Pocket Picks :: The coolest things for the coolest phones

“We expect Apple to make an announcement on additional international iPhone carriers in the coming months, and our contacts in the supply chain point toward a new iPhone model to be released by March.”

Those are the words of UBS financial analyst Ben Reitzes. Seriously, how much do these guys get paid to make obvious guesses? Where do we apply for the job?!

Still, if we’re jumping back on the iPhone speculation bandwagon, then it seems likely that with Flash memory capacity on the rise again, the least we should expect is an updated iPhone with 16GB of storage. In fact, if there’s not a 16GB iPhone and a 32GB iPod touch out by spring 2008, we’ll eat this entire website. And be quite disappointed, because it’s one of those two updated models that we’re waiting to buy.

(Via AppleInsider)

With Sony Ericsson’s slimline W880 having been such a success, we can only assume that its successor, the W890, will continue the trend — not least because it has a 3.2MP camera on-board. We’ve run pics of the W890 before, but thought we’d tweak your interest with these fresh shots, which have come courtesy of Unwired View.

Well, that pretty much wraps up (and batters to death) any hope of overcoming your CrackBerry addiction: a dedicated Facebook app for the berrilicious mobile email handsets of choice. The press release goes like this:

‘The rich, native application goes beyond browser-based access, automatically pushing notifications to the user’s BlackBerry smartphone as friends and colleagues send notes, Wall posts or pokes. The application allows users to take a photo, upload it to the site with captions and tags; quickly and easily invite friends; manage events; manage photo albums; and manage their status while on the go.’

The combination of instant ‘pushed’ updates from Facebook to BlackBerry is bound to be a winning combination. The Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones (to give it its full name) app is arriving in the States first, via T-Mobile USA, but we expect to see it rolled out worldwide in fairly short order.

However, with thousands of BlackBerry users already addicted to their handset’s email functions, will the addition of this Facebook app mean that social networking has just become a whole lot more anti-social?

In the last of today’s triumvirate of ‘in stores soon’ stories, we’re pleased to note that T-Mobile has just added Samsung’s new G800 (the one with the five-megapixel shooter) to its Coming Soon pages.

No word on pricing but it’s bound to fall into the ‘free phone if you sign-up on a £40-a-month tariff’ category. Due date: November.

Here’s a surprise: three of the lead phones in UK operator O2’s winter line-up have arrived in stock, but are all available for the same price on the same tariffs. The three are Samsung’s G600 plus Sony Ericsson’s W910i and K850i, and all come for free if you sign-up to a minimum £30 monthly tariff. For SE’s K850i Cyber-shot branded handset, with its five-megapixel camera, that seems like a particularly good deal.

The £30-per-month tariff that nets you a free handset runs for 18 months and offers either 400 minutes and 1000 texts or 500 mins and 100 texts. Alternatively, there’s a £35-per-month tariff that runs for 12 months that offeres 400 mins and 1000 texts. Our money would definitely go on the latter (£420 over 12 months instead of £540 over 18), perhaps with O2’s new £7.50 monthly Web Bolt On for a bit of mobile browsing — although with a 200MB limit it’s a bit on the tight side.