WinMo teams up with LG, cheap Android phones are coming and Children in Need wants your old mobile

Kia Ora!

I forget exactly which Bond film it was (the differences between them are not many – I think that Pierce Brosnan chap was in the tux) but one of the more futuristic of 007's gadgets was a mobile phone controlled car. Well, our Pocket Picks Spectre operatives uncovered a nifty new function for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 at the Paris Motor Show.

The phone has been teamed up with a concept car from Saab, running an application that allowed the phone to control a host of in-car functions such as seat position, door locks, opening the boot and tinkering with the lights. Not quite the remote controller we'd have liked to see, but it's a nice thought having your keys integrated into your phone.

Nokia also seem interested in making their handsets a bit more autonomous, and are apparently looking to include automatic, over-the-air firmware updates for future S60 handsets. Currently it all needs to be done through a PC, which shackles the phone to the desk in a lot of ways, though the new N79 kicks off the auto-update feature very shortly. The S60 framework is a superb mobile system, but its reliance on a desktop has never done it any favours.

Pocket computers like this seem to have gone out of vogue recently, what with the iPhone persuading us to play more games rather than run office software. Microsoft has fallen behind with its once-supreme Windows Mobile OS, but just as Nokia is doing with the S60 system, WinMo might be in for something of a re-launch.

Since Microsoft has never got involved with mobile hardware design, the system has always been entirely dependent on third parties providing alluring thumb-candy to get the OS into the market. The software giant has therefore chosen its latest partner very carefully, in the shape of LG – a hardware designer that's done some sterling work in the last couple of years. All being well, we'll soon be seeing LG's awesome handsets sporting WinMo, and be tempted once again to embrace the impressive catalogue of mobile computing applications the system boasts.

Of course, the iPhone's not all about games, as one of the most popular applications currently on the App Store proves. Classics is a superbly stylish eBook reader that comes bundled with a handful of classic literature such as Alice in Wonderland, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Robinson Crusoe. Although you wouldn't think that style was a big deal when it comes to an eBook reader, when coupled with the kind of functionality Classics comes with, the slightly off-white paper, illustrations and animated page turning makes this inexpensive application an absolute delight.

While Classics allows you to dispense with your tatty old copies of Penguin published novels, Children in Need is looking to relieve you of tatty old mobile phones and PDAs. As part of this year's appeal, Regeneris are collecting up old handsets and turning them into donations for Terry Wogan. A working handset can translated into as much as an £80 donation, although even your old, knackered warhorses can put a helpful £20 note in the TOG's charity pocket, so it's worth having a route around the back of the cupboard for those retired pocket picks.

If this turns out to be something Regeneris do every year for Children in Need, it's likely to be donating a huge amount in the next few years, considering how many new handsets are hitting the shelves this week. First up is the elusive (to the UK, anyway) Nokia N85 – a trimmed down, yet highly appealing, version of the expensive new N96. Meanwhile, Phones4U has landed the rights to sell RIM's highly anticipated answer to the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm. This ultra slick touchscreen handset looks about as close to the Apple device as anything previous, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of prices we can expect when Vodaphone gets around to announcing them.

And last word this week once again goes to Google's OS, Android – though not to the G1 handset, as usual. Melbourne based manufacturer Kogan Technologies says it's got a bunch of hot new budget range handsets to choose from to load the Android system on. After a bit of tinkering and testing, the consumer electronics designer reckons it can get a cheap Android powered handset to the market as soon as December 15th, so it could yet turn out to be a distinctly robotic Christmas.

Kia Ora!