Pocket Picks roundup: September 10th - Kindle tablet revealed, rumours of a 3G iPod touch, LG readying the Optimus 3D 2

Hello. Podcast listeners and Twitter stalkers will know I was away on holiday last week, so there was no Pocket Picks round-up.

While I would normally try and fit in two weeks' worth of news at times like this, this week has actually been fairly hectic for big app and handset stories.

There’s the inevitable Apple rumour (but not about the device you’re thinking of), as well as the first proper hands-on with Amazon’s much-hyped new competitor in the tablet market.

Elsewhere, there’s good news for lovers of great television in the UK (as long as you own an iPhone or iPad), while even Orange is trying to provide extra value for money with its services.

So without further delay, let’s get on with this week’s roundup.

An anonymous source talking to AppleNApps has told the site that Apple is currently working on bringing out a new iPod touch with the ability to take a 3G SIM card.

Yes, we know what you’re thinking. But rather than dismiss this one off-hand with a comment about there already being an iPhone, this rumoured iPod touch will not have the abillity to make calls with this extra connectivity.

Rather, the 3G connection is intended as another means of downloading data - in a similar fashion to how the iPad and Kindle use their SIM cards.

It’s not unheard of for iPhone features to make their way across the divide, with GPS and the camera both finding their way to earlier iPod touch models.

However, given that Apple ‘rumours’ are normally all made up, we wouldn’t hold our breath on this being true.

Amazon rumours, on the other hand, tend to be true - such was the case with the speculation over the company releasing its own brand of premium tablets for later in the year.

Now embattled site TechCrunch has managed to get its hands on the fabled Kindle Tablet itself, discovering it to be a 7-inch Android tablet that’s been completely re-worked from the ground up with Amazon branding and navigation.

The most interesting snippet of information - bar the fact that it’ll be full colour and run Android - is that Amazon intends to price the machine significantly lower than Apple’s offering, at around $250.

Given how frenzied the sales of HP’s now-dead TouchPad were after retailers slashed the price, it would take a very brave person to bet against Amazon providing a genuine competitor to Apple if the device goes on sale at that sort of price.

LG isn’t one to give up easily when it comes to cracking a market, as its constant battle with Samsung for consumers' hearts demonstrates.

Even so, the announcement that a slimmer, lighter Optimus 3D model will be released next year is a little bit of a surprise, considering that the phone hasn’t exactly caught the imagination of the buying public just yet.

LG’s Dr Henry Noh seems to think it’s the design that’s really been putting people off taking the plunge, stating that, “Next year, all the phones are going to be as thin as, let’s say, 6mm”, and that the current model is a bit too fat to compete.”

Channel 4’s excellent 4 on Demand service, which allows viewers in the UK to go back through the channel’s back catalogue of new and old programmes and stream them via the net, has finally arrived on iPhone.

It’s been a heck of a long time coming, as all the other major UK channels seem to have their apps out already, and even the home consoles have had 4oD for a good year or two now.

There isn’t, however, an Android app - so there’s another thing you can annoy your ‘droid-owning friends about.

You can now grab 4oD for iPhone and iPad from the App Store for free.

Orange has just finished finalising an exclusive deal with French firm Deezer that should see its customers on the Panther contract gaining access to the company’s Spotify-rivalling service.

Much like the better-known Spotify, Deezer streams music across the net to your PC/Mac, and works off a subscription basis for unlimited access to 12 million tunes.

Unlike Spotify, it doesn’t come with a free trial and requires a more expensive subscription than normal to add mobile listening (via its iPhone, Android, etc) apps on top.

The new deal effectively acts as a mobile-only subscription for Panther customers, so no home computer listening. We’re unsure as to how that’s better than Spotify’s own offering, but we’ll reserve judgement for when we see the service in action.