Pocket Picks roundup: 8th October - Apple launches iPhone 4S, HTC hack-prone, Nokia Maps for Windows Phone, and Samsung Galaxy Note confirmed

I’m writing this ‘live’ from the show floor at Droidcon in London, a gathering of Android developers to celebrate whatever the green ‘droid gets up to when he’s not breakdancing with zombies.

But even in this heartland of Google development the recent developments of the past few days haven’t gone unnoticed.

The passing away of Steve Jobs was on everybody’s lips. After talking about APIs and whatnot.

Thankfully, I won’t bore you with methods and classes - mainly because I’m usually asleep during those talks. Instead, here are all the biggest stories currently making waves over on Pocket Picks.

Nope, it wasn’t the iPhone 5. Instead Apple confounded all (well, most) expectations by revealing the iPhone 4S - a dual-core, 1GHz, 8MPupgrade on the iPhone 4.

Reactions were muted from the tech press, with the lack of any real surprises in both the design (it’s an iPhone 4) or specs (it’s the same chip as the iPad 2) leaving the firm with just the voice activation system, Siri, and the improved camera to wow the crowds.

Still, even if the experts were disappointed, there’s no doubt the new phone will continue the Apple tradition of selling like hot cakes. The pre-order site opened yesterday, and the three models (ranging from £499 to £699 unlocked) go on general release next Friday.

A nasty security vulnerability has been discovered in the latest line of HTC’s Android handsets that open up an exploit that could allow hackers to access logs of where you go and who you call.

These logs are a recent addition to the company’s handsets - possibly to help customise the upgraded SenseUI functionality - and requires only a basic snippet of code inserted into a malicious app for the third party to gain advantage.

HTC is, as you might expect, urgently looking into the issue.

Where is that vital tipping point where a phone ceases to be a phone and becomes a tablet? We’ll see if Samsung stepped over that imaginary line on the 17th of November when the frankly obscenely big Galaxy Note launches in the UK.

The Note’s screen is 5.3 inches on the diagonal - only one and a bit shy of the original Galaxy Tab - which will make it the biggest phone available when it’s released.

Along with the screen, the Note is also notable (sorry) in that it comes with an ‘S pen’ for writing on the touchscreen, and is powered by a powerful dual-core 1.4GHz CPU.

But is it enough to tempt you away from the upcoming Nexus Prime (see below)?

Rumour: Impressive Nexus Prime specs leak onto the internet

The Samsung-Google Nexus Prime is rapidly becoming the worst-kept secret since HTC’s last product refresh. It’s also looking like a strong contender for smartphone of the year if the latest spec leak from Boy Genius Report is anything to go by.

The first phone to come with Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich) installed, this new Nexus is expected to pack a 720p screen (yes - ‘screen’), that displays up to 320dpi, dual-core 1.2GHz Texas Instruments OMAP CPU, and to be compatible withe LTE.

In short, it's a potential iPhone 4S beater.

The only disappointing thing for US customers is that the device will be limited to just Verizon network. We’ll no doubt find more out about the new device when Google and Samsung officially announce the device.

Alas, this has been delayed from the original date of the 11th October, with rumours suggesting the two companies don’t want to start hyping up the phone so quickly after Apple lost its talisman ex-CEO.

It’s fairly inevitable that some of Nokia’s more popular services would make the transition across from Symbian to Windows Phone intact, but not so much in the case of Bing maps competitor, Nokia Maps.

The mapping service is arguably one of the best features on Nokia phones so its appearance on new Nokia Windows Phones will be a big draw, especially given that Bing maps is pretty terrible, and the new screenshots of the app revealed this week looks promising

Nokia Maps is expected to come pre-installed with all of the Finnish giant's phones.