Today we have been lucky enough to have seen some official images of the upcoming Oneplus Nord 4 that will be officially launched in Milan on the 16th July at 2pm BST. As the invitation that I was sent for the event teased there is a focus on metal in the design which can be seen in the back panel of the phone below.

We can see that the phone will feature a dual camera design in what looks to be a glass section with a metallic panel below presumably made from stainless steel. In terms of other aspects of the design not much else has been shared with us so far but I would expect this to be around the 6.5″ sort of sizing of the previous generation Nord devices lineup.

I am very excited to see more of this phone and I will be lucky enough to be on the ground at the event in Milan when it happens. I will be bringing my first impression of the phone as soon as I can after the announcement has been made.

Here are some other images of the phone’s two colour versions by themselves.

First up Mercurial Silver

Next is the Obsidian Midnight

I do like the simplicity of the design here especially the ridged effect on the Mercurial Silver version.

That is all I have for now but more to come here on the 16th July.

The post OnePlus Nord 4 design revealed ahead of unveiling in Milan is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Xiaomi Unveils the Xiaomi 14 Series: A Leap Forward in Mobile Photography and Performance
Hey tech enthusiasts! If you’ve been monitoring our coverage of MWC so far for the next big thing in smartphones, Xiaomi has just dropped some exciting news that’s sure to pique your interest. The everything and anything tech giant Xiaomi, unveiled its latest flagship series – the Xiaomi 14 Series, alongside a suite of other innovative products. Here’s everything you need to know about Xiaomi’s latest offerings.

A New Era of Mobile Imaging with Xiaomi and Leica
Xiaomi has taken its partnership with Leica to new heights with the Xiaomi 14 Series. This collaboration is pushing the boundaries of mobile photography, integrating Leica’s famed Summilux optics to deliver unparalleled imaging experiences. The Xiaomi 14 Series isn’t just about taking pictures; it’s about creating art on the go.

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra: ‘A Marvel of Engineering’

The standout of the series, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, is a dream come true for photography aficionados and tech lovers alike. With its eye-catching circular camera module and a design that screams elegance, the Ultra variant doesn’t just perform – it impresses. Its robust build, featuring high-strength aluminium and vegan leather, is both durable and chic.
But what truly sets the Xiaomi 14 Ultra apart is its camera system. Sporting a professional quad-camera setup with focal lengths ranging from 12mm to 120mm, the Ultra promises exceptional image quality across all scenarios. And with support for 8K video shooting across all four cameras, the possibilities are limitless.

Xiaomi 14 Ultra comes with 1 storage variant (16+512GB) with an RRP of £1299

Those who purchase between 25th February 2024 and 18th of March 2024 will receive a free camera kit and £300 to spend on Xiaomi ecosystem products.

Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Ultra will include 4 generations of Android OS upgrades, as well as 5 years of security patches. Users of the two devices can get 100GB of

Google One cloud storage for 6 months, 3 months of YouTube Premium with ad-free access to YouTube and the YouTube Music app.¹⁰

The Xiaomi 14: ‘Compact, Yet Powerful’

For those who prefer something a bit more compact without compromising on performance, the Xiaomi 14 is the answer. It features a triple-camera setup that promises comprehensive photography experiences, from ultra-wide shots to detailed close-ups. Plus, with its CrystalRes AMOLED display, every image looks stunningly vibrant.

Xiaomi 14 comes with 2 storage variants:

Xiaomi 14 12+256GB will go on sale with an RRP of £849.

Those who purchase between 25th February 2024 and 31st of March 2024 will receive a free Xiaomi Pad 6 and Xiaomi Band 8 Pro.

Xiaomi 14 12+512GB will go on sale with an RRP £1099.

Those who purchase between 25th February 2024 and 31st of March 2024 will receive a free Xiaomi Pad 6.

More Than Just Smartphones

Xiaomi also introduced the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro 12.4, Xiaomi Watch S3, Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro, and Xiaomi Watch 2, expanding its ecosystem of smart devices. Each product is designed to integrate seamlessly, offering users a unified and intelligent experience across devices.

Special Offers and Availability
Xiaomi is kicking off the launch with some enticing offers for early buyers, including freebies like the Xiaomi Pad 6 and cash to spend on Xiaomi ecosystem products. And with a commitment to long-term updates and security, Xiaomi is ensuring that your investment remains future-proof.
The Xiaomi 14 Series represents a significant leap forward in mobile technology, offering something for everyone, from photography enthusiasts to performance chasers. With its innovative features, sleek design, and the promise of a connected ecosystem, Xiaomi continues to cement its place as a leader in the tech world. If you’re in the market for a new smartphone, the Xiaomi 14 Series might just be what you’ve been waiting for.

Here are a few hands on shots of the Xiaomi 14 anf the Xiaomi 14 Pro. I have also included some shots of the New Wear Os powered watch that was launched as well.

The post MWC – Xiaomi 14 Series and More Announced is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

So the glitz and glamour of a Live launch event have now finished. We have had some time to give the devices a look over on the stand in all the glory. Now however is the time to get up close and personal with the new Honor Magic6 Pro, in a more comfortable environment (my hotel room). So let’s have a look at what is in store with the unboxing.

As you can see we have got what looks like a pretty special device, I have to say I am so chuffed that Honor provided me with the Epi Green version as the colour just makes it stand out a little bit more from the crowd.

Let’s have a quick run around the device in closer details

Starting as always at the top, we find the top-mounted speaks, an IR blaster and a microphone pinhole

Around on the right-hand side is where we can see the power switch which pulls double duty as an assistant prompt on a long press. Then we have the volume Rocker both are nicely positioned and nicely damped as well as giving solid feedback when pressed.

Continuing around to the bottom we have the USB Type C 3.2 port that is flanked by the bottom speaker and the dual sim slot, we also have another mic port here as well.

On the left-hand side, there is nothing to see apart from alone of the many antenna break lines which are spread about the phone.

Moving around the back is where we can find the bit that is going to interest a lot of people and this is the giant camera array that is housed on a bump, which to be fair is not that large in terms of depth and it doesn’t protrude from the back of the phone anywhere near as much as the ones that I have seen from competitors. Inside this camera array we have got 3 cameras;

• 50MP (wide, f/1.4 – f/2.0, OIS, PDAF)
• 50MP (ultrawide, f/2.0 AF)
• 180MP (telephoto, f/2.6, 2.5x optical zoom)

On either side of the top sensor, we have the Dual tone flash to the left and the laser and sensor for the laser-assisted autofocus. For added measure the is also one more microphone port as well.

If we continue around the front hen we have a dual camera cut-out at the top of the display that houses a 50MP camera and a Time of flight sensor for depth-sensing and biometrics. What is cool is also works as the Magic Capsule area which will show an actionable area for enhanced functionality when using certain apps i.e. media players as shown below.

This is the first time I have seen this on an Android device but iPhone users will be right at home here.

As for the main screen, this is a glorious 6.8-inch All-range Low-power LTPO Eye Comfort Display, that is coated with Honor NanoCrystal Sheild for protection. This coating will give up to 10 times the protection of regular nanocrystal glass when dropped and should offer a more scratch-resistant coating as well. This is all of course hidden under a pre-applied plastic screen protector. The screen will also be able to offer up to 5000 nits brightness when using HDR Content but it will use an average brightness in normal max condition of 1600 Nits which is still plenty bright enough as you saw from the video where I turned it up to the maximum settings. I have not had any issues seeing the screen in the sunshine that we have got poking through the clouds here in Barcelona

So that about finishes things off for the hands-on tour of the phone as for the rest of the specs check out the specs list below for some more details.

As I had one lying around I thought I would also share some comparison shots of the phone next to an S23 Ultra which whilst not its direct competitor is a good representation of the size of the device etc.

As always I will be using the phone as my daily driver for the next few weeks to allow me to get a real grip on the phone and all of its features. Once I have got some time under its belt a full review will of course be posted on Coolsmartphone for your viewing pleasure.

If you can’t wait that long and want to buy one right away you can pre-order today from Honor’s store for a full RRP of £1099.99 for the spec I have here.

If you are preordering then please take advantage of the discount code AM6PP250 to get £250 off the device once you have subscribed to HiHonor, you will also get 12 months of screen protection cover included when buying directly from HiHonor.  You will also have the option to add the recently announced Pad 9 for £149.99 (down from £299.99 RRP) if you fancy going all in on Honor kit

The Honor MagicI6 Pro is also available to pre-order from the 1^st March with sales from the 8^th March with a complimentary launch bundle worth £359 including HONOR Earbuds X6, HONOR 100W SuperCharger and HONOR Pad 8 from Amazon, Very and Currys.

The post #MWC24 – Honor Magic6 Pro – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It has been a long time since I have been able to use the title above for an article but we have arranged for me to attend Mobile World Congress in the beautiful city of Barcelona!

I am currently sitting in Stanstead Airport overlooking the runway awaiting to get my flight to Spain for the mobile tech feast that is MWC 2024.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our generous host for the trip Honor UK who allowed this trip to happen. As they are graciously hosting us I will be of course attending their event tomorrow to kick things off for the next few days.

In addition to this, I will be running around the venue halls to capture as much as I can in the short time that I am there!

If you want to keep track of my antics I will be posting some quick news on our X account @coolsmartphone and more in-depth coverage will of course be done right here on the site

The post We are heading to MWC 2024!! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

OnePlus will finally enter the folding phone market very soon and in doing so will be embracing their company Tag line “Never Settle”.

The phone will be launched alongside OnePlus’s sister company OPPO which has had a presence in both the book-style foldables and clamshell style fold for a few years. During this time the now-joined companies have accumulated many patents regarding folding phones and are merging this with the fast smooth experience and burdenless design that onePlus has always been associated with.

The teams behind the phone have had a clear focus on one of the things that make a folding phone great and that is a smooth and strong hinge with as minimal a crease as possible. Over the past few years, OPPO has been fine-tuning this design in the form of the Find N devices which have never officially made it out of the eastern markets.

During this time OPPO accumulated over 600 patents specifically in hinge design. This has been identified as a key differentiator between foldable phones and OPPO has shown good form as they have been doing the no-gap hinge style design for 2 years now. One of the claims being made for the new phone is that the hinge will close tight enough to be supported by a single sheet of paper between the closed screens. I have tried this with my Pixel Fold and it didn’t go well with my phone letting the paper slip out in a matter of seconds!

So when the OnePlus foldable was being developed they didn’t rest on their laurels and they have added another 35 patents to the already very large list specifically for the hinges. These patents are being used to allow a reduction in both the size and weight of the hinge components whilst also making them stronger. The OnePlus hinge is purportedly 37% smaller than the previous device the Find N2. All this work on the hinge and reworking it has allowed the new foldable to be slimmer and lighter which is great news for the segment of the market and potential buyers.

There have historically been two styles of screen format for the folded outer display the “remote control” style which has been used by all the Samsung Z Fold devices. and the more traditional wider style “phone” screen that can be found on pretty much any other folding phone such as the Honor Magic Vs and the Google Pixel Fold. I am definitely a fan of the latter as it allows the phone to be used for normal phone tasks when folded and then when you need some more space you have that more tablet-style form factor. The OnePlus seems to be leaning towards the latter but maybe not to the same extent as being seen by the likes of the Pixel Fold which some people have found to be too wide when unfolded.

In addition to this large format screen, OnePlus has also included a Camera that is meant to be class-leading no specs have been defined for this yet but we expect it to be of similar levels to the likes of the Hasselblad shooter found on the OnePlus 11.  We also see that OnePlus has kept a fan favourite in the form of the Alert slider on the phone which is really nice to see as this is a feature more phones need to have them! The design brief for the team was to hit all the flagship phone top specs and OnePlus is pulling out all the stops to ensure that they meet these targets.

There is one more aspect that will break a foldable phone and that is software. OnePlus may be a little late to the foldable phone market but this may actually be to their benefit especially as the phone looks like it will come out after Google host their Pixel Event where we expect to see Android 14 launch. Having used the Android 14 beta on a Pixel Fold I can see that Google has been working on software tweaks to make the Folding phone experience the best it can be. One of the changes that is especially relevant is the option to have the app scale to the larger screen instead of letterboxing it like we initially saw on the Pixel Fold when it was first released. This was a feature that was highly requested by the early adopters. On top of this, I would expect that the Oneplus foldable will have some other multitasking tricks up its sleeve.

I am looking forward to seeing this phone in the flesh as I think this will be one of the foldable that Samsung may be justifiably concerned about and that can only be a food thing as their designs have become somewhat stagnant. The OnePlus And Oppo partnership and simultaneous release will allow them to get the maximum market exposure in a short amount of time. 

Editor note. Images are credited to Unbox Therapy who got a hands on an early prototype during an interview with Pete Lau, Founder of OnePlus and Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer of OPPO.

The post OnePlus and Oppo to release new Folding phone at the same time is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Time for me to get stuck into the review of the CAT S75 phone from Bullitt. I have been using the phone for the past few weeks as my daily driver and I have been able to put it through its paces as my daily use device This has allowed me to get a good grip on the capabilities of the phone whilst also allowing to test the camera and what it is actually like to live with.

I want to get this out of the way first and foremost this is not a phone that is going to be high on people’s wish list along with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy lineup, the iPhone range or Google’s Pixel devices. this is a phone that is built for a reason, and that reason is to be tough and durable. It is unashamedly butch but under that tough exterior is it any good. In a word yes. it is good but good and great have a big space between them and this is where I feel his phone sits in between good and great. I come into this phone off the back of the review for the ONeplus Nord 3 CE Lite, which given the bang for your buck is a great phone for the right buyer the CAT S75 will also be great for the right buyer but not for the mainstream masses. 

Design and Hardware

What Bullitt has done here is create a good phone with some extra heavy-duty padding to toughen things up. in doing so they have created a phone that is chunky and solid which I do like despite my feeling like I need a weapons licence to carry it in public! Not once have dealt even the slightest bit concerned about throwing this in my pocket while I have been out mountain biking with my son or capturing photos of historic places with the rest of my family. I even felt comfortable handing the phone over to my 10-year-old to take some pictures while we had a look around some old palaces.

The build quality gives a reassurance that if you were to drop this then it would be fine and you can just dust it off and crack on with the rest of your day. I had the opportunity to use the CAT S75 in the rain as well where it performed perfectly thanks to the incredibly high IP68 and IP69K rating which stems from the tough soft-touch rear body which envelops the internal structure of the phone like an antimicrobial security blanket. When it gets dirty it goes in the sink and I wash it as if I was washing a plate or glass!

If you haven’t taken the time to go over my unboxing article on the phone I would strongly encourage you to do so as it gives my thoughts on the hardware and a tour of the device.

There is of course one other big selling point of this phone and that is the integration of  MediaTek’s state-of-the-art NTN (non-terrestrial network) chip that enables direct connectivity to geostationary satellites above the earth making it possible to send a message or make an SOS assistance request. Thi is different tot he system that Apple use as they have to use propriety satellites where as the CAT S75 should in theory use any satellite that can be found by the phone. I have spent some time trying to test this out I have had mixed results, which you can see in more detail below. I was only trying to use the satellite messaging service as I didn’t need the tracking ability or the SOS function during my time with the phone. This seems as good a time as any to remind you that these services are extras and they will require that you use the specialised sim that is provided with the phone in one of the sim card slots.

Another little gem that I discovered during my testing was that the phone does actually have built-in Wireless charging which I had missed during my unboxing which is a nice feature to have as I do use this function a lot. However, I have to say that I had mixed results actually getting the phone to share wirelessly. I was unable to use the Wireless charger built into my desk which works for pretty much any other wireless charge-enabled device that I have ever tried on it. I was also unable to get it to work on my Pixel Stand 2 charger as the coil on the charge and the one in the rear of the phone just would line up. I was however able to get it to work on my old Samsung fast wireless charger and an unbranded pad that I have next to my bed. You may find that mileage will vary using this feature.

That concludes the design and hardware part let’s look into how this chunky boy performs now.

Performance

The performance of the CAT S75 is perfectly adequate for a phone that is being used as a daily driver and I have not found much in the way of things that will trip it up it is pretty swift at moving through apps and loading up games and streaming services. I have not had problems with having multiple apps running in the background and the phone stays cool.

This is not going to be an out-and-out gaming beast and the likes of Shenjen Impact will not be the smoothest experience on the higher settings however given that is not my type of gaming I went ahead and fired up F1 Mobile Racing instead. On my Pixel 7 Pro this game runs fluidly with minimal frame dropping or stuttering. when I loaded it up on the CAT S75 it felt a bit more sluggish and I am quite certain that the graphics detail was not as good in terms of the track textures and details. I did try and check what level of graphics it was running at and I was unable to see this information. I did also try running another of my favourite games Grand Mountain Adventure and this ran smoothly for the most part apart from when you switched between the game and the Mini Map the were some distinct slowdowns. I can only put this down to the level of detail that is shown on the mini-map and then the phone needs to catch up on the rendering which would explain the short lag. Again this is not something I have ever noticed on my Pixel 7 Pro.

In terms of the longevity of the battery on the phone, the large 5000 mAH battery presented no problem in my daily use which consists of checking emails, mixed messaging across various channels including social media, some light camera use and approx an hour o sat nav and media streaming via Bluetooth when driving to and from work. On top of this, I am also using it a lot for web browsing as I am currently planning a trip abroad next week. I have been able to get through a normal day like this with no need to worry about when my battery will run out as the phone will gently sip power during the day and by the time I call it a night I will easily have double figures in the battery percentage icon. I have on some days been able to stretch the phone out to last up to two days but by the end of the second day, it is normally screaming out for a recharge. It will take a recharge fairly fast either via the wireless charging I mentioned above or via the USB Type C port which will allow the phone to pull in power at 15 watts which is not that fastest by any means but more than adequate for an overnight charge.

I have been trying to use the phone while I have been out trying to enjoy the sunshine when we have had and I have found that the screen is somewhat lacking in terms of the brightness. I prefer to use dark mode for my UI and this means that the brightness needs to be high in order for me to read text on the screen in bright conditions. Now because the backlight levels of this screen are not that high I do struggle to use the phone in any sort of sunshine when outdoors. I feel that this is a big weakness for a phone intended to be used in an outdoor environment. It had been my plan to take the phone on holiday to Turkey to test the underwater photography aspect but as I was going to be in the mids of a Europe-wide heatwave that wasn’t gonna work! I have found that the phone is great inside but under very bright outdoor conditions it just didn’t work for me.

Software

The software of the CAT S75 is where the phone has a chance to differentiate itself, however, I have to say rather thankfully they have not fiddled too much with the stock Android UI and I do like this however before you Pixel UI fans start jumping for joy there are some things that are missing here from the UI that I have found annoying in day to day use. it is also on a version of Android that is now nearly 2 years out of date.  Bullitt has stated that they will; be updating the phone to Android 14 but we don’t have any sort of time frame on when that will be I expect that it will be at some point next year, especially as the phone is running on a relatively unknown chipset (The MediaTek Dimensity D930 octa-core 2.2GHz) that will require custom coding to make it work with the updates before they can release firmware revisions. The good news is hope to see Android 13 before the winter however again this is not confirmed so only time will tell on that front.

I have grown used to some of the tweaks that have been enabled in the UI on Android 13 and these are not present on the CAT S75 which is a shame. For example, there is no ability to allow for the customisation of default icons in either the settings or the home screen menu which is a feature that I really like using as it allows me to personalise my phone a little bit more.

The homescreen setting menu

I have not been able to find a way to remove the recent apps option from the app drawer as well I really don’t like that function as it is just duplicating the existing app menu so is not needed.

App drawer with search function

The whole phone just feels like it is missing the little extras and tweaks that I have become used to when using the more flagship-grade phones that I normally use. Even when I compare it to the OnePlus Nord CE3 Lite I feel myself being left wanting on certain aspects of the software.

Dont get me wrong the phone offers all the things you need from a phone and for normal users or for those rallying on the phone as a tool this will be great as long as they keep the phone updated with all the security patches.

Old security update

At the time of writing this, the phone is on 1st May 2023 in terms of security patches hopefully they will be adding a more up-to-date one soon as this will give businesses the peace of mind to invest in getting these devices for their field workers which I feel is a target market for these phones. I know that when I used to work in the field as an engineer, I would have been much happier using one of these over the iPhone 7 that I was issued as that was not really useable in the rain at all which we have a lot of in the winter in this country and the “glove mode” would have also been very useful as well.

The difference between the sensitivity is all software driven in “glove mode” and it does seem to offer a marginal improvement when I tested it with some random woolly gloves I found but it would be fine with the typical style nitrile gloves that I used to have to wear.

So all in all the software is good but it does not come with some of the niceties that are found in more consumer-based phones which is hardly surprising. As a company phone admin, I would be more than happy rolling these out to my engineers as there is not much they can do to screw things up in terms of the settings as they are simply not there! I presume it would also be very simple to implement some sort of management tool on these devices for companies to use via an app linked to a back-end solution. Ironically this is a speciality of the sister phone to the CAT S75 the Motorola Defy 2 as that is being built for Motorola Mobility Solutions who are widely regarded as experts in this area.

I do like the fact that some of the “Pixel” features that I have grown to love are still here, for example, the location of the search widget being at the bottom as can be seen on the home screens and that this continues to be available regardless of the screen you are on.

Correct Google Search bar placement

I am also a fan of the UI scaling as the icons are not too big and the text size is a good scale even when dialled down to the lowest setting. I have been really annoyed in the past by most non-Pixel and Nexus phones for the fact that the icon and text size is too big due to the limits implemented by scaling this is a big win for me. So with that, I can happily say that I am pleased with the look of the software and the way they have implemented the look of things. So without further ado let’s look into the camera and how it performs.

Camera

This was one of the areas I was not expecting to be anything special and my expectation for the most part were met. As an experiment, I gave the phone to my son while we took some time to explore some very old buildings in London on a family trip recently. Now if the camera was kept perfectly steady and till the results were not too bad but as soon as movement is brought in things start looking a bit dodgey.

I have included some examples below the 1st batches are taken with the phone being for the most part stable

Here are some of the more blurry shots 

Finally here are some Zoom samples for you to check out

While this is by o means a bad camera it is also not a great camera, I feel that again when the target audience is considered then it works but I wouldn’t want to rely on this as my main shooter either. This is again another reason why I decided to not take this on holiday as my Pixel 7 pro was much more up to the task of taking photos that I want to keep forever.

As for the selfie camera, this is more than adequate for basic use and has the ability to shoot with adjustable Bokeh which is a nice touch that is actually executed reasonably well!

Something that I did notice when I was playing around with the camera modes is that the front camera will not allow night mode to be used which is a bit strange and something I have not seen before on other devices I have compared it to.

Now it’s time to look at night mode now first up is with night mode on and you can see that while the light levels are good as the sensor does well to capture the available light it is a bit of a grainy mess.

It is a much better result than if you shoot without night mode on as seen below,

Another feature that i would find useful for the target audience at least I would have found it useful in my previous role in the field, is of course Super Macro mode.

You can see that when Super Macro is on the detail in the foreground is a lot crisper but it drops out as you get deeper into the shot, however, it does look like there is some noise being picked up by the 2MP macro camera which is a shame but it will be fine for taking an image of stuff that you want to get that close too.

Finally, I captured this quick video of my shortlived ownership of a Pixel Fold and it is not too shabby

The camera software is in itself fairly easy to use and it does have some extra modes as well arguably the most interesting of these modes for me is the Underwater Mode, which I regrettably was unable to use in anger. There is a rather helpful tutorial that will take you through some of the controls on the UI.

So in conclusion for the camera, it is serviceable but nothing to right home about but again I draw you back to the target market piece again which is those who are using the phone as a tool. In a push, you will be able to get some good shots out of it but once you start getting close up or things get dark then it starts going sideways.

Time to wrap things up then.

Conclusion

This phone has very clearly been designed for a target-specific market and also one with a very specialist set of needs. If I am to look at both of these sectors of the mobile user markets then it keeps bringing me back to the same two groups. people who use their phones outdoors and people who use their phones as work tools. Now the neat thing is that these two market segments are actually looking for a phone that ticks quite a lot of the same boxes. It needs to be tough, it needs to last a long time, it has to do the basics well and it has to be simple to use.

The CAT S75 in my mind ticks all of these boxes and then it adds the extras that will really appeal to outdoor users as well with the enhanced tracking functions and offline SMS services. however with the see all requiring extra costs, I think the amount of users that will be buying the phone specifically for those functions is somewhat niche. Now to be fair this is not the first ruggedised phone we have seen but it is one of the better-specified ones and the fact that the software is relatively unencumbered is a nice bonus. The only other widely available ruggedised phone I was able to find while doing this review in person was a Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro  which is actually no longer available but it has much weaker specs and is a much older model. It can still be bought but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are looking to buy a phone that is now 4 years old and will be reaching the end of its update cycle in terms of software support. The only other option is the sister phone the Motorola Defy 2 but if you are based in the UkKi don’t think you can get one yet as they are only showing as being available via preorders with no indication of pricing.

So if you want a well specced hardcore phone that will allow you to use your device outdoors or on the work site then the CAT S75 get my recommendation with some caveats regarding the screen brightness and camera quality. But at the price of £499.00 from the CAT phones website then it is well worth getting

The post Cat S75 – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

Today we have got something a little bit different as I am unboxing not just a phone but a satellite communication device and a work tool for those of us who aren’t afraid to get a bit mucky in the pursuit of an income.
I am of course talking about the CAT S75 by Bullitt
Some of you may be wondering who Bullitt is and you are correct to wonder as they are not a common name in the world of smartphone builders like Samsung, Apple OnePlus Honor and Google. Bullitt is a company that specialises in making a phone that is for workers and explorers, phones that like it rough and don’t shy away from being a bit bulky in the name of protection and ruggedness. They have been the company behind CAT-branded phones for a few years now but they also make devices for Motorola Mobility as well (more on that later).

So without further ado let’s step out of my comfortable foldy flagship zone and into the more toughened world of rugged mobile tech and unbox this tough customer.

Now that your eyes have been sufficiently seared by the beauty within that glorious white box let’s talk specs….

Specs

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So that is the specs taken care of let’s have a quick look around the device to see the hardy beats in all its glory.

Staring up front is where we can find the 6.6″ LCD IPS panel which is made of Gorilla Glass Victus at 0.8 mm thickness to ensure that is scratch and impact-resistant. it will also work with gloves if you enable Glove Mode in the settings and can be used with wet fingers! The screen will refresh at up to 120hz and this can be set on at all times, reduced to 60hz or set to adaptive mode which will automatically adjust depending on what is being done on the device. 

Also to be found on the front of the phone is the front-facing 8MP camera which is located in an old-style teardrop and is in the bezel around the screen. The bezels by the way are huge and this is deliberate and is most likely been done in this way to help against the screen breaking if dropped but I also suspect that it may be to do with the aforementioned glove mode.

Tucked into the section just above the camera is the earpiece which is also built into that top bezel as well this sounds crisp and clear and I have not had any issues hearing people during calls. 

Moving around to the right-hand side we can find the strangely placed buttons. This is one of the first phones I have used in quite some time where the power key is placed above the volume rocker. This requires some finger gymnastics to find the power key on what is already quite a tall phone. the good news is that this can mostly be negated buy the “lift-to-wake” feature that is present in the phone’s settings and also by using the fingerprint reader on the back. Both the volume rocker and the power buttons do have a solid feel and are responsive when pressed. They are not metal though but they do feel sturdy which is a theme throughout the phone.

On the base of the phone, we can find a USB Type C port that is flanked by what looks to be a dual speaker but in reality, this is a single-speaker affair. The grill on the right of the USB port is the speaker and the other side most likely is hiding a mic array under the grill. Although I cannot see the water ingress protection for myself I expect these apertures to all have gaskets on them internally.

Continuing around to the left-hand side is where the programmable key is hiding along with the only port that will allow access to the internals of the phone the Sim/SD card slot. The programmable button like the other on the right of the phone is again solid but this time has the added benefit of being ribbed for ease of location as this can be used for a Zello Push To Talk (PTT) button or just for any other functions which can be configured in software.

The Combo Sim/SD card tray is quite deeply recessed inside the phone and is a toolless style the flap that covers this is a reassuringly solid feeling and when closed creates a tight seal. I am a little concerned that it could be flipped open with relative ease but I am sure that this has been thought about in design and I wouldn’t be surprised if the internal sections of this compartment are all coated in a waterproofing agent.

Finishing our tour of the sides we come to the top of the phone which house the SOS button in a deep red, which is again ribbed for ease of location but this time it is recessed into the phone’s casing so that it is level to prevent accidental activation. Next to this is the only visible Mic hole on the phone.

Around the back, we have got a fairly clean panel with the exceptions being the camera array and the fingerprint reader. the fingerprint reader is nicely positioned where your index finger would naturally fall so it is easy to use and a good size for me but if you have bigger/wider fingers it may be problematic for you. It responds quickly and seems to be pretty accurate with a very low failure rate from my testing at least.

The camera array is housed in a single slightly raised bump that is on the rear right corner of the phone in a very similar position that Samsung tend to place their cameras. In the array, we have got a 50MP Main Camera (f/1.8), 8MP Wide angle camera and a 2MP macro featuring underwater mode. Below this, we have got a very bright dual LED Flash which works really well as a torch as well if you need it too.

That concludes the tour of the phone.

I have been able to get some limited use out of the phone since it arrived on my doorstep on Monday but I have got plans to take it with me mountain biking this weekend to give it a bit more of a test. This is one of the areas where Bullitt and CAt intend for this style of the phone to be used so I will be putting it through its paces as best as I can over the next few days.

I am normally quite gentle on the phone I am lent for review as i don’t want to break them and be asked to pay for the damages! However in this case I am going to be a bit rough with the phone as it is a tough phone after all so within the realms of relative sense I will be tough on this phone over my testing period. I may even be able to get some underwater photography use out of this if I am allowed to keep it for my trip to Turkey later this month! It then the north sea may have to suffice instead not that you will be able to see much in there!!

If you are interested in picking up a tough phone from CAT or more specifically the CAT s75 then you can do so from the CAT phones store now for £549. If however, you prefer your phones with Motorola branding then you can also pick this phone up as the Motorola Mobility made Defy 2 although I think this is limited to America’s at this time.

As a small treat here is a link to the app satellite messaging app working as it should, not as I tried to demo unsuccessfully in the video above!!

The post CAT S75 by Bullitt – Unboxing is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

It is time to pull my thoughts together for the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G after I have been using it for a few weeks.

I have already taken the time to put this through it unboxing process and provided a few very brief initial first thoughts for the device, however, that was before I lived with it for any sort of time. I wanted to dig down to the very core of the Core Edition phone to find out what made it tick and now this has been done, I have a better grasp of the subject matter.

So let’s get started and see if this phone that is currently on sale for £269 at OnePlus is worth spending some of your hard-earned cash on.
Design

I have gone over this in more detail in the unboxing article I wrote when I first receive the device earlier last month. I was pretty pleased with the design of the phone as it has some very nice details. A couple of areas that stand out now having used the phone are broken down in some detail below.

-It’s a bit square… but in a good way.

I have got to day this was one of the things that struck me the most about the design of this phone when I first unboxed it and even before that when I saw the early pictures. I will go as far as say this was one of the things that made me want to review the phone, to begin with. If you have been a reader of Coolsmartphone for some time you may remember I was a big fan of the Xperia lineup of old and one of the things that I liked most about their design, which is continued into today’s phones that they are pushing out was the “blockiness” of the design. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I like this.

The Nord CE 3 is very much from the same school of thought in this regard. it has a large flat glass display a flat plastic back and flat plastic side and bottom rails making up the frame. These all appeal to me. The rails along the side and bottom are nicely textured to add a bit of grip to the exterior making it easier to hold and they are very slightly rounded off on the four corners which contribute to the comfort when it is hand. It is very similar in terms of the design that is currently being offered of the iPhone 14 lie up and this has been unchanged for what feels like forever. I do like this design choice and it fits the market segment correctly I feel.

-The buttons are split between both sides of the phone

I have found that this is a design choice that OnePlus started to follow a while ago and I like it for the most part as it means that you aren’t confused as to which button does which. So on the right-hand side, you have got the power button which also pulls double duty as a fingerprint reader. It is nicely raised enough (just about 1mm)so that it can be found with ease and has good action. The fingerprint reader is also pretty responsive too which is a nice touch. the volume buttons are then located on the left-hand side almost exactly opposite the power button. This means that unlike on my Pixel 7 Pro, I am not often pressing the volume key instead of the power key. There is however a downside which I need to mention and that is that it is very easy to accidentally take a screenshot with these buttons the way they are located which I have done several times by mistake!! it is an easy fix as you can turn the feature off in the settings which I am yet to do, whenever I remember to do it I then get sidetracked by something else.

-The back is plastic.

Now for a lot of people, this is a negative but for me and given the costs of this phone I am not too bummed out by this. I get that having a glass rear panel is nicer as the feel is better and it affords a better feel in the hand. it does however mean that the phone is inherently more fragile and if you were to drop it then the glass will break meaning an expensive repair and potential for other damage. having a plastic back means that the phone is more resistant to damage if the phone does get dropped and it is cheaper to make in the first place. So for me, this is a good decision on the material used but they did in my opinion, especially on the back colour way make a fundamental mistake. They have given the back of the phone a “Piano black” style finish which we see on a lot of car interiors these days. This is one of the most annoying finishes that they could have had as this means that the phone is constantly covered in smudges and fingerprints. if you give this to a teenager without the case this phone will look mining in a matter of seconds. It is, for this reason, I was very glad to see that OnePlus has continued to provide a free clear TPU case for the phone in the box as this was applied as soon as the initial picture had been taken and only removed if I need to photograph the back panel. If you’re choosing this phone and hate fingerprints get the Lime Green one as even if this is the same glossy finish you won’t see the fingerprints as much on that colour version.

-Camera Modules are exaggerated.

This is a bit of an odd one to me. I can see what has been done as this is the designed direction being taken for the Nord series in its 3rd generation. the camera modules on the back of the phone are pretty massive for the overall size of the phone. I can get it for the top array as that features the bigger camera but the bottom array is a bit nasty looking as it has 2 camera lenses in the same circle. This means that if you glance a the phone then you would think this has 2 rear cameras but in reality, you really only have the one which is mounted into the top circle.

I was on a video call the other day for work and happened to be doing something on my phone for password authentication and out of the blue I got a comment from one of my colleagues saying that the cameras were ridiculously big! I then felt compelled to advise him that it was only the top one that was the actual camera and the bottom one contained a depth of field sensor and the 2 MP macro lens The person who commented uses a Samsung phone that incidentally has the same 107Mp sensor on his phone and was shocked at how big they had made the housing for the camera when compared to his phone. It is not a problem in any way but just something that came up in my time with the device.

-Sim and Micro SD card support!

It has been such a long time since I have had the pleasure to use a phone that supports micro SD card expansion that I forgot all about this feature and how useful it is. I love that if I needed to I can throw in a memory card to the phone and store extra content on it. This would be great for me to take this away on a trip as it means I can throw a load of music and MP4 files onto a large SD card and then I will have a way of keeping my 10-year-old entertained on long journeys. It also means that if he was using it and it and the screen were to get broken as long as I set the camera to store photos on the external storage then he will have all those photos available to him on that memory card. Given that the phone also only comes with one storage size of 128GB having the expandable memory is a great selling point as it will allow the phone to be used for longer without the need to buy extra cloud solutions once that internal memory has been used up. I have been using the phone for a few weeks with my regular app loadout and music on the phone and I have already used 90GB of the stage so having the ability to add extra will be very useful.

of course that is only one of the use cases for the extra slot as the phone also supports a secondary sim which is a gain very useful if you are using this a travel phone as it means that you can have both your primary and secondary sim inside it at the same time. The phone has various future that will allow you to determine which SIM is used or what which can be set up easily for you to make the best use of this feature.

-3.5mm headphone jack on board.

So I defiantly did not expect to see this on such a budget-oriented device as this feature was something that was for the large part now defunct on all phones bar the Sony lineup Xperia 1 Series devices which are all £1k plus phones. I am pleased to see this is back as it was a feature I used to get better audio when I was recording videos at trade shows but it also means that if I was going to be giving this to a child I can give them headphones that they can use that won’t cost me a small fortune but will still allow a good sound experience. it also means one less thing for them to lose and let run out of power.

-SuperVooc 67W charging.

Fast charging is a must for phones these days and the Nord CE 3 has this covered with the built-in SuperVooc fast charging capability meaning that even the most demanding of users will find that they can back up to speed in no time at all. With a recharging speed of 0% to 80% in just 30 minutes you can have enough power for your day’s adventure in the time it takes you to get yourself ready whiteout having to worry about the phone not being charged. I have been using SuperVooc charging on a Realme phone that my wife uses for nearly a year now and it is a godsend as she never remembers to charge her phone so it always needs that quick boost, which SuperVooc affords.

However, it is often a cited concern that using fast charging will harm the battery or the phone which is where the SuperVooc Endurance Edition aspect of the charging protocols comes into its own. The phone and charger will use the phone’s built-in Battery Health Engine software to ensure that the phone’s battery will be kept in optimum condition so that you charge it whenever you need it and depending on your charging habits the charging speed will be adjusted. So if for example you are plugging in overnight all the time then the phone will pick up on this behaviour and it will then slow down the charging rate accordingly. If however, you are more of charge and dash style person then it will allow the phone to charge quickly and fast for the short period the phone is plugged in. This is normally a feature that is only found on flagship-grade phones so it is nice to see this on a lower specced device.

So those are some of the design features that jump out to me about the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G. The key overwhelming feeling I get from the phone is that this is a phone that does what it says on the tin but the design is only part of what allows this to happen a lot of that does what it says on the tin comes from the hardware and what is inside the phone so let’s spend a few moments going through that
Hardware

First up and following on nicely from the battery tech I have just been looking at is that this phone has a suitably large 5000mah hour battery meaning that you should in most use cases not have to worry too much about being left with a depleted battery on most days. In most of my usage, I have normally had anywhere from 30% to 40% left in my daily use cases. Now admittedly I am not a young man and I don’t spend a lot of time using social media or taking pictures as I am at work for 8 hours of the day and my phone will just be ticking over quietly in the corner. However, I do use the phone for at least 2 hrs of media playback over Bluetooth on most days while I drive to and from the office for work. I will normally have about a 1hrs use of email and then another hour of web browsing and social scrolling in the evenings throw in a few Youtube videos and that is where we are at. All of this time I have had the phone connected to a Galaxy Watch 5 Pro over Bluetooth as well for tracking steps and notification duties as well. I have not ever been worried about the phone running low on juice so far and most days I can stretch the usage out to last me up to days which is nice to have.

It is good to see this price point getting a decent size battery and coupled with the aforementioned charging speed and tech this is head and shoulders above some higher-end devices that I have tested and owned over the years.

Next up is the screen that is I would say average to good. Whilst I had no problems with its speed and fluidity of displaying content and navigating on the large 6.72″ 120Hz FHD Display I did have an issue with the brightness of the screen as I found that it was very hard to see in direct sunlight. This is partly down to the panel being an LCD and the colours being not as vibrant due to the capabilities of LCD panels by their very nature. The panel was also not a very bright panel maxing out at 680nits which when combined with my preference for dark mode does make it tricky to see when the sun comes out.

I also dont think it was being helped by the screen protector that comes pre-applied to the phone as this seems to be a dust magnet and I found myself constantly cleaning the screen down especially when I had just taken it out of my pocket to use it. I am not sure what material was used by OnePlus for the screen protector but the combination of the screen protector and TPU case meant that the phone was constantly being covered in lint and dust. I did ultimately remove the screen protector as it started to peel at the edges and the dust pick up did reduce a bit so that is some food for thought.

Under the hood the brains of the phone are in the form of the efficient energy-sipping Snapdragon 695 5G chipset that was plenty powerful for most daily tasks which I carried out on the phone it was very rare for me to see any sort of slowdowns on the phone. Again as mentioned above I don’t tend to push these phones to their max but I was able to do all I wanted to do on it with very little speed difference when compared to either my Z Fold 4 5G or my Pixel 7 Pro. The only chick was that I did occasionally notice that when I was using some apps that required large data set to be loaded this was a bit slower than on my flagship devices. I didn’t see the same when playing F1 Mobile at least not after I went through the initial loadout of the game that was as this did take a bit longer than I would have liked, but it is a big game so I will let the Nord CE 3 off for that one. I use the inbuilt gaming mode to monitor the performance of the game and I was consistently getting frames rates in the high 20s’ through the session apart from one very strange moment when the phone slowed down to single figures and everything turned into a bit of an awful laggy mess. A quick force close of the app seemed to resolve the issue and it didn’t come back even after playing for about another hour of gameplay time.

Another area where I was keen to test the phone’s performance was when I was using it with Android Auto in my car. This has been the downfall of phones that are much better specced than the Nord CE 3 in the past. I am happy to report that the phone didn’t have any problems when using Android Auto in a wired mode, Unfortunately, I was unable to test the wired functionality as my car does not support that feature but it worked fine when using it for music playback and handling voice and texts while I was on the road.

In terms of call quality, the phone delivered here calls were crisp and clear and they synced up with Bluetooth fine both on my watch and my car. In terms of the signal I was experiencing the same sort of signal that I typically get on most phones I have tested as of late in some specific areas I was able to get a better signal on the Nord CE 3 that I sometimes would get on my Pixel 7 Pro. I would say that this is another respect of having the plastic case design as it allows more of the signal to get into the phone’s antennas which unlike the Nord CE 3’s counterparts have to use signal channels creating potential weakness in the frame. This has been a problem on the OnePlus devices since the adoption of the larger camera modules on the OnePlus 10 series phones and sadly it is still evident on their 11 series. The good news is this should be the case with the Nord CE 3 and the other phones within the Nord series of devices.

So in terms of hardware and performance, the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G is great bang for its buck as long as your expectations are realistic.

A lot of the phone’s appeal comes down to the software experience that is provided by the phone and that brings me nicely to the software side
Software

The concept of the OnePlus phones, when they were originally envisioned, was to bring true flagship value to the masses at a low and affordable price point. While there have been some shifts in this ethos over the years I do feel that a lot of hose aspects still ring true in the way that the Oxygen OS 13.1 UI that sits on top of Android 13 still works. Yes, there has been a lot of merging with the parent companies Colour Os that can be found on Oppo and Realme phones but this is not necessarily a bad thing as Oxygen OS is a really good UI. It doesn’t add too much duplication and where the duplications of apps or functions do happen they are either well thought out and useful or easily sidestepped. I have been running this phone as my daily driver for quite some time during this elongated review and I have found that I was never left lacking in terms of the way the software works.

The UI allows me to set the phone up the way I want it to I have options if I want them and if I don’t then I am not forced to adopt them. An example of this is the App Drawer. I can set the phone to either have on or off as I want. I can have a swipe-down gesture brings up my notifications screen or it can bring down the OnePlus Shelf option, which is a place to keep useful widgets for quick access. Being that I am a bit of an old-school user I prefer the notifications dropdown but I have the option for either which is good to see. I do appreciate the search function in the app drawer and I have found myself using it more than once.

With all that being said, there are some minor annoyances that you do learn to live with but are not found on a device from the pixel lineup. So if I get a notification I need to tap on the small arrow icon to view it on Oxygen OS which is a bit annoying when I am trying to quickly clear my notifications. on other phones I can just pull down and as I do so all my notifications expand fully allowing me to see what I need and quickly dismiss irrelevant apps.

A lot of the OnePlus built-in apps require you to approve the Status Of Usage before you use them which is annoying but is only an issue on the first use so this is forgivable.

I did also find that the battery management was sometimes a little too persistent for my liking as I would be reminded about an app that is open in the background that I want to be open too frequently. If I want the app open then I know what it is going to do to my battery. Again this is probably something that is just me as I know what I am doing but for an inexperienced user, this would potentially prove to be useful as it will stop the phone from running unneeded programs in the background. I do feel that this is not as big of a problem as the Oxygen OS management software makes it out to be though as I normally get the same sort of battery life out of the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G as I get on my Pixel 7 Pro despite them using different chipsets screen types etc.

If you can live with these very minor issues in the software there is a lot to like about Oxygen OS 13.1 and don’t let the OG Oneplus Oxygen OS hater put you off. I have been more than happy living with the phone daily and would be more than happy to recommend this phone based on the software implementation to either my wife or my parent. I also know that my son would be more than happy with this phone as it would allow him to do everything he wants to do and more.

Just before I wrap up on the software there is one more section that I want to mention. that is of course virtual RAM. This is something that more and more phones are starting to feature and I am pleased to see that it is on board here as it does allow the phone to stretch its legs if you need that extra bit of memory for gaming or multi-app use. It is particularly useful when gaming as it allows for an option called Championship Mode

This will essentially turn your phone into a dedicated handheld when you are in a game and draws the maximum power from the phone for gaming only everything else becomes secondary. By default, the virtual RAM capacity is set as 4GB but this can be doubled if required (In my testing I have not needed to do this but it could be useful for some)

Last but not least let’s look at the camera.
Camera

This is perhaps one of the weaker aspects of the phone but going into this I was aware that the camera was not going to be amazing as we do only have one sensor to work with in reality here. The camera adopts pixel binning using a 9 in 1 ratio meaning that your 108 MP sensor will produce images of 12 MP in size which is plenty for an entry-level camera. the difference here though is as the image is being captured by a high MP sensor it can pull in more data about the subject matter and essentially capture more light. this in turn results in brighter, clearer and more natural-looking images. In addition, you do of course have you wide variety of capture modes included and some of these modes will feature an aspect of AI Assitance to tweak your settings to suit the lighting levels the subject the depth of focus etc.

You also have got 3x Lossless Zoom which is of course a digital manipulation afforded by the large sensor size but it works reasonably well as can be seen in the zoomed images below. But that is enough of me stating the facts here are some image si have captured for you to assess yourself and make your judgements.

As you can see from the images the camera is not too bad in optimum light conditions. The macro shots come out pretty well and it does a good job of keeping the subject in focus when using portrait mode (even when the subject is not a person!). This is all pretty much par for the course with any camera these days. It is when the light drops that normally things start to wrong.

I have included a few low-light shots here to show what I mean

The first of the above shots was without night mode and the second was with night mode on. As you can see there is a little bit of improvement but it is not great as we have a lot of edge blurring on the shot. To be fair to the Nord CE most phones would have struggled with this type of shot. This however is not something that would actively disuade me from this phone as these are firmly in the minority of the photos I would be intending to take with this phone. Also, the LED flash is more than bright enough to make up for the low light issue.

As for video the phone can record at up to 1080p at up to 30FPS in normal video and it will also do 720p at up to 120fps samples of which can be seen below.

Last but not least is the selfie mode which is more than good enough. it also allows for background blurring and it does a pretty good job at keep the focus on the subject whilst blurring out the background.

I am happy with the camera performance for a phone of this price point and would be more than happy to recommend this to someone who doesn’t need anything more advanced which to be fair is the vast majority of us.
Conclusion

This phone is a very good budget offering and I have enjoyed using it. If I had not become so accustomed to the high-end flagships that I can use due to this website I would be happy with this phone as one for myself. it is of course not perfect but given what you are paying it does a great job. I found it slightly irritating when I was using it in very bright sunlight due to the relatively low nit levels that the screen was able to produce. There were some things in the software that did annoy me slightly but none of these things were a deal breaker for me overall.

OnePlus has always been very good at hitting the cash-to-spec balance well with the Nord range and this is why I am normally such a big fan of it. I have recommended that some of my colleagues look to this phone as a possible replacement for their ageing phones that they are currently using as they have said that cost is a bigger factor for them than high-end specs. I feel that this is the market where the OnePlus Nord cE 3 Lite 5g shines brightest. If you are on the lookout for a phone for a gift to a family member who doesn’t need the specs to be top-end but wants to know that they have something reliable and easy to use this is defiantly one I would recommend.

In terms of its competition there are a lot of cheap but good ones in this segment b the direct competitors for me though are the Pixel 6A and the Realme 10 Pro. The Pixel 6A I currently a tad more expensive but it does bring all of the Pixel’s unique features to the party and as such this would be a bit of a step up especially if the camera was one of the main drivers for the user. The Realme 10 Pro on the other hand is essentially the same phone albeit in a different shell and with slightly different branding. The main reason why I don’t think Realme would be one I would recommend is that it is a largely unknown brand in the UK.

So there you have the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G, This is a very competent phone with a great price tag and some great specs on board. if you know someone who just needs a smartphone but doesn’t demand the best interest of specs, then this is a strong recommendation. it is also a great alternative for your normal phone if you are looking for a secondary device for work, or travel to the sketchier areas of the world. (on my recent trip to Marroco this would have been a great option over my Fold 4 as it wouldn’t have been the end of the world had I needed to replace it if it got lost /stolen etc). lastly, if you have kids who have not quite learned the value of high-end electronics and don’t take the best care of things this would be a great option for them as well.

If you are wanting to get a OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G now is a great time to buy as they currently are selling them for £269 on the OnePlus Website, they are also available on Amazon for £289.99 with next-day delivery if you have a prime account

The post OnePus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G – Review is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

This is a big launch for Honor as this is the first non-Samsung horizontal folding phone that has been launched in the UK. It is also aiming to be undercutting the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and the recently announced Pixel Fold. if you caught the recent article that I published regarding the price for this phone you will have noted that you can get the Magic Vs for as little as £1399 as the standard RRP, however, it is highly probable that this will be subject to discounts as Honor do love to do a good discount now and again. That is a massive and significant saving over the other two options on the market at this time.

The Pixel Fold is coming in at £1849 for a matching spec and the Z Fold 4 will cost £1769 without any trade-in options on either phone. Now I know that these phones will offer things that the Magic VS cannot but the latest from Honor is by no means a slouch in any respect. I will be mainly focusing this review on the comparison with the Z Fold 4 as I have been using this as my primary phone for nearly 8 months outwith times when I have been using a review device. I have grown quite accustomed to the way I want my folding phone to work for me and things that can be improved in this area.

So I would normally go into a full tour of the device and a specs list for you at this point in the review but I am going to skip that here and suggest that you pursue the Unboxing Article that I posted back when I first received the phone earlier this month.

I will however include the specs list here again for those of you who don’t want to click over to that post above.

Design

Now that we have ticked that off it is time for a few of my thought now that I have used the phone and lived with it for a bit longer.

First thing first and this won’t be a surprise for those of you who have used foldable already is that this phone has got a fair bit of heft about it. You will notice this in your pocket when you are stowing it, not just in the weight though as the phone is thicker than a candy bar design. This is hardly surprising as the phone essentially consists of two phones held together by a hinge assembly in the middle. Whilst I have mentioned the hinge this is an area where Honor has invested a lot of time and energy in the development of the phone and as such they have managed to achieve something that Samsung has not in that this hinge is a no-gap hinge and the actual size of it is considerably smaller than that of the Z Fold 4

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The hinge is also slightly less complicated and whilst this does mean that the size is smaller it doe cause an issue when you are trying to find the correct screen angle when using it partially folded. The Z Fold 4 will be happy at most over approx 25 degrees to the full 180 degrees. This is down to the much more complex hinge design which Samsung has refined over 4 generations of development. Sadly the same cannot be said about the Magic Vs hinge as I found that it was only really happy at an opening angle between 35 degrees to about 150 degrees as the hinge does not have the same friction capabilities built into the device.

Whilst this is by no means a deal breaker for me it is something that I feel is important to know about as some people will want to use the phone at the wide end of these angles for viewing video content etc. I found it was a pain point when I was using it to read Ebooks in particular. There is however one saving grace in that the Magic Vs is very secure when it is fully closed maybe even more so than the Z Fold 4 is.

A big difference between the two devices in terms of the screen footprints both when folded or unfolded, this is most notable when the phones are closed as the Magic Vs has got the larger outer display, especially in terms of width. this makes for a nicer experience when using the phone closed as you can use it more like a regular phone. I found that I was using it more in the folded state than I was with the Z Fold 4, I really only used the screen unfolded if I was settling into a long session of browsing socials, the web or consuming media content. This feels like one of the key benefits of a folding phone and the way you interact with them but this is also where software becomes a big factor as well and I will cover that a bit later on.

Another design aspect that liked is the bundled case that I had included in my review kit as it doesn’t add any bulk to what is as I already mentioned a chunky device, this is appreciated and is a massive improvement to my Z Fold 4 which I ended up using without a case for most of the time I have had and it shows the marks due to this.

The next thing I like more than I thought I would is the positioning of the Volume buttons and the Power buttons on the different sections of the folding screens. It meant that I had a lot fewer accidental presses when I was playing games or watching videos on the phone. The Power key is in a good place for finding and using for unlocking the phone however it is set up in a strange way in the software. I found that there were a lot of occasions when I was having to use the fingerprint reader differently than on the Z Fold 4. Normally I would expect that when I put my finger on the reader it would perform a scan and then unlock the screen without the need for an actual press. I thought this must have been a setting issue so I check the settings and it was set up correctly but it was just not working as I expected, now I have got an early production unit so your mileage may vary if you get one but it is something to be aware of.

UPDATE:-Shortly after starting this review my Magic Vs received a software update that seems to have improved the behaviour of the fingerprint reader and I was not seeing the missed read of the sensor as often.

I also like the positioning of the speakers as it provides a good soundscape when watching videos as the speakers are less likely to be covered by your fingers when holding it in the landscape.

In terms of negatives I would say the main ones are the fingerprint magnet that is the rear cover, I would recommend the Blue colour version if you don’t like a smudgy rear. The offset camera lens array means that the phone will not sit flat on a surface and will rock, especially when being used in folded mode. Other than these things I genuinely do like the design of the phone and I would (barring the hinge stiffness which I identified earlier) say that it may be slightly above the Z Fold 4 in the design stakes. However, there is so much more to these two phones than design, so it is time to dig into the hardware and performance.
Hardware and Performance

So there are a few areas where the hardware of the Magic Vs is significantly different to that of the Z Fold 4. The there areas I want to specifically focus on are the Screen Tech, the Battery and Charging tech and the Camera Array.

Screen tech:

Without further ado let’s take a closer look at the screens. The external screens as we have mentioned are different in terms of size and aspect ratio but that is really the main difference. Yes, the Samsung one will get slightly brighter but in most scenarios the Magic Vs has been plenty bright enough for me. The refresh rates of both panels are the same at 120hz and they are both sufficiently high resolution for daily use. With both screens using forms of OLED tech the colours are bright and crisp on both and the blacks are inky and deep when they need to be, incendentally in terms of colour representation the same statement rings true for the internal displays on both phones. The big difference comes into play when we are talking about the internal displays as the Z Fold 4 has one or two aspects where it gets a leg up on the Magic Vs.

I will cover the more minor one first, the refresh rate of the internal display on the Magic Vs drops to a 90hz refresh rate which is not something I would really worry about and unless you have very good eyesight in normal use you will not notice this. I was only able to see a very slight difference when was scrolling a website with the phones both unfolded and them set up side by side. It shouldn’t affect your gaming either as the Honor will also push the refresh rate to the highest available setting during gaming due to the GPU Turbo X software tweaks.

The second big difference is potentially much more substantial and that is that the Magic Vs does not have a digitizer on the inner screen meaning that you will not be able to use a stylus of any kind on the inner display like you can on the Z Fold 4. Now I say that is potentially a bigger issue but for me, it is a non-issue as I can count on my fingers of one hand how many times I have actually used the SPen on the Z Fold 4 inner display. I simply don’t see this as being a useful feature and this is down to the way the stylus has been integrated with the phone. Quite simply it hasn’t been, which means it is never on me as I refuse to have it clipped onto the outside of the phone case adding even more bulk to what is already a bulky phone. I am glad that Honor did not try and copy this feature as I don’t feel it is a useful enhancement for me until that is they can actually have the SPen stowed inside the phone frame for quick and easy access like on the Note series of old. In short, if you need a folding phone that has Stylus input then buy a Z Fold series device if not then the world is going to be your oyster as you now have the Honor Magic Vs 5G and the Pixel Fold to choose from in the UK and more will come very soon trust me on that.

Battery and Charging tech:

In the simplest possible terms, this phone has the Z Fold 4 liked in terms of what the battery is and what it can do in terms of longevity and charging speed. it is however not that fully onesided as the Z Fold 4 does claw some points back here with Qi Wireless charging and reverse Wireless charging support. The batteries in both phones are split cells across both sides of the hinge as this allows for the phone to feel more balanced. I believe the split in the Magic Vs is a 50/50 split whereas with the Z Fold 4, I think there is a bit more battery in the camera half of the phone. This doesn’t really matter in terms of the use as both phones balanced excellently for weight on both halves. What it does mean as the cell sizes for the Honor are equal in capacity then it can adopt the faster charging technology to fill the bigger 5000mah total capacity battery.

The Honor will use their propriety SuperCharge charging technology to allow the Magic Vs to charge from 0 to full in under an hour as opposed to the slower charging of Z Fold 4, which can take nearly 1 hour 30 mins from my testing. Whilst this is not a big issue for me it is good to know that I can quickly top up the Magic Vs with a SuperCharge charger and it will get back up to 50% in the time it takes for me to have a quick shower before I head out for the day.

What is however a shame is that this is the only way I can get power into the phone as there is no QI charging here either fast or slow and no reverse charging for your earbuds or watches etc. This is annoying as I have become a wireless charging covert for my phones and I hate having to use wired charging as I have a wired charging stand built into my desk and on my bedside table I even have it available in my car! Fortunately, the pain of having to plug in is lessened by the fact that I can eek two days of use out of this battery without too much trouble on a normal workday. When using it more intensively that will come down to about a day and a quarter. This is however still better than on the Z Fold 4 as most days I was getting near to empty by the end of the day. So there are pros and cons in each camp but I think for me, I am in my happy place with the Wireless charging capability on the Z Fold 4 if I had to choose one over the other.

Camera array:

Again this is an area where there are differences in terms of the numbers but in reality, those differences are not that significant. That is until you come to the front camera of the inside display. So let’s address that first, on the Z Fold 4 Samsung has tried to use a hidden under-display camera to hide the camera when it is not in use this results in the camera being quite a low MP (4) and this reflects the quality of image that is produced as it is normally pretty bad. On the Magic Vs, they decided against the use of this emerging tech and went with a much more simple hole-punch camera which allows them to use a higher quality 16MP sensor that works as you expect as normal from a front-facing camera, they actually use the same senoras they use on the outer display so you will not see any difference between the two cameras. As for my thoughts, I am not going to use either normally so I don’t care about it but I do like that the one on the Z Fold 4 is kinda hidden when it is not in use.

As for the rear camera’s we have got similar triple sensor arrays on both phones with slightly different setups.

On the Z Fold 4 we have got the following;

12MP Ultra-Wide camera F1.8 aperture , 50 MP Wide-Angle camera F2.2 aperture, 10MP 3x Optical Zoom Telephoto camera F2.4 aperture

On the Magic Vs we have the following

50MP Ultra-Wide camera F2.o aperture, 54MP Main camera F1.9 aperture, 8MP 3x Optical Zoom Telephoto camera F2.4 aperture

So as you can see they have got differing numbers of megapixels but as we know the numbers don’t always paint the full picture when it comes to cameras. I have been able to get good photos from both but I will go into this is in more detail in the cameras section of the review below. What is a big difference is in terms of the way these cameras are mounted. The array on the Magic Vs is mounted in the corner in a very similar position to what we find with the Z Fold 4 but the difference is that while the lenses on the ZFold 4 are in a slim sliver, the Magic Vs has them all in one large and wide glass bump. I feel that this bump protrudes a lot more on the Magic Vs which means that the phone is more prone to rocking when laid on a flat surface in folded state. This may be exaggerated by the way that the stock case fits around the camera bumps respectively but then found the Z Fold 4 was more stable, probably due to the slightly bulkier case.

As I am writing this I had almost forgotten one fairly major difference to the hardware is the level of ingress protection of the devices as this is very different across the two phones. Neither of the phones has any official dustproof rating so this may not be one to use on your next trip to the desert but if you are planning on getting them wet then I would be concerned with the Magic Vs as it does not have any waterproofing rating whereas the Z Fold 4 is rated for IP8X which should mean that it can take a quick splash here and there. In all honesty, I wouldn’t feel 100% comfortable with taking either of these down to my local beach due to the sand….. Eurgh nasty stuff.

As for Performance, the phones are very level in terms of performance which is hardly surprising as I have got two phones which at their cores both have the same specs, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 + Gen processor, 12GB of Ram and 512GB of storage (Z Fold 4 is available in smaller 256GB and larger 1TB sizes). They both use the Adreno 730 GU as well so the raw number crunching abilities are the same, however, this is again an area where software is a big factor so more about that later. I have been happy to use both phones as my daily driver and experienced very few issues with ever needing more oompf out of either device. The only thing I would say is that the Samsung feels a touch more refined but I am going to put this down to the software implementation as you will see there are some significant differences to be found there.
Software

I have broached this matter a few times so it is now to pool the wool back and dig into what makes these phones so different. The crux here is that the software on the Samsung is more evolved and fits better to the foldable form factor. This is quite understandable as they have had four years of developing the software for the fold whereas Honor is only in its second year of doing things for foldable phones. Normally I would say that I prefer the cleanness of the lack of modding that has been carried out to the core Android 13 software on the Magic Vs as I am normally a big fan of the pure Android UI but this is not the case here. Let me explain.

The Magic Vs has taken a simple approach to the implementation of Andriod 13 on the phone and as such there is no immediate apparent evidence that the form factor has been given much thought. An example of this is when you have taken the time to set up your home screen layout on the external display and then you open it to be a tablet-style device this app layout is exactly the same in terms of layout (see below examples).

Now those of you who are familiar with my reviews may be thinking well that is just how you like things clean and uncomplicated. However, when it comes to a tablet-style foldable form factor I want my tablet-mode home screen to reflect that I am working on a bigger canvas. My logic is if I am unfolding the screen I am doing so as I want to be reviewing the content on that bigger screen or I want to be productive, I will therefore have my main apps for these tasks at the forefront with the widgets laid out to fit into the bigger display format. When I then fold the back top phone mode I would then go back to my regular app layout for daily normal use. Now I will be the first to admit this is perhaps a behavioural trait that has been learned from using the Z Fold devices over a few generations, but I would also argue that this may have come from using tablets in the past as well.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with the Magic Vs as when you unfold the screen to enter tablet mode your app layout is exactly the same just with slightly bigger iconography. This is something that I have now learnt to live with but it is a shame that Samsung give you the option to have different home screen layouts depending on what mode you are in. I do however this is an option that comes more from Samsung One UI than from Google so I do understand. What is more concerning is that I dont see many other ways that the Ui Element s that Google has been developing for foldable have come through either. We dont have a navigation dock to allow you to quickly switch between apps, the back navigation gesture does not only work on the active app when in-app pair mode and the biggest sin of all is the lack of the App Drawer as shown in the video below!!!

This last point is in my opinion inexcusable for any Android software UI and it is especially worse on a Folding phone. Up until I was given this review unit I have always had the option on Honor devices and some others from Chinese brands as well to have either all apps on-screen iPhone style or an App Drawer. I have always been a fan of the latter and it is normally the first thing I do when setting up a phone if it isn’t on by default. I was shocked to see that this was not an option that I could see within the Ui anywhere, so I asked Honor as I thought it may be down to me having an early preview of the phone. Sadly this was not the case as I am now (to my knowledge) running release firmware and there is still no App drawer. I was advised that this was due to the UI embracing the folding nature of the device. the end result is I have an extra display screen which has all the apps that I rarely used and a folder with all of the Honor duplicate apps in there as well. It is messy and I can’t fathom why anyone would want this on an Android phone at all.

Moving away from the negative to the more positive, Once you do start using the multi-tasking it does become more intuitive use but it is nowhere near as simple as on the Z Fold 4. You can have apps open as split-screen apps and floating apps as well. you can also use Picture in Picture mode for some video playback apps. Some apps are context and fold-state aware. for example, Gmail will adopt a dual view mode like you get a on tablet when the phone is unfolded in landscape but it will revert to normal when folded. Youtube will also respond to the fold state and orientation really nicely as seen in the image below. Twitter gives you the option of opening a split screen when you click on a link whilst having your main feed open and being able to action the reply or link in the other half, this does need to be enabled under foldable settings though. Some other apps are not quite as well-honed but that is more to do with the developers than anything else.

My main takeaway from the Magic Vs is that Samsung has done a boatload of work to make the software work with the folding phone form factor as well as it does on the Z Fold 4 and Android have some catching up to do. This does concern me slightly as I have put down a preorder for the Pixel Fold and if the UI features that I like come from Samsung, is that going to be a mistake?

Only time will tell I guess but I hope with Google now have ig hardware of their own in the mix this will give the push needed for Developers to start thinking about how we can really use the real estate better. Hopefully, with the Magic Vs being on the more affordable end of the currently available foldable it will bring the tablet-style foldable form factor to a wider audience which will also increase the need for better software implementation onto these devices from Google themselves.

Here is a selection of images of the software of various apps for you to see some of the multitasking at work.

I just hope that any changes that are made to the core Android design in Android 14 are quickly rolled out to the Magic Vs as well

Last but not least we need to discuss the camera on the Magic Vs
Camera

While this is not one of the main draws for the phone as that is the giant foldable screen it still needs to perform to a reasonable degree as this would be your main on-the-go camera if you are to buy one of these phones. The good news is I have been pleased with the camera in the situations I have tried it in. I am not going to say that I have been blown away by the camera performance but it has been more than satisfactory for use day to day.

I have been happy with the various different levels of Zoom and I have found that I have not been lacking in this area it does a good job at closes up and wider shots as well and I include a few samples of this below for you to see for yourself.

The camera modes are as you would expect from Honor all here and this allows for you to get some rather interesting shots and capture on multiple camera modules at one time which is a nice feature but if I am honest it is not one I see myself eve rising and indeed I have not used it during the course of this review.

I like the UI of the camera it is straightforward to use and easy navigate, you can also customise which shortcut modes you have in your toolbar for quick changes to shooting modes. Honestly, I am not much a of pixel peeper if the pictures that are captured by the camera are useable then for the most part I am happy. I have included a selection of photos below for you to review if you want to see what the phone can produce along with a very short video clip to give it a representation of the video quality.

Here is a video clip that was shot a 1080p and 30fps but has had to be downgraded by WordPress to share here so it is now 720p and 25fps but it is still representative of what the camera can do for video work.

Next up is the obligatory selfie using the front-facing outer display camera which is the same in terms of spec as the internal one.

Pretty happy with the result but given the subject matter it was never gonna be great was it?

Finally here are a few low-light images where weaknesses for the camera start to show

This one isn’t too and as it has picked up a bit of light from the clock face and that has helped however the next one which is the other side of the room where it was darker things start to unfold pretty quickly.

Magic Vs very Low Light

You can start to see some edge blending where the phone tries to make up for the lack of clarity to try and give you a good image but it fails miserably. For context this is the same shot with some light

You can clearly see the differences here. Most phones would of course struggle in the conditions I took the same shot with my Z Fold 4 and the result was a bit better but still far from perfect as I could still see the edge blurring see below

Z Fold 4 very Low Light

I am as I mentioned above pretty happy with the result in the good lighting of the Magic Vs and as I don’t tend to venture out after dusk anymore i would normally be using the Night modes of the camera anyway so this is moot point for me.
Conclusion

So there you have it my review of the Honor Magic Fold Vs. This is an important phone for Honor as mentioned as it is them making a statement that they want to play in the Foldable market on the global stage (the previous Magic V was a Chinese-only release) and they have come out strong and also undercut their rivals in the space in doing so. However, I do feel that whilst the hardware is something for the most part I prefer, with the exception of the hinge mechanism which is too prone to unfolding when you don’t want it to, there is til work to be done on software. Honest ly this conclusion surprises me as i thought that i would prefer the implementation of the more clean Ui over what is offered by Samsungs One Ui on the Z Fold 4. I also felt that the lack of an app drawer on this phone is a big misstep and this will need to be looked into as they should at least give the user the option (i did eventually get over it though!).

Do I think it is worth the investment into getting one now given that we have just had the Pixel Fold announced and we have got the Z Fold 5 on the horizon imminently? Well, it is a simple question of how much you are willing to pay and also if you think having a non-stowable stylus is important. if you are not willing to pay but do want the stylus and don’t mind buying a refurbished unit then i would say go for the Z Fold 4 as you pick these up for less than half the original price at the moment in great condition. if you want the wider aspect ratio afforded by the front display then you have got two real options the unknown Pixel Fold which has a very phone-like width to the front display and then becomes more of a tablet when unfolded or you go with the slimmer but taller Honor Magic vs which still give you all the benefits of folding screens but in taller skinnier front screen ratio and a squarer unfolded internal display, it is also nearly £500 cheaper.

I like the Honor Magic Vs 5G but the software is a bit too compromised for me and as such I would b sticking with the Z Fold 4 for the time being but it has given me food for thought about my planned move to the Pixel Fold at the end of next month. I guess i have inadvertently become a One UI Foldable fan, which was very unexpected!!

The Honor Magic Vs 5G is available to buy now from Honor’s website and is currently retailing at £1399 with shipping of the BHlack colour sooner than the Cyan one which is the more popular and the one I would go for if I was buying one now.

The post Honor Magic Vs 5G – Review. is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.

I have been looking at the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G over the last few days and I have recently done an unboxing of the device which left me impressed. The phone was already cheap at £299 however that price has dropped by £20 meaning that you can now pick up this phone for under £280, £279 to be exact.

I am still to complete my review of the device but in the few days I have used it so far I am pretty pleased with the device. The hardware feels great and its battery life is plenty to get me through a full day with ease and a bit left in the tank.

The camera is one potential area for weakness but at the price that this phone is currently at I can excuse certain weaknesses. OnePlus seem to be pitching this phone as an entry-level phone and look to be targeting a younger segment of the market especially if the marketing material is anything to buy. This price reduction will ensure that it is one on the potential list for buyers in that category.

That’s it for now just a quick update for you on a cracking deal especially if you have a young adult in your group that needs a new device 

The post OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite 5G – Price drop!! is original content from Coolsmartphone. If you see it on another news website, please let us know.