Pocket Picks round-up: December 10th - Kindle Fire heading to UK, indoor mapping for Google Maps, Sony to ring in the changes at Sony Ericsson next year

It’s been getting a bit windy and chilly here in the UK lately, but you’ll find no bluster and coldness in this week’s Pocket Picks round-up.

Instead, I’ve picked a few hot stories from the world of Android and - would you believe it - Symbian for you all to muse over while the howling wind and rain lash at the windows.

There are the rumours of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet heading to the UK in January to warm you up for starters, plus intriguing (if not particularly useful-sounding) additions for US and Japanese Google Maps users.

Rumour: Amazon Kindle fire heading to UK in January 2012

Sources inside Amazon have told Know Your Mobile that the online retailer’s Kindle Fire tablet will be launching in the UK in January 2012.

The Fire has been making quite an impact over the Pond, thanks in part to the strong reputation Amazon has built up with its Kindle e-readers. Oh, and the fact that it looks rather swish. Oh, and it's priced at a very competitive $199.

Despite the low price, the 7-inch device still comes with a 1GHz dual-core CPU and a PowerVRSGX540 GPU inside, but only packs a fairly small 8GB of storage and 512MB of RAM - no doubt to keep costs down.

If the company sets a similarly low price for the machine when it launches in the UK, I expect it to gain decent traction with the general public.

I’m really not sure why any US citizen would want to check out the inside of a public building via Google Maps, but Google has updated its web-mapping service app so that you can do just that.

These buildings include airports, shopping malls, and the larger retail shops. Presumably, ones you could actually get lost in.

Alas, we Brits will have to rely on the old-fashioned methods of looking for signs and politely asking staff for directions for the foreseeable future, since The Big G has yet to confirm whether we'll be getting the indoor Google Maps treatment.

Award-winning iOS photography app Instagram (a.k.a. that app all your iOS friends use to post photos to Facebook with) is now officially heading over to Android.

Instagram comes with a wide range of effects you can apply to your photographs, making even rather dull pictures look slightly less dull with a few taps of the screen. This is mainly thanks to its filters and other neat features.

However, while we’re looking forward to seeing Instagram finally make its way onto our LG Optimus 2x, apps like Vignette already fill the gap in the market nicely.

We’ll have to wait and see if the Instagram name and brand wins out over these Android-specific competitors.

Nokia made a big noise about the power of the N8’s 12-megapixel camera when the company released the phone last year, but now it can mention that an entire feature film (recorded in 720p) was shot solely using the phone’s lens.

Filmmaker Hooman Khalili did strap a 35mm lens clip onto the device for extra depth (and pop it on tripods to prevent any shaking), but otherwise it's all N8.

Is this the first sign that all filmmaking in future will be done via our phones? However unlikely that sounds right now, if smartphone camcorder technology continues to catch up with the tech on dedicated devices, there’s the possibility that digital video cameras could well be considered 'old hat' in a decade's time.

It was bound to happen at some point, but Sony Ericsson has now confirmed that it will be dropping the 'Ericsson' from its title around the middle of next year.

At the time of the original buy-out announcement, Sony CEO Howard Stringer suggested the deal would enable his company to "more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets, and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another". So, having two names for the same brand was never going to be on the cards.

Still, it will be interesting to see if Sony continues with the 'Xperia' name for its line of smartphones once the companies link up. We’ll no doubt find out in about six months.