Will the stylish Bang & Olufsen design be enough for Serenata, Samsung's iPhone killer?

It's been something of a topsy-turvy seven days – a political will-he-won't-he?, compounded by sporting upsets, plus the deaths of two very English light entertainers – but dialling back into the world of small things that is the Pocket Picks round-up, we're kicking off with hardware again.

We swore it wouldn't be the case this week, but the appearance of Bang & Olufsen (and Samsung's) Serenata fair set our hearts aflame. We'd even dare to give it the title 'iPhone killer' considering the music-focused handset is 3G/HSDPA-compatible and comes with 4GB of memory, although presumably isn't iTunes-friendly.

This aside, however, things were a little quiet when it came to handset-based excitement. Samsung's G800 made its debut. It boasts a five-megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom and flash, and has something of the look of the N95 about it.

At least emerging Windows Mobile-based manufacturer HTC kept us busy. One of its new phones is the Wi-Fi supporting S730, which has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The more business-driven P6500 comes with GPS, HSDPA, a three-megapixel camera with autofocus plus fingerprint and barcode scanning capabilities.

Other HTC devices detailed included the Touch Dual handset, which will arrive in the UK courtesy of Orange, and the more angular Juno, which is only expected to be released in the US. But that suits us fine, as the Touch Dual seems to be the nicer choice, despite not having a BlackBerry-style 'SureType' keypad or the iPod-style touchwheel.

Still, just to remind us of the silly season of millionaires' playthings, ten of the world's most expensive N95s have just gone on sale. Available from Amosu Luxury Phones, the limited-edition diamond-encrusted obscenities will set you back £12,000 apiece.

Balancing out such willfulness, two handset rumours proved to be amongst this week's most picked stories. The first suggests BlackBerry manufacturer RIM is taking a leaf out of Apple's and HTC's design manuals and moving over to touchscreens. The top-secret BlackBerry 9000 is thought to be the first result. Also, worrying the lawyers was news suggesting 3, Skype (owned by eBay) and an unnamed handset manufacturer were working on a low-cost device to provide free VOIP mobile calls. Should be an interesting story to keep an eye on.

But leaving hardware behind, there was plenty of activity when it came to the worlds of business and services. Nokia spent $8 billion buying mapping company NAVTEQ. It's expected to use this newfound expertise to improve its location-based services as GPS technology becomes a standard across its handsets. Meanwhile, GPS company Garmin is getting in on the LBS act, too, thanks to the release of all-in-one software for GPS-enabled smartphones which turns them into Garmin navigators.

Google continues to focus on the mobile space. It bought untested mobile networking site Zingku with the stated aim of helping people more easily access Google on their mobile devices.

Other companies making our news included Vodafone, which announced it will let users of the Second Life virtual world make in- and out-of-game calls. Adobe released its Flash Lite 3 software, which will enable more devices to access richer online content (including You Tube), and the new version of the Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile browser supports Flash Player 7 for the first time.

Finally, how about swapping money for old rope? Radiohead's new album 'In Rainbows' will be available DRM-free and downloadable to mobile phones, PCs and MP3 players. And in the true spirit of being millionaire rockstars, you can pay the band whatever you like – not forgetting the handling fee for credit cards of course. Let's hope they spend the cash wisely. Maybe Amosu has some gift ideas?