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iPhone arrives in the UK but Google tries to crash the party

It's the weekly Pocket Picks round-up

iPhone arrives in the UK but Google tries to crash the party
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There is no denying last week's Pocket Picks belonged to the iPhone, in fact some of you may have already spent the weekend fawning over one and using it to make your friends envious.

Pre-launch, last week kicked off with some good news for those sitting restlessly on pre-orders. The device's exclusive carrier, O2, announced that it was going to lift the fair usage cap on its so-called unlimited data plans for the device, meaning that if you have an iPhone you can now browse the internet to your heart's content and not worry about your bank balance.

It's good news but not the sort that should make a huge difference in sales considering the iPhone has already achieved an unmatched pitch of hype, with both O2 and The Carphone Warehouse predicting that the device will smash Christmas sales records.

Of course, such demand is going to need ranks of trained iPhone gurus on hand to help with the inevitable customer services deluge and O2 has seen to it that no query will go unanswered by hiring 727 new staff in anticipation of the launch.

Still, with such overwhelming praise and demand it is refreshing to see that not everyone is being blindly swept away by the fanfare. Former Apple bigwig and company co-founder Steve Wozniak has been laying his thoughts about the iPhone on the line, commenting that it's not open enough and that the device should operate more like a computer.

Perhaps added functionality is just around the corner, however, as a hacker found some interesting iPhone tidbits in the newest version of iTunes, one of which points towards a voice memo function for the device.

But enough about all that for now. Because, incredibly, despite last week being the week the iPhone was officially launched in Europe, it wasn't the biggest story to emerge from the mobile industry.

On Monday we were still wondering if Google's long-rumoured Gphone would be a handset or a revolutionary operating system. By Tuesday we had our answer. As it turns out, Google will be going the software route with what it's calling the Android operating system. The OS will apparently be the first truly open mobile platform giving developers and users alike the chance to really flex their creative muscles.

Even so, it transpired later in the week that a Google branded device is still on the cards and several prototypes codenamed 'Dream' are currently in works courtesy of HTC.

In other reasonably big news, Nokia pushed back the launch of its planned new N-Gage gaming platform to December. The company also kissed and made up with Vodafone, with plans for collaboration with the latter's Ovi music service and Nokia handsets. The only other noteworthy Nokia happening was the discovery of spy pics of the N82 successor to the recently released N81 music-focused handset.

Elsewhere there was the release of the new Opera Mini 4 web browser for mobiles, Kylie Minogue launched her very own social networking site, some kind souls launched a mobile dog adoption service called DOGMOB and a new report revealed that brits send one billion texts per week.

And on that pretty astounding fact we will leave you to fondle your shiny new iPhone some more. Click 'Track It!' to catch next week's Pocket Picks round-up.