box with some apps and a bit of IPTV chucked in”. This links together the various streams, the various apps and all the content providers in one place – and for a relatively low cost considering that you get the box included in that £10 monthly fee.

The remote control is very good, especially considering how long I’d used the Sky TV remote. I kinda wish that the “Home” button was slightly bigger though, as I spent a lot of time in that particular screen rather than the large “Freeview Play” and “Netgem TV” screens linked to with the larger buttons at the top of the remote.

Part 2
An app comes with this – install it on your phone for further control. However, I’m going to review that in the second part of this feature. Until then, head to the Netgem website to get more information or start your one month trial here.

The post Ditching Sky. Life after cancellation with Netgem TV. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Free access to unlimited mobile data will now continue for a massive six months. Vulnerable customers can also benefit too.

Care workers and NHS staff who are Vodafone Pay Monthly customers only need to head to keepconnected.vodafone.co.uk. Add in your employer’s name, address and their email or – if you’re an NHS worker – your NHS email address. You’ll then be checked and verified. Vodafone are also automatically provisioning the Pay Monthly customers listed as working for the NHS or flagged as vulnerable in its systems.

Vodafone UK CEO, Nick Jeffery, told us…

We are so pleased to be able to extend our original offer for NHS workers and our vulnerable customers, and to be able to now add care workers in recognition of the amazing contribution they’re making at this time. We will continue to do what we can to say thank you to those on the front lines doing such valuable work in this crisis.

Head to keepconnected.vodafone.co.uk for more info.

The post Vodafone extend their free NHS data and add in care workers too is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

However, the “strangeness” will be going on for a bit longer yet. When we do eventually come out of the lockdown, we still won’t be going back to “normal”. We’re all going to have to adapt to a “new normal” – still distancing and with certain activities banned. That said, a lot of people have still been able to continue their work lives despite being unable to get into the office.

For those who are lucky enough to have kept working, and to be working remotely, things has worked quite well and it may change the way the companies organise their staff going forwards. With offices closed and staff working from home effectively, why return back to the “old ways”? Draft government proposals are looking at the way we work after the lockdown and, especially with offices where social distancing isn’t possible, remote working may continue for a lot longer – until either a vaccine is available or perhaps forever for some.

Why? Well, government advisers are now also stating that we should continue this way of working, with people working from home where possible and promoting investment into broadband connections rather than roads. The goal is to help the Earth, avoiding slipping deeper into a climate crisis.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the committee has stated that people should continue to work from home if possible and to walk or cycle more. It also suggests that those without a job should be re-trained to work “green” industries such as home insulation, tree-planting and peatland restoration.

Although the government is still yet to reply, it is known to be in favour of reducing carbon emissions and a “green recovery” to the coronavirus recession.

The post Working from home could last for a lot longer is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

This is all part of the Vodafone “#KeepingtheUKConnected” mission during the coronavirus lockdown. The data should be added to your account within 7 days. Once done, you’ll get a text, and it means that you can use the WiFi Hotspot on your phone to work anywhere – attaching laptops of other devices to the WiFi on your phone and not having to worry about data usage.

I’m hearing that there’s only a certain amount of these per day, so have a look right now to see if you can get it.

The post Free unlimited data for Vodafone customers is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

You can help by directly contributing towards a local Community Fund or through a hardship fund for giffgaff members.

The network has already helped out vulnerable members, but now the goodybank will allow members to purchase additional credit in the form of minutes, texts or data to donate directly to other members facing hardship. giffgaff will also match donations.

The second option within the goodybank is to make a donation directly to a Neighbourly Community fund. “Neighbourly” is an award-winning giving platform that helps businesses make a positive impact in their communities by donating volunteer time, money and surplus products, all in one place.

The post COVID-19 – Donate via giffgaff goodybank is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I’ve just finished off my daily P.E. Workout and want to do more moving around. How about watching some Lockdown DJ Sets? There’s quite a lot of these right now because the big DJs just can’t go and play their tunes anywhere else. Here’s a selection of the ones I spotted during the weekend. Subscribe to the various channels to get more of these…

• Pete Tong doing a Lockdown Hot Mix

• Four Tet Boiler Room “Streaming From Isolation”

• Fatboy Slim – Lockdown Mixtape (Week 1)

• Calvin Harris – Love Regenerator Livestream (1)

https://youtu.be/2QBjvA6cT4w

• Calvin Harris – Love Regenerator Livestream (2)

https://youtu.be/4PbReDdV2Jo

• Calvin Harris – Love Regenerator Livestream (3)

https://youtu.be/YCM59X2Aicc

And if all that doesn’t get you moving, my absolute favourite radio station right now is Centreforce Radio. This is like no other radio station on the planet and is an ex-pirate station that has now gone fully “legit” without losing any of its style. Live mixes all day long, excellent DJ’s and a real fun atmosphere to get you dancing through the isolation. Watch the studio camera here, grab their app or listen live on their website.

The post Home Active – DJ Mixes and videos to keep you moving is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Over the weekend, in the midst of a global pandemic and a lockdown here in the UK, some people have taken it upon themselves to not stay at home. Instead they’re out setting fire to crucial mobile phone infrastructure and abusing engineers installing and repairing masts.

At least 20 masts have been damaged or vandalised and hardly any of them were actual 5G ones. Instead the destruction has prevented critical comms during a worldwide period of crisis.

I’m not going to embed these here – you can watch someone called “Heapy Fullsesh against 5G” bullying staff here and here. The engineers are described in these YouTube videos as “murderers” and “scumbags” who are installing “death machines” and … err.. (checks notes) “kill grids”. These videos were all recorded during the lockdown.

Wait though, what’s this all about? Initially the “Stop 5G” groups seemed to start from a relatively simple theory -that the higher frequencies used in 5G cause health problems. If you’re talking about the 60GHz mmWave frequency then I’d be prepared to have a chat about this, but the fact is that 5G in the UK doesn’t use the 60GHz frequency and probably never will.

The 5G masts here operate between 3.4 and 3.6GHz – a lot lower than the frequency that modern WiFi routers use (5GHz). Indeed, your neighbours probably have 5GHz WiFi beaming into your brain right now without you knowing. Here’s a scan from my lounge – all these WiFi access points are pumping out at a frequency higher than the ones used by 5G..

All of these are 5GHz WiFi access points.

Unless you rip out every WiFi router in your neighbourhood, you’re not going to stop frequencies higher than UK 5G entering your home.

In recent weeks the conspiracy theories have morphed into higher levels of craziness, including…

• People calling themselves “nurses” and suggesting that 5G is to blame for coronavirus deaths.
• Friends of “Doctors” reporting that coronavirus patients are being moved away from family members so that the “truth” can’t be revealed.
• That “smart dust” is in the air and is being transmitted by masts into your body.
• 5G is “remote assassination” and areas can be “targeted ad-hoc”.
• 50GHz mmWave transmissions are being “secretly tested” in the UK.
• 5G “Chemtrails” can get into your system and a mask should be worn at all times.
• The coronavirus lockdown is really a “house arrest” so that 5G deployment can be accelerated.

Believe me, if you hang around these Facebook groups for long enough, it goes even deeper. Some are even suggesting that the current coronavirus restrictions should be “ignored” and masts should be “burned quickly” to stop the coronavirus. This is a dangerous, baseless and crazy world where reality simply doesn’t get a look in. Instead it’s a link to a YouTube video featuring a “doctor” or a recording of “an ex-boss from Vodafone” or a “friend of someone who knows”.

It’s garbage. Absolute, complete, un-checked garbage, but – as I’ve mentioned before –  there’s a growing distrust in mainstream media and scientists. It’s amplified by President Trump, who calls news outlets “fake news” and even disagrees with medical experts to recommend random drugs as a treatment for COVID-19. Our belief system is being altered and twisted.

The people burning masts and abusing engineers are capturing content on smartphones which connect to the very masts they’re destroying. They’re destroying our ability to keep in touch with loved ones during this global emergency and, ironically, the way in which others watch these videos.

Why are people being duped by this? Why are people too lazy to look at the facts? Why don’t they ask basic questions like..

Despite having glorious 5G coverage, why does nobody who stays inside get coronavirus?

It’s a puzzler isn’t it? But the conspiracy theorists will just adapt their posts to work around this.

We can take a look at the 5G coverage and amount of 5G masts-per-state in the USA…

And then we can compare that map to the coronavirus cases in the US. There’s no correlation, but if you mention this fact within the Facebook groups it’ll just start another theory – in this case that the 5G “kill grid” is “targeting certain areas only”.

Now, you won’t get many websites saying this, but this whole 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory nonsense is a Flat Earth level of bonkers. It’s people setting fire to masts that they “think” are 5G (heck, they might not be) and abusing key workers who are trying to ensure that we can all keep connected during a global pandemic. It’s insane garbage which is allowed to propagate on Facebook and other social media outlets without a great deal of control.

Some people who do post reasoned or questioning responses to the conspiracy theories in the “Stop 5G” Facebook groups get their remarks deleted by moderators. There’s a constant hype and hysteria, an admiration and glorification of criminal acts and nonsense “evidence” being wheeled out on a daily basis.

All of this has led to all UK networks joining together to publish the following letter..

In addition, the culture secretary is now to order social media companies to come down harder on these crackpot conspiracy theories.

The post Masts on fire as insane 5G coronavirus conspiracies continue is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Trouble is, that’s really not a good plan. As an example, here’s a photo I took during my COVID-19 exercise outing…

The original photo is right here. Go ahead, open it up and take a look at it. If you want to see it fully, right click the link and say, “Open link in new tab”.

On my phone it’s got a resolution of 4224 x 3136 and is some 5.42MB in size…

The image above is great if you want to take it to the shops and turn it into a printed photograph. You can stick it on the wall and the quality will show through. It’ll look good on a big screen too. However, if you send it through WhatsApp you’re going to lose a huge amount of quality.

Here’s that very same image after it’s been forwarded through WhatsApp…

Again, we have to condense images on the site a bit when they’re displayed on your phone, so here’s the original WhatsApp picture that got sent. Right-click on the link again and open in a new tab or you can perhaps click the “Expand the image” button on the upper right of the opened shot if you see that. It’s now a much smaller file – just 354KB instead of the 5.42MB original – and has a 1599 x 1187 resolution. On your phone, both photos seem the same. Indeed, it’s tricky to perhaps decipher the difference with the images I’m showing here, but the “sent through WhatsApp” image will be a more blurry and will lack quality if you want to look at it on your TV or turn it into a photo to put on the wall.

Zoom in a little on the original (seen on the left below) and you can see the house in the far distance. It’s still fairly clear (this is a 12 megapixel 4:3 photo), but on the WhatsApp image (right), things go wrong when you try to zoom into the same level..

Again, because we do some rather clever stuff on the site to make it all super-speedy on your phone, it’s worth looking at the original version of the above comparison.

Here’s some more examples. First, a 2666 x 2574 pixel shot (roughly 1.05MB) of our cat. The original image is here so you can zoom in on it.

And now, the “after it’s been through WhatsApp” version. Check the direct-off-the-WhatsApp-message version here. It’s now 165 KB and 1333 x 1287 pixels.

This is a bit trickier to compare because it’s more close-up but the whiskers become a bit “digitized” on the lower-quality version. You can see that in the example below, or get the full-sized comparison here.

Lastly, a photo of my favourite thing. This is a 4000 x 3000 pixel image and is 6.53MB. Don’t forget to click here for the original shot off my phone.

After the WhatsApp compression, we’re left with a 1600 x 1200 pixel image at 428KB. Here’s the original WhatsApp attachment..

Put the two alongside each other and, again, you get an element of pixelization. It’s best to check the original version of this comparison.

But, there is a way to send images over WhatsApp without compression. It’ll maintain all the picture attributes and the quality if you do this too.

Just click attach “Document” instead of “Gallery”. This way, you’ll force WhatsApp to treat it as a PDF / Word or other document and it won’t compress it. The image will come out the other end with the same file size, the same attributes and the same quality..

Here’s a video showing how to do that..

As you can see below, it works really well..

The post Sending precious photos on WhatsApp? Here’s some essential advice. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Head to this page and you’ll get a whole month of their IT videos and training. There’s in-depth IT, dev and creative training. Whether you’re working in IT now and want to improve your skillset, or you want to perhap get into IT, this is a great website to try.

Check out some of the categories that you can study. There’s Virtualization, Database Administration, Web Development, Mobile Development, Servers plus much, much more.

The post Home Active – Improve your IT skills is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.