Solid gold mobile phones, second coming of the Android and alcoholic iPhones

Kia Ora!

Do you talk to your mobile? I don't mean talk through your mobile, you understand - I mean acknowledge it as an (often vitriolic) entity in its own right, capable of maintaining a conversation and thinking quite independently.

I know I do.

Well, according to some particularly bored researchers at Texas A&M University, the power of your words might soon be enough to power your handset.

Nanoscale piezoelectrics generate a small electrical current when mechanical stress is applied to them, and a new strain of ultra-sensitive crystals could, in theory, be activated by the fluctuations in air pressure produced when you ring home to tell the wife you're on the train.

Should this system ever take off, there are folk I know whose mobile phones will probably go nuclear from the excess energy they'll be producing.

Up until now, however, there's been little point in chatting with your iPod touch, seeing as how it's an iPhone without the phone. Truphone is looking to change all that with a version of its iPhone VoIP application designed to allow headset-equipped iTouch's to make wifi phone calls.

It also provides access to a variety of instant messaging functions, too, so it's not useless without the required hardware.

Another diverse use of Apple's hottest toys comes in the form of a breathalyser attachment. The product website suggests its popularity among Hollywood's A-list celebrities (who, to be fair, do spend a lot of their time drunk and blowing into things), and have even added an FM transmitter to the package to give it that bit extra usability during a few sober moments.

Normally we wait until the end to take a quick look at this week's new handsets, but considering the slew of new phones we're going to crack into them a little early.

First on the electronic pile is a rugged little chap designed in partnership with LandRover (or the 'unstoppable shopping trolley' as we call them round our way). These rubberised monsters are apparently certified to withstand salt, fog, ice, water (they are submersible) humidity and drops of up to 1.6 metres onto concrete.

We all know what it's like when you get salt in your phone, so these could well prove popular among clumsy callers.

Aussie manufacturer Kogan Technologies promised us an Android handset this year, and it's apparently made good on it with the launch of the second Google-powered phone, the Agora.

Taking an elbow in the design ribs from BlackBerry, the Agora (insert agoraphobe joke here) features a mini QWERTY for a keypad, and comes with wi-fi, 3G, a touchscreen, Bluetooth and all the Google-esque trimmings promised by the Android OS.

To contrast these two very practical handsets is the…erm, stylish (?) Vertu Boucheron 150 - a solid gold mobile weighing in at $30,000.

You wouldn't have thought making the casing out of a dense metal like gold would be particularly conducive to good signal reception, and you probably wouldn't want to wear it on a lanyard around your neck (unless you're Flava Flav, perhaps), but the prestige is certainly there. Shame it looks like crumpled tin foil.

The real style this week is found in a sneak preview of an all-new, all-touchscreen Nokia handset. Although this full touchscreen beauty with a gorgeous looking UI isn't a concept phone (and therefore likely to never materialise), neither is the slide that was released at a presentation held at Nokia's Capital Markets Day necessarily representative of the finished product.

To be fair, it doesn't really matter what the rest of the case looks like, if we're getting a full touchy-feely screen like this, so please join us on the edge of our seats until next week's Pocket Picks update.

Kia Ora!