As such, here on the MoneySupermarket.com Mobiles blog we’ve decided to launch a brand new campaign to find the best mobile accessories available on the market without breaking the bank – and first up are Bluetooth Speakers.

These little devices allow you to play your music wherever you are, without being tied down by plugs and cables – perfect for people who spend a lot of time on the move, or have multiple devices they want to play music from. They’re available in a number of form factors and styles, but we’re looking purely at devices under £50.

We are sending out devices to a number of bloggers, and asking them to provide their thoughts on the devices to us – once they’ve done this, we’ll collect that data and put together an asset that reveals which Bluetooth Speaker is the best one to buy if you have £50 to spend (and no more!)

We’ll be looking at:

Katinkas Kaboom Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

iHome iDM12

Marmitek BoomBoom 230 Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Speaker

ITek Bluetooth Speaker SystemLogic3 i-Station Bluetooth 2 Wireless Speaker

These speakers are being shipped out to bloggers this week, and we hope to bring you a full report of what they thought by the end of March – Watch this space!

Well, they’ve made their big comeback today with a brand new device called the Z10 – and what’s exciting is that not only is the device free on £36 a month contract, the device is also 4G ready as well.

The news keeps getting better as well: Us Brits are likely to be getting it months earlier than the US, in an unusual reversal of standard phone release procedure.

EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have already confirmed that they will be stocking the device, and a number of phone retailers will also be selling the phone as well.

If you’re on EE, you’ll be able to use their 4G connection right off the bat as well – although you’ll pay a pretty penny for the chance. To get on the 4G train, you’ll need to pay £50 and fork out £41 a month for two years, which isn’t exactly cheap. We’re not yet sure how much the device will be without a contract attached to it – but as soon as we know, we’ll let you know.

Well, if this sounds like you you’re in luck, because Apple have today announced that they are releasing a new version of the current iPad (called the iPad 4 by many), which will feature a massive (for the iPad at least) 128GB of hard drive space.

In typical Apple style, the new iPad isn’t far away either: in fact, you’ll be able to buy one in a week.

That’s right, Tuesday, February 5th is the launch date – but what will the new slab cost?

The sad news is it’s not cheap (and the models with less storage aren’t getting any cheaper, either) – in fact, for the Wi-Fi only version will set you back £639, and the Wireless and 4G model will cost a not inconsiderable £739.

This release was rumoured a few weeks ago – the releases of iOS contained references to the new tech which were discovered by some clever techy types delving into the inner workings of the software.

It’s also rumoured that the iPad mini will be seeing an update sometime soon as well – which is unusual, as the device has not been on shelves for long:- although Apple do seem to be deviating more and more from the “old fashioned” yearly release cycle they used to be known for.

The screenshots will likely come as little surprise, of course: Blackberry debuted the QNX powered BB10 around a year ago, and the alpha build has been all over the place recently too.

What is interesting however, are what some of the screenshots are of. There’s no music or video application shots, but there are pictures of what’s called “Print to Go” – a sort of cloud printing service that, erm, doesn’t involve any printing. Basically, it appears that the app allows you to send data to your phone, making it easier to find than it would be an a crowded inbox, along with all those other emails.

Also highlighted was the software that will allow services such as Evernote to interact with the operating system – it seems that Blackberry have decided to focus on its core market – business users that don’t have any need for games or other apps, but do need excellent note taking, diary and organisation functions – which could be what RIM needs in order to kickstart Blackberry, which has really suffered in the smartphone war.

Whether this “leak” is a proper leak or not actually remains to be questioned however, as it’s not unheard of for data to be “accidentally” shared with media channels – Microsoft have used this tactic for years.

Here’s hoping there’s a few surprises left for when the OS launches, a week on Wednesday.

How are they doing this? Well, Google has to authorise and licence all Android handsets manufactured in order to allow them to use Google services like the Google Play store – and Google monetises this through ads and app sales – meaning that Google don’t see a cent or a penny from the device (Android is open source software).

Also, these devices don’t send data back to Google, like other legitimate handsets. You see, your Samsung or HTC Android device constantly sends information back to Google to allow them to understand what you’re up to, where you are and the like – allowing them to tailor search results and the like to your likes, needs and social groups. Ben Evans, an analyst who identified this trend, said “Google receives no signalling information from these devices – it doesn’t know your location or handset type, all kinds of information it uses to improve its search”.

These phones are manufactured by tiny companies that are likely too small to be traced, and often sold by “backpackmen” – people who travel from town to town, literally selling phones out of backpacks. This means the likelihood of this trend stopping any time soon is unlikely – there is a huge demand for mobile phones in China, and the vast majority of the population has a very small disposable income.

The little technological marvels are called Peak and Keon and will run Firefox’s long awaited HTML 5 based OS. The phones have been manufactured by Geeksphone a relatively young Spanish company, and from the looks of the specs that have been released are something to get truly excited about.

The Keon is orange (urgh, not my favourite colour but I could live with it) with a standard 3.5 inch HGVA screen,; it runs on a single-core 1GHz processor and 512mb of RAM, but an impressive 4GB of storage built in with the option to expand that with a microSD. The same goes for the Peak in terms of RAM and storage, but it runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and sports a 4.3 inch qHD IPS display. The Keon has a single rear camera of 3 mega-pixels while the Peak has a rear and front camera with 8MP and 3MP respectively.

Both phones come unlocked without having to pay a gazillion extra pounds for the pleasure, which leads me onto something very clever that Firefox have leapt upon – what they are calling Firefox OS App Days. Which in Firefox’s own words means bringing “the power of open standards and an open community” to mobile operating systems. Essentially, they’re bringing “hack days” that will allow participants to learn, hack, and share the platform. I for one am quite impressed with this open attitude and hope it turns out as good as it sounds.

Apple’s orders for iPhone 5 touch panels from Sharp, LG Display and Japan Display for the first quarter of this year have been cut in half, according to Japanese news resource Nikkei. Apparently multiple sources have repeated this claim to the Wall Street Journal – and the root cause seems to be nothing other than demand for the iPhone 5 being lower than expected.

Apple initially ordered 65 million iPhone touchscreens for the first three months of 2013, but have been forced to slash orders for them and other components as well. This basically means that Apple are now buying around 10.8 million screens a month as opposed to 21.6, and that not only suggests a drop in demand, but also a drop in sales compared to last year.

Of course, these figures still suggest that Apple are shipping millions of iPhones every month, and in the US they still hold the top spot in terms of market share – although 2012 did see Android take spot int he UK and other territories.

Of course, it is also possible that the iPhone has lost some sales to the iPad and it’s mini cousin – with a product range as closely related as Apple has, they could be spreading the iOS net even wider…

A Delaware company has acquired an old IP from BT, and is now aiming the lawsuit gun at just about every single mobile company you can think of.

Apple, HTC, LG, NEC, Motorola, Sony and many more are targets in the case, and it’s all to do with this:

That is US Patent 5,491,834, and it details a technique used by phones to decide whether to connect to a different mast.

BT filed the patent back in 1993, and are still listed as being in control of it – but the lawsuit brought by Steelhead (the company in question) assures all involved that the company have full rights of recover, and will be reclaiming what they believe is rightfully theirs (BT have stated that they are nothing to do with the lawsuit and will not be claiming any money from Steelhead).

For those wondering how this can happen, the simple version is this: Patents have to be renewed by the company who initially files them – and if they do not, the IP becomes available to others. Also, if a company purchases another, they will usually receive the IPs belonging to that company as well – and sometimes they will shed patents they don’t require.

The Premium Suite is as swanky as it sounds, bringing some of the excellent features that you find on the Note 2 to the S3, such as Multi-Window Views which allows you to use 2 apps at once in different windows. There will also be Facebook Lock Ticker to use the social network on your lock screen; Page Buddy which opens your music files the second you plug in headphones; Sound Balance that allows you to pick on set of audio over another (perfect for music buffs), and a handy little thing called Contextual Menu that arranges apps by most used.

That not all party people! There’s Paper Artist to make your bad-to-average photos look great; Best Face which uses five photos to create one image as close to perfect as possible, and finally, Easy Mode which helps first time touch screen or S3 users transition from buttons to smooth, smooth glass.
There’s 14 of these new feature arriving on UK S3s very soon, and I am very excited about this.

This is down to a brand new Android Trojan known by the disarmingly cute name SpamSoldier, which spreads through spam texts offering free versions of games like Angry Birds and the latest Need for Speed title.

The text encourages users to tap a link that promises to run an installer – which it does, but the user receives a virus instead of an app, (although occasionally it has been reported that users have received a free version of the app as well) which isn’t quite so good a deal if you ask us.

Obviously, once the virus is installed on a new phone, it then sends the same messages out to everyone it can – potentially while the owner of the infected phone plays their new game.

According to the American anti-spam company Cloudmark researcher Andrew Conway: “Once infected, a user’s phone will be used to silently send out thousands of spam SMS messages without permission to lists of victim phone numbers that the malware automatically downloads from a command-and-control server. We’ve seen a peak rate so far of over half a million SMS messages per day.”