New rumours suggest the iPhone 5 will be released on 7 October and that the device will be available for pre-order from the end of September.
Apple fan site 9to5Mac report that the company is currently in the process of deciding whether to release its next-generation smartphone on 7 October or 14 October. However, with pre-mass-production reportedly going well, it’s believed that the Cupertino-based tech giant will opt for the earlier date.
The most interesting aspect of this rumour is Apple planning to offer the iPhone 5 on pre-order, something it didn’t do with the iPhone 4. The unnamed sources cited by 9to5Mac intimated that pre-orders will commence on either the 29 or 30 September, but suggested that the latter date looks more likely.
Whilst the rumours come via questionable sources, this latest development does tie in with reports from reputable tech blog AllThingsD and Apple fan site TiPb both of which claim to have heard from separate sources that the iPhone 5 will be released on 7 October.

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It was earlier this week when a support page for the then-absent Palm Pre 3 smartphone appeared on Orange’s website, prompting us to speculate the phone was at least nearing release. After all, it was announced back in February.
Now, to almost no fanfare whatsoever, the Pre 3 has gone up for sale through HP/Palm themselves here in Europe, although there’s still no indication when it’s set for its US debut. It’s not just a pre-order page either, as the phone is listed as shipping in one to two days and will set you back £299.
That’s not a bad price for an unlocked, contract-free smartphone of the Pre’s quality either. The official page also puts us straight on the rumour that the phone would be using a 1.2GHz processor, as the spec clearly states a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8x55 will live inside, backed up by 512MB RAM.
This is the third major smartphone release from Palm in as many years, and the third to be treated to an almost silent release in Europe, this time without even any headline launch in the USA! Anyone would think they don’t want the device to sell, and would prefer them to stack up in warehouses around the continent. Someone needs to remind Palm/HP that the announcement event is only part one of the operation, as you really need to tell consumers when it’s out to buy – especially after six months have passed!

The mobile industry cannot seem to stay out of the courts these days. Apple’s latest legal drama is a £15m class action law suit from over 27,000 iPhone users in South Korea who are claiming invasion of privacy after finding their devices were storing a hidden log of their movements.
It was revealed back in April by researchers, O’Reilly Radar, that iPad 3G and iPhones running iOS4 could be tracking their users movements. They found that the iPhone and iPad 3G and backups on users’ computers contained detailed location information, including latitude, longitude, and time stamps showing where the mobile devices have been. In addition, the information was unencrypted and unprotected, and could be left on any machine you’ve synced with your iOS device.
It’s not first time Apple has been in the courts about privacy concerns with law suits filed in the US but this latest litigation stems from a successful outcome in May, when Kim Hyung-souk, a Korean lawyer working for Mirae Law won damages of 1M WON (£586) from Apple for unauthorised data collection on his iPhone. Despite Apple releasing a software update that same month to “fix the bug”, the law firm decided to prepare a class action law suit against Apple by encouraging aggrieved iPhone users to sign up via a website.
The company will use the country’s Internet litigation service to file the suit for 26,691 out of the total 27,612 iPhone users who joined the action which would mean a total payout of more than £15.2m if their claim is successful and could establish a legal precedent in law courts around the world.

The long-awaited update to Nokia’s Symbian^3 software is finally here! Symbian Anna has been talked about as far back as December last year, and although there has been a wealth of news and information surrounding the contents of the update since then, it has never had a firm release date. Nokia had talked about July, but then shifted the release to August via a tweet from their official account.
Good news though, as this morning Nokia sent a press release stating it’s ready to go, but with a disclaimer saying the rollout schedule ‘varies from market to market’, as does the delivery method. We take this to mean some will have to sync their phones with the computer rather than receive it over-the-air.
So what can you expect from Symbian Anna? First you’ll need a compatible phone, so provided you own a Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 or E7, the following new features are headed your way:

An updated user interface with new icons, a split screen view, a portrait keyboard and several other tweaks to the OS’s usability.
An improved, faster web browser.
Nokia Maps will be faster and have an better search feature, maps for public transport and location check-in via Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.
Business users will be able to take advantage of Symbian Anna’s new security and data encryption features, plus Microsoft’s Communicator Mobile software.
Owners of the Nokia C7 will have NFC enabled too.

Nokia has said it’ll be supporting Symbian until at least 2016, and that we’ll be seeing another ten new phones using the operating system released over the next year. If you happen to be planning to buy any of the above Nokia phones, it should come with Symbian Anna pre-installed too.

A Dutch phone retailer has posted details of the unannounced HTC Vigor online, and it looks set to be the first smartphone to come with Beats by Dr Dre technology.
German fan site HTCInside made the spot on the website of Dutch mobile seller The Phone House in which the Vigor’s impressive specs were laid out. The prospective device packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, Android 2.3.4 plus HTC Sense 3.5, a 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 HD display and an 8 megapixel camera.
Whilst HTC has made it no secret of its future devices will integrating Beats technology, this particular leak fails to outline exactly what form that will take on this handset.
Although there’s been no official confirmation of whether the HTC Vigor is bound for UK shores, the fact that it’s been granted a release in the Netherlands is a positive sign as it would be unusual for HTC to launch the device there and not in other European countries.
The first HTC Beats smartphones are predicted to be landing in Q3 so if the Vigor is to show up in the UK, we’d expect an announcement pretty soon.

Ofcom’s annual communications report this month indicates that nearly 60% of Britons are ‘highly addicted’ to their smartphones so it comes as no surprise that a new study reveals that almost a third of UK smartphone users believe it would be worse to lose their smartphone than their wallet.

According to research by YouGov on behalf of outsourcing firm Firstsource Solutions who commissioned the study, 30% of participants admitted that they would rather hang on to their smartphone and lose their wallet. The study also revealed that younger users placed a higher value on their smartphones, with 42% of 16 to 24 year olds and 34% of 25 to 34 year olds claiming that they cared less about their wallet than their smartphone compared to just 19% of 45 to 54 year olds.
The firm also researched how addicted consumers had become to their smartphones by surveying the usage habits of 2,000 British consumers, aged 16 and above. Firstsource Solutions telecom and media division executive VP Santanu Nandi said: “The fact that so many people would rather lose their wallet than their smartphone shows how indispensable these devices have become to the kind of lives we now lead.”
With the likes of Orange teaming up with Barclaycard to create Quick-Tap – a service that lets you make small purchases by simply passing a specially equipped Samsung phone over a reader, to the growing number of high-end phones that feature NFC as standard, the irony is your smartphone will actually become your wallet in the next couple of years!

While Googlerola lacks the finesse of the celebrity meldings of TomKat and Brangelina, the $12.5Bn marriage of Google and Motorola Mobility is arguably a much more expensive affair than even the crème de la crème of Hollywood couplings. While many (especially shareholders like Carl Icahn who fought for a spin off at the earliest opportunity) are hoping the deal will go through by the end of 2011, Google isn’t taking any chances according to AllThingsD opting for a time cushion until February 2013 to get regulatory clearance for the deal to go through, with a hefty fine of $2.5Bn if the search giant can’t close the deal.

Samsung are clearly not fazed by the Googlerola deal nor are they afraid of Nokia’s ‘all-chips-in’ approach with Microsoft if their leaked 2011-2012 product portfolio from GSMarena is anything to go by. With a heady mixture of nine Android devices (most featuring high-spec AMOLED displays), three home-grown Bada 2.0 handsets and a Windows Phone 7 product, the Korean’s are taking the scattergun approach,  spanning a wide reach of technologies, consumer segments and price points.
While Samsung has refused to confirm whether any of these devices exist, it does make interesting reading even if only half of this portfolio is real.
Samsung’s Android offering is perhaps, the most important. The flagship device, the i9250, will sport a massive 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD display, run the latest Ice Cream Sandwich OS and come equipped with a 5 megapixel camera.
Supporting it will be a trio of high-tier Gingerbread devices the i9220 and i9210 both with Super AMOLED displays, and 8 megapixel cameras. The 9220 sports a fast 1.4GHz dual-core processor and a 4.3-inch display whereas the 9210 will have a larger surface area at 4.5-inch WVGA resolution.
The final Gingerbread device is the i8150. Like the 4G equipped I9220 it has a WVGA resolution display but it has to make do with LCD technology and is smaller at 3.7-inches, it has the fast dual-core 1.4GHz processor, 4GB memory and 720p HD video recording, it’s well connected with Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi, DLNA and GPS. Uniquely it also has a FM radio.
New mid to entry-level Android products are the  QWERTY device codenamed B5510 with a 2.8-inch display, FroYo OS, full keyboard, 3 megapixel camera, FM radio and WiFi, the S5610 comes with just a 2.4-inch QVGA display, Gingerbread and a 5 megapixel imager. And finally there’s the GT-S5360 with a 3-inch QVGA screen, 2 megapixel camera equipped with Gingerbread.
Interestingly, despite the push for 10-inch tablets on Honeycomb, Samsung is launching a 7-inch Honeycomb equipped device. The P6200 has a Super AMOLED display with SVGA resolution, HSDPA, WiFi and dual cameras (3 and 2 megapixels.) A WiFi only version, the P6210, will ship simultaneously.
Next on the list is the WP7 device, perhaps trying to steal the thunder from Nokia, the Mango equipped Samsung i8350 Omnia W is expected to ship in October, with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.
Bada bing, bada boom…the three Bada smartphones comprised of the S8600 Wave III with a four-inch Super AMOLED display, which surpasses the 3.7-inch Wave II, adds in improved Bluetooth 3.0, 3GB storage and a 5 megapixel snapper. The S7250 Wave M with its 3.5-inch HVGA display, Bluetooth 3.0 and NFC is the most likely replacement for the Tocco that is being sold by Orange for its Quick-Tap proposition. Finally the S5380, which is essentially an entry level Bada phone, again comes with Bluetooth 3.0 but a relatively basic 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen, and 2 megapixel imager.

If the standard BlackBerry Bold 9900 is…well… just a bit too black for you, then Amosu Couture can solve that problem with a 24 carat gold plated version of the smartphone.
The price? A mere £999, SIM-free. For added bling factor it’s also available in white, yellow or platinum gold or you can even request the bezel to be encrusted in Swarovski crystals.
Expect to see it guest starring on an episode of next season’s Made In Chelsea in the hands of Caggie and co!

 
The (ahem) buzz on the street is that Honeycomb 3.2 is due to be released in the UK for Motorola’s XOOM tablet in September. This is quick seeing as Motorola only started deploying the 3.1 update to European markets, including the UK, last week which activated much desired hardware features such as being able to access the SD card storage, enhanced Bluetooth connectivity (no A2DP though).
As well as creating a better user experience with full Adobe Flash Video 10.3, Google DRM support and being able to forward emails with attachments.
No word on precisely what the 3.2 update will entail as CDMA and 3G versions of Honeycomb 3.1 focused on different features. Don’t expect huge sweeping changes though as it has been dubbed as an “incremental platform release.”
As an indicator though, US XOOMs sporting Honeycomb 3.2 on the Verizon network benefit from enhancements such as better ActiveSync and ”zoom to fill screen” option for non-optimised tablet applications, akin to the 2X option you have on the Apple iPad for apps that are designed for the iPhone screen resolution.