Pocket Picks round-up: April 16th - Galaxy S update delayed, Galaxy S II release date brought forward, Skype security back up to speed, Intel looking at Honeycomb this year

As is often the case, Android news dominates this week’s edition of the Pocket Picks round-up, with four of the five stories featured revolving around Google’s fast growing platform.

That’s not to say this week’s Pocket Picks posts have been dominated by Android. Instead we’ve got a whole heap of great Windows Phone 7 app reviews (including eBay and Cocktail Flow) for you to peruse over on the main site.

There’s also an in-depth review of the HTC Desire-S handset, although that’s once again Android-related. Never mind - I’m sure we’ll have news for the other formats next week.

If you have an Android phone in your hands, though, or are just interested in what’s up in the Google garden, then read on.

Last week it was revealed that Skype’s Android app had a nasty-sounding security flaw that allowed those with ill intent to nab every piece of information in the app (as long as you install a nasty program first).

Skype has acted quickly, and released an update that fixes the hole this week, meaning you can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that your chat records about Eastenders and Lewis are safe.

On top of that, though, the company has also enabled 3G calls over the internet, which is a rather nice bonus for those with decent data plans.

Not the most exciting-sounding headline for those not in the know about mobile tech (most normal people), but for all us geeks it’s exciting news.

ARM’s current Cortex-A9 is pretty much the de facto choice of chip design in all modern mobile phones, so the appearance of its successor later in the year - the A15 - in licensees’ designs should have tech fans excited.

Why? Because it’s apparently five times faster than the current generation, has better power consumption, and is designed to be used in both quad- and dual-core formats.

Or, to put it another way, expect some quad-core chips to start appearing from the company’s licensees (including Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Apple) at the end of 2011/early 2012.

On the other side of the mobile tech divide, Intel has announced that it expects to have Honeycomb adapted for its chips (based on a completely different architecture to ARM’s) later this year.

This’ll likely mean Atom processors - the ones found in almost every netbook - making their way over into Android tablets. It also opens up the possibility of a dual-boot Windows 7/Android tablet in the future, although why that would appeal to anyone is beyond me.

In any case, it represents a bit more competition for ARM in the future, which is likely to keep both firms on their toes.

Bad news for those eagerly awaiting the Gingerbread update for the Samsung Galaxy S.

While the company did start rolling it out this week, it’s been told to halt by Google due to some ‘customer experience’ issues that were emerging with the handset.

Thankfully, it appears to be just a temporary halt to proceedings, but it’s now likely that the update won’t be appearing on the majority of users’ phones until after the Galaxy S II launches.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s new flagship phone can be pre-orderd to arrive early through Phones4U in the UK.

The dual-core 1.2GHz smartphone has an official release date of the 1st of May, but the company is promising deliveries by the 27th of April should you order through them (and commit yourself to two years of hellish data speeds from Orange).

You can pick it up for free on a two-year £35 per month contract with the UK’s slowest 3G network around (from personal experience), but I’d recommend waiting.