Nokia's London store, Samsung's Second Life Island, and China's mobile millions

Imagine if the living room console world had 50 instead of three competing hardware platforms, all of which were superseded by better models every six months. The world of mobiles phones is not surprisingly chaotic, to say the least, and trying to cover it can be a bit like trying to drag an elephant through a large puddle of treacle.

The week began with the filtering through of reviews for the hotly anticipated Nokia N95 handset. The short version: great phone, rubbish battery life.

Given that it's something of an omnipresent force in the world of mobiles, it's often easy to unfairly glaze over news from the Nokia camp. But this week, as well as releasing a new video manager for Series 60 phones, Nokia announced that it will bring two flagship stores to London, perhaps in anticipation of a similar move from that more recent omnipresent force (or flavour of the month) in mobiles, Apple. (New York's Nokia store is pictured above).

First off for Apple this week there was a wholesome analyst's prediction; the iPhone will sell by the squillion because of the ultra successful iPod line (duh). Then there was a lesson in how to SMS the iPhone way. More interesting however was a rumour concerning Sling Media's supposed plans to bring Apple TV content to mobiles, although the service could end up being prohibitively expensive if it ever sees the light of day.

Some iPhone-related hardware is already seeing the light of day and, whilst not wallet-ransackingly expensive, Gomadic's new line of accessories for the unreleased Apple phone are certainly not cheap. As for iPhone software, what appears to be the first third-party application for the iPhone has shown its face and surprise surprise, it's a gambling title.

Closing what was a busy week for Apple after a brief news drought, it has come to light that the next Mac OS has been delayed because perfecting the iPhone's OS has sucked over a quantity of Apple's top software engineers.

It's not often that Samsung warrants a section of its own on the Pocket Picks roundup but this week the South Korean electronics giant attracted attention with some very modern advertising. To begin with, Samsung started raining down virtual versions of its new Japanese handsets on the inhabitants of Second Life. Obviously happy with how that went, Samsung later unveiled its very own Second Life island.

In more general news, there were some big developments concerning roaming charges. An EU committee voted on Thursday on European Commission proposals to slash astronomical roaming charges by up to 70 per cent; hopefully we will know the outcome soon. Mobile operator 3 was also rocking the mobile pricing boat this week by instigating a data price war with the introduction of the new unlimited internet access tariff.

There were also some of those more quirky news bits doing the rounds. Environmentally conscious mobile users received some good news when NEC unveiled a new kind of bioplastic for mobile phones, and apparel manufacturer Pacard debuted a new bag with an in-built solar powered mobile charger.

Fact fans may also be interested to know that there are more mobile subscriptions in China than there are people in America. Mind you, if as many Chinese people have as many mobile accounts as Chinese native Mrs Zhang (she has a bill-tastic 2,000) it's little wonder!