Pocket Picks round-up: July 23rd - 48% of buyers want an iPhone, CyanogenMod reaches half a million users, HP upgrades pre on the sly, iPhone 5 likely in September

Because there are so many different types of Android phones out there right now, it can be very easy to let this weekly round-up descend into an all-Android report.

This time around, however, I’ve tried to mix things up a little by including some iOS titbits as well as some webOS news among the usual droid suspects.

Still nothing for the bada users, I’m afraid, but I’m sure something will come up for the platform at some point (maybe).

During the company’s earnings call with the press and analysts this week, Apple dropped the biggest hint yet that we should expect to see a new model of iPhone in September.

Peter Oppenheimer, chief financial officer at the Cupertino corporation, mentioned that the firm had “a lot going on in the fall with the introduction of iOS 5 and iCloud. We also have a future product transition that we’re not going to talk about today, and these things will impact our September quarter.”

While this latest rumour technically comes from the horse’s mouth (as it were), it could well be about another product, i.e. not the iPhone 5 - maybe that fabled mini iPhone that others have mentioned in the past.

We’ll find out in two months, in any case.

A survey from ChangeWave of 4,163 people (89 per cent of which are US mobile users) has revealed that an impressive 48 per cent of those polled wanted to purchase an iPhone in the next 90 days, despite the possibility of a new model around the corner (see above).

In keeping with the positive news for Apple, 46 per cent of those that responded to the survey also said they preferred the iPhone's operating system (I guess the stray two per cent just liked the hardware), compared to Android's (32 per cent) and embattled BlackBerry's (4 per cent).

The not-so-shocking news from the survey was that the iPhone also topped the customer satisfaction charts (Apple's mobile nearly always scores scores highest in this category), with 70 per cent of those polled saying they were satisfied with their iOS blower, compared to 54 per cent of Windows Phone users and 50 per cent of Android owners.

HP has ‘done a Samsung’ and made a few subtle adjustments to its Pre3 handset since it was shown off to press at Mobile World Congress in Feburary.

The release version of the handset will now come with a 1.2Ghz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU at its heart, rather than the original 1.4Ghz single-core model.

In theory, two cores should enable a phone to use up less power than a single-core device, thanks to the way that the various cores can be ‘turned off’ during low-intensity operations. So, while the speed boost is handy, there should be a positive difference in battery life, too.

The switch over in internal parts may be the reason why the webOS handset has encountered numerous delays, with the latest release date being pegged as August 31st in the US.

Google has finally updated Google Maps to enable the 3D view in some of the world’s major urban centres - US users have had this feature for their major cities for a while now.

The 3D view allows you to pull back and turn the maps into a mid-'90s flight simulator (sort of), with the various skyscrapers and other assorted buildings looming out from the map. It’s practical use is questionable then, but it doesn’t half look pretty.

The latest version of Google Maps is available to download from the Android Market for free.

Moving away from the officially endorsed Android Market for a second, the makers of CyanogenMod - the most popular alternative OS for Android phones - have announced that the total number of downloads it's received has broken through the half a million mark.

This total is actually likely to be much higher in reality, as the figure is purely based on the number of people that were willing to allow data to be sent back to the makers after they first installed the software.

CyanogenMod has been slowly winning over even the phone manufacturers this past year: Samsung donated hardware to the team to get CyanogenMod's software running on them, while HTC pledged to unlock its hardware for other operating systems to run on.