Software updates are always something to look forward to, especially when it comes to relatively new devices. After all, most updates not only fix existing problems, but more often than not, they come with additional new software capabilities and features that extend and expand the overall usefulness of a smart phone.

The Satio will be getting some interesting new tools as well as a few graphical improvements for those who would be pointing their phone browsers at the official Satio website by Sony Ericsson (use the update service command).

The big new addition here would be the additional WVGA quality recording for the Satio’s amazing 12 mega pixel camera. The snapper already comes with video LED lights, Xenon flash, auto focus, smile and face detection and geo-tagging. The new high resolution video has definitely made the Satio an impressive media phone.

Of course, all those good videos are nothing if you cannot show them off. The update will also give users better Facebook integration with a new app found in the Sony PlayNow menu. Even better is that addition of instant image uploads to Facebook and instant video uploads to YouTube –making that WVGA patch pretty useful.

This impressive set of new updates for the Satio certainly shows how far this Symbian smart phone has gone. Back in 2009, the Satio got a lot of publicity from Sony Ericsson’s massive marketing campaign –a powerful marketing boost that still had the Satio fall flat on its’ face as it suffered from sudden firmware problems that got it suspended from sales.

Sony Ericsson was still able to save the device by bringing out a patch to fix the errors and have the Satio back on shelves just right before the holidays.

Read more about the details of the Satio update patch on GSM Arena.

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away time is quickly running out to get all your shopping done. Personally I leave it until Christmas Eve, but so it seems does almost everyone else, as the shops are always bursting with frantic customers desperately fighting over the last Power Ranger (or whatever) toy for their kid. This is where ordering online can be a good idea but this still raises the problem of items not arriving on time so if that is your avenue then it’s a good idea to get ordering early to be sure that everything is ready in time to be placed under the tree.

Anyway, for anyone thinking of getting someone a new phone this Christmas I have decided to try and help by giving a rundown on some of the best touchscreen phones on the market at the moment. Some of these are newly released but some have been around for a while, but either way they are all virtually guaranteed to put a smile on someone’s face this Christmas.

HTC HD2

Following on from the success of the highly popular HTC Hero, Taiwanese phone maker HTC has gone one better with their latest phone the HD2. While at one point in the not too distant past the little island of Formosa had a reputation for producing shoddy merchandise, the likes of the HTC HD2 should certainly put those accusations to rest. This Windows Mobile handset boasts a staggering 4.3″ high quality touchscreen and superfast 1GHz Snapdragon processor that sets it apart from its heroic predecessor as one of the fastest and cinematic touchscreen phones on the market today.

Nokia N97 Mini

Earlier this year saw the release of the N97 from Nokia, and then some months later the Finnish company decided, for some reason, to produce a slightly smaller version: the N97 Mini. Whatever their exact reasoning was we are most certainly grateful. If you have considered buying the N97 then the N97 Mini is well worth your consideration, with all the same appeal and functionality but with a much more ergonomic feel to it. The QWERTY keypad of the N97 Mini is ideal for whacking out long messages or emails and makes this an ideal touchscreen for the more professionally oriented phone owner.

Sony Ericsson Satio

For all the photography enthusiasts out there the phone of choice has to be the Satio from Sony Ericsson. This phone boasts an impressive 12 megapixel camera with a wealth of features including geo-tagging, smile detection, touch focus and the highest quality xenon flash. Although this is its main selling point there is more to the Satio than its camera however, with a wealth of other entertainment features and a very pristine 3.5″ TFT display.

LG BL40 Chocolate

There are two new Chocolate phones from LG making their way onto the shelves this season, but the one that stands out this Christmas is the BL40 for its unique entertainment features. This handset is for the movie lovers and all those phone owners who love watching videos on their phones, as the BL40 is the only handset to boast a 21:9 widescreen screen resolution. This means that all those widescreen films you have amassed over the last few years will now be displayed in all their glory on your very own phone. No more black bars and eye squinting for owners of the BL40. While having one of the highest quality displays to be found on a phone today the Chocolate does not fall short in other areas either, with high speed HSDPA connectivity and a very nice 5 megapixel camera into the bargain.

Apple iPhone 3GS 32GB

Although the original iPhone was released a few years ago now, the Apple handset is still one of the most popular touchscreen phones doing the rounds. New iterations have seen an improvement on the original however, with the latest version having much more memory and a far speedier interface. All this while still retaining all the features that have made the Apple phone so popular, including the exceptional media player, first class web browsing experience and of course that famous app store that has a downloadable application for just about every endeavour you could wish to perform on your phone, and lots of useless (but quite amusing) ones also.

LG GD510 POP

Falling into the more affordable range of touchscreens the LG Pop follows in the footsteps of the highly successful LG Cookie and Samsung Tocco Lite. These phones were designed to bring the touchscreen craze to a wider audience by placing the technological revolution into more affordable handsets, but neither company were quite prepared for just how popular they would become. These two phones have been some of the best selling handsets for their respective manufacturers and two of the most popular phones released in the last few years. The LG Pop follows on where the Cookie left off, providing all of the fun of a touch screen phone without any of the extra baggage that makes them cost the earth.

So here are some ideas for you to consider if you were thinking of purchasing a certain someone a new phone for xmas. There are many other great phones being released at this time and in the coming year, but there are too many to mention them all by name. For now however, these should provide some ideas for presents if you are struggling to think what to get for little cousin Timmy, or even if you just felt like treating yourself this festive season.

Vodafone’s new mobile phones consists of a Windows Mobile 6.5, and Android 1.6 Donut and a Symbian S60. The LG GM750 will be sharing its Vodafone limelight with a couple of other mid-tier smarts phones from other manufacturers sporting different operating systems. If that was not competition enough for LG, HTC has also brought out the HTC HD2, which is a Snapdragon powered WinMo 6.5 device.

Considering the competition, anyone willing to shell out loads of money for a WinMo 6.5 phone would do well to pass on the more practical LG GM750. As said, the GM750 is a practical device meant more for those in need of a decent Windows touch screen phone.

LG’s Windows Mobile 6.5

Unlike its predecessor, the GM730, the LG GM750 sports the latest Windows Mobile OS, version 6.5. This new version supports the recently launched application store, the Marketplace. The Marketplace has been up for a month now and has already received a few updates –such as compatibility for desktop computers, WinMo versions 6.0 and 6.1, as well as the inclusion of new anti-piracy measures.

Windows Mobile brings a lot of familiar yet updated features. Among the most useful WinMo applications is the Office for Mobile, which is used to handling Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and viewing PDF files. The Windows Media Player 10 provides excellent media playback capabilities as it handles many different audio and video file formats.

For those who are not too fond of the Windows Mobile operating system’s interface, LG has put in the S-Class user interface to make navigating the device a whole lot easier.

Vodafone Exclusive

The LG GM750 deals that Vodafone is offering will be the only carrier deals you will find for the LG GM750 until December. The device is available for free on certain plans. Other carriers have not confirmed the prices at which they will be offering the device when they finally launch it.

Here is yet another top – notch phone from the labs of Sony Ericsson. Having been nicknamed Satio, it has a great number of features, the main one of which is the 12 MP camera, which makes the camera on the phone as good as a standalong digital camera. Though Sony Ericsson had first ‘leaked’ details of the phone under the name ‘Idou’, it has now been christened as Sony Ericsson Satio and will be released during the course of this year. Let’s have a more deep look at the specifications sheet.

There will surely be a number of us who will be wondering as to whether a 12 MP camera is actually necessary for a phone. To be truthful, it is quite for people who would like to snap some high quality pictures wherever they go but don’t want to carry around a digital camera for this. The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with a 12.1 MP camera and has most of the features that can be expected of a digital camera such as an image stabilizer, auto focus (touch focus) and face detection, making capturing pictures extremely easy. There are other features as well such as red eye reduction, best pic and smile detection. The top – class Xenon flash enables you to take pictures even if the surrounding light is not bright enough.

Geotagging facilities are also present in the phone. Other major highlights of the Sony Ericsson Satio, apart from the awesome 12x digital zoom are the photo feeds, video light and photo fix. There is a ‘send to’ feature which enables you to share pictures on social networks with the blink of an eye. Truth be told, the Sony Ericsson Satio’s camera is good enough to make dedicated digital camera’s heads hang in shame! The phone weighs in at 126 grams and is fairly slim at 13.3 mm. Internal memory of the phone is 128 MB and the phone comes with a 8GB microSD memory card.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 Links:

• Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 Contracts
• Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 Sim Free
• Sony Ericsson XPERIA X3 with Free Gifts

Two phones have gone under our noses recently, both of which raised more than a little wrinkled of, if not quite disgust, then certainly a little annoyance. First up was the Samsung Pixon 12, with it’s from-the-rooftops shouting about its having, well, 12 megapixels onboard. So what! we shouted back, you’re still not a camera, never will be, so there. Then we had the Aino, from Sony Ericsson. Which, while impressive in many respects, was pretty much a daft buy unless you owned a PS3. So, what about the Sony Ericsson Satio? Does it claim to be something it’s not? Nope. Does it pander to a small and smug portion of the population exclusively? Not a bit of it.

So, what does it do, and how does it do them? Well, the short answer is: a lot of things, very well. (Read this Sony Ericsson Satio review for the long answer!). That’s because the Satio is very cleverly being positioned as a phone that excels at ‘visual communication.’ A-ha! you say, I like watching videos on the way to work, therefore this phone is definitely for me. Or, wahoo! you scream, I like surfing the internet and using things like Flash while I’m doing so, this will be exactly what I need.

And that’s where Sony Ericssion have got it so right with the Sony Ericsson Satio. Because, to look at the thing (have a peek at the video below) you’d be very much forgiven for thinking, oh, it looks just like a camera, it must be primarily a cameraphone. And with the pretty damn good camera onboard, it is a fantastic cameraphone. But it is also a fantastic music player, video recorder, email checker, media downloader and… well, it does just about everything it attempts more or less spot on. So we’re all for the Sony Ericsson Satio, and we have a sneaking suspicion you will be too.

Yawn…. Another handset trying to grab market share by adding a better camera. I don’t know if it’s just me, but bolting on more megapixels onto an old model doesn’t really do it for me. Yet that is exactly what Samsung have done with their “all new” Samsung Pixon 12. It seems that in a bid to increase market share, Samsung is releasing the Sony Ericsson Satio which is expected to be released later this year. Overall both handsets promise to offer great image quality, but is there really much more room for increased pixel quality images on your mobile phone. I feel that we should now be looking beyond purely just megapixels. We should be looking at optical zoom, new filters, better flash quality and more besides. 12 megapixels is great, but without a high quality lens, you will not see a marked difference image quality. I have mentioned before in other posts that we may not be far off a truly universal device that will allow users to leave their digital camera at home and just take a phone out with them. However if handset manufacturers are determined to simply increase the resolution on their handsets and not offer other features, it may take us a little longer to achieve this. So can we say that 12 megapixels is going to be the highest spec? I very much doubt it!