Pocket Picks roundup: 26th November - Galaxy Nexus off to a rocky start, Lumia 800 also off to a rocky start, LG and Prada set to reveal new device

This week may be one of Thanksgiving in America, but certain major mobile manufacturers certainly won’t be in the holiday spirit after some less-than-perfect phone launches.

Both Nokia's and Samsung’s latest flagship handsets were beset with launch week issues, much to the amusement of Apple fans who spent much of last year defending the iPhone 4’s antenna issues.

Elsewhere in the roundup, there’s the first sign that LG and Prada are about to deliver the latest iteration of their ground-breaking phone line, while RIM appears to be taking a leaf out of Amazon’s playbook by reducing the price of its, er, PlayBook.

After a bit of pre-launch kerfuffle surrounding the release date, the highly-anticipated first Android phone to come with Ice Cream Sandwich - the Samsung Galaxy Nexus - arrived on UK shores this week, much to the excitement of tech-heads up and down the country.

Alas, this excitement soon turned into dismay as the fetching dual-core phone was revealed to be having issues when tied to certain networks that use the 900MHz band for their 2G frequencies.

In a nutshell, it would randomly alter the volume rapidly during operations (both calls, media playback, and everything in-between) making it impossible to have a decent conversation or play a game without suddenly having your ear-drums blown.

Not the greatest of starts for the new flagship Android phone.

The good news is that Samsung has already managed to develop a fix for the problem and will be sending out the update soon to all owners.

Reports elsewhere suggest that only the very first buyers of the phone will have to update their handsets, as future shipments are apparently going to come with the fix pre-loaded.

So while the bug may have caused quite a lot of fury, expect to be enjoying your new cutting-edge Android handset without issues from next week onwards (hopefully).

Nokia is experiencing some launch problems of its own, albeit not quite to same level of annoyance as the Galaxy’s possessed volume control.

Some purchasers of the Lumia 800 - Nokia’s first Windows Phone handset - have reported a less-than-stellar battery life for their 1300mAh device, with the phone sucking up to 25 per cent of the energy if left on standby overnight.

Nokia has released a few statements on the issue revealing two updates due for the phone - one in December and another in January - which should “make some improvements to power efficiency” as well as introduce “high voltage charging, increasing the Nokia Lumia 800’s battery power from 1300mAh to 1450mAh”.

LG to launch new Prada smartphone

Do you find it impossible to buy something without a familiar label? Is John Lewis considered too ‘lowbrow’ for your shopping? Does an LG phone make you weak at the knees?

If you said yes to all those questions then congratulations! You’re a fashion-obsessed lunatic with an odd obsession with LG phones.

But you’re also the target audience for LG’s upcoming Prada phone - the third in the series to bear the most popular designer name for spambots everywhere.

To be fair to the range, the original LG Prada in 2006 was something of a trendsetter in its own right, with a full touchscreen and slick design a full year before Apple stomped onto the scene.

Indeed, an LG Prada currently resides in the New York Museum of Modern Art, so ground-breaking were its looks, and LG accused Apple of stealing its design after the iPhone launched (although this never went further than a few angry public comments).

So with that context out of the way, the announcement of a new LG Prada (running Android this time) isn’t quite as silly as it sounds.

No details of what this next model will look like or what will be powering its innards just yet, but here’s hoping it can pull off the same design feat as the first model (so that Apple can nick the design). Only joking, LG fans.

Meanwhile, over in the world of tablets, manufacturers are falling over themselves to lower the price of their respective iPad-beaters in an attempt to avail themselves to consumers.

RIM, for instance, has just slashed the price of its PlayBook in the US down to $199 until December the 3rd, putting it firmly in the ‘impulse buy’ sector for tablet PCs. The impulse buy sector for tablets being about $150 more than everything else, I stress.

While the dark clouds of Black Friday is no doubt a factor in the decision, it’s interesting to note that this now puts the PlayBook in direct competition price-wise with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.