Pocket Picks roundup: 5th November - Motorola Xoom 2, iPhone GarageBand, Samsung phones getting Ice Cream Sandwich

Hello and welcome back to another Pocket Picks roundup on this fine / wet / cold Guy Fawkes night.

For the benefit of our international readers, he’s the chap who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, best known now as the symbol for financial protests around the world (that’s his moustached face on those masks).

But that’s enough about 17th Century terrorists and Warner Bros merchandise. This week’s been an exciting one for mobile tech followers as it’s seen the official unveiling of not one but two potential iPad challengers from Motorola.

Meanwhile, Samsung has pledged to support some of its 2011 line with the latest version of Android, while both Apple and Google have spent this week rolling out first-party apps to their respective platforms.

So put on some gloves and avoid poking yourself in the eye with a lightly glazed gunpowder stick - it’s time for the Pocket Picks roundup!

They don’t run Ice Cream Sandwich (at least, not yet), but Motorola’s latest attempts to challenge Apple for the tablet crown were revealed this week at a launch event attended by tech journalists from around the UK and beyond.

The Xoom 2 is, as you might expect, the more traditional successor to the original Xoom, with the same 10.1-inch widescreen display and a faster 1.2GHz dual-core processor beating within.

While the tech upgrades aren’t an overly impressive leap up from the original dual-core model, the Xoom 2 comes with an improved one month standby time, and a load of nifty features such as splash guard, Gorilla glass, and ‘Intelligent Grip Suppression’ to stop accidental mis-taps on the side of the screen.

The Media Edition tablet, meanwhile is effectively the same, only smaller, lighter, and lasts about half as long between charges. The two devices will be out later this year in all the usual electronics shops, with the Xoom 2 priced at £379.99 and the Media Edition retailing for £329.99.

Back when Google was showing off the first new features for Ice Cream Sandwich in the middle of the year, it pledged it would start clamping down on the fragmentation that has blighted the format since it first launched.

Samsung was one of the companies that were on board with this drive to unify versions, and this week it announced that a number of its 2011 products will be updated to Ice Cream Sandwich by the middle of next year.

That means owners of the Galaxy S II are on the list, as well as owners of upcoming phones like the Galaxy Note and all the various tablets Samsung has managed to sneak past Apple’s lawyers these past few months.

The class of 2010 and the less powerful models are all, however, off the list, so if you’re carrying a Galaxy S or Tab it's tough cookie, I’m afraid.

One of the ‘hottest’ new features for the iPad 2 was the ability to run GarageBand, the music-making software familiar to Mac-owners and disliked by anyone who does music production professionally (I used to, okay.)

The touchscreen version of GarageBand was actually really well-made, much to my biased annoyance, and turned out to be a big hit with iPad owners.

Now, like iMovie before it, it’s finally arrived on the iPhone, shrunk down to fit the smaller screen but otherwise fully intact and available as a Universal build (so it’s free if you already have the iPad version)

If you don’t already have the iPad version, you can buy it from the App Store for £2.99.

Over in Android world, Google has also been making some changes to its first-party software, with Google+ for Android (that’s the one that isn’t Facebook) getting a significant makeover in lieu of Ice Cream Sandwich.

So there’s a new UI styled after the look of the new OS, support for Google Apps, better battery usage, and the ability - finally - to sign out from your profile.

Meanwhile Google has also confirmed that its RSS reader, Google Reader, will be heading to mobiles very soon.

Unfortunately, the company appears to have removed a number of excellent features like sharing and follower lists from the browser version without warning this week, which led even your mild-mannered corespondent into a furious rage on Twitter.

Sky Go appears to be finally coming to Android, with Sky telling TechRadar that the service would appear ‘in the coming months’.

It’s been a long wait for Android users to get their hands on the app, having watched their iOS friends gallivant around with mobile TV for over a year now.

What is Sky Go, you ask? It’s effectively an app that allows Sky customers to watch Sky Sports on their mobiles. Or, to put it another way, it’s the only reliable way you’re going to watch any Premiership football in the UK.

Along with all the Sports channels, including Sky Sports News, the app also packs in Sky News itself, which is also available as a separate free app for Android and iOS users.