A recent survey by telecoms regulator Ofcom has also found 60 percent of teenagers saying they are “highly addicted” to their smartphone. Of the people surveyed just under half of teenagers and over a quarter of adults own a smartphone, according to an article on Guardian.co.uk. Interacting with Facebook or reading and sending emails was found to be the biggest use for the handsets.

Owners used their devices in the most unusual places, with 47 percent of teenage users admitting using their smartphones in the toilet, with only 22 percent of adults owning up to the same habit. Teenagers also used their smartphones while eating dinner or watching a movie at the cinema.

The sales of such devices have now overtaken those of feature handsets in the first half of 2011, which mirrors the trend which is happening in the US. Just over half of the 13.6m handsets sales in the first six months of this year were for smartphones. Facebook remained the most popular site visited by mobile users, with around four times the amount spent on the site compared to Google or other sites.

What may worry the likes of Microsoft and Sony is that some respondents said they would ditch games consoles to play games on their smartphones. The big rise in smartphone ownership has put a big strain on the mobile infrastructure, with a 67 percent rise in mobile data.

Luckily operators have been upgrading their networks to try and keep up with demand. Sending SMS messages continue to grow with the average person sending five per day last year, with a total of 129bn sent up 24 percent on the previous year.

Despite the big take-up of mobile devices, the UK public is spending longer in front of the TV with an average of four hours. This has been led by the likes of Sky and the amount of homes with HDTVs, but Freesat HD and Freeview HD have also helped as they are a cheaper option to Sky and Virgin Media.

Of those who own a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 22 percent use the devices for watching video content, with another 22 percent playing online games. A small percentage used their console for browsing the internet, with 9 percent watching the BBC iPlayer. Sales of 3DTVs remain low with only 125,000 out of a total of almost ten million new TVs sold.

Are you addicted to your smartphone?

We now have a release date update to bring you however, as according to Jon over at fonehome.co.uk; Samsung has recently confirmed that the Galaxy S Plus will in fact be heading to the UK. Although we don’t know a specific launch date yet, we do know that it should be arriving later this year.

As previously mentioned, the Samsung Galaxy S Plus / 2011 Edition – which is an upgraded version of the original Samsung Galaxy S smartphone – is now powered by a 1.4GHz Scorpion processor with a Qualcomm MSM8255T Snapdragon chipset, compared to the 1GHz processor of the original.

The Galaxy S Plus runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS and comes with a 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen with a 480 x 800 resolution, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage (which can be expanded by up to 32GB via the SD card slot) and a 5-megapixel camera with 720p video capture.

Battery power has also been upgraded, with the Galaxy S plus now packing a Li-ion 1650mAh battery compared to the old 1500mAh battery. Would you buy the upgraded Samsung Galaxy S Plus handset?

Now we have new information that could possibly add to the launch date confusion, as we’ve just heard that the HTC ChaCha is also coming to the Carphone Warehouse in the UK. According to Kate Solomon at techradar.com, Carphone Warehouse has now begun taking pre-orders for the Android phone.

The HTC ChaCha – which was first introduced at the Mobile World Congress event earlier this year – will be available both in store and online as from June 1st. As for the price of the HTC ChaCha, Carphone Warehouse doesn’t appear to be selling it as a standalone handset.

However, they are offering it for free on a £20 per month contract. There does appear to be a £10 a month deal available, but that requires you to fork out £179.99 for the actually handset itself. The HTC ChaCha’s features include a physical QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.3 and a 2.6-inch touchscreen.

Will you be picking up the HTC ChaCha phone?

What we can tell you however is the specs, which according to Robert Nelson at nexus404.com includes a hardware QWERTY keyboard and the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system. What makes the LG Genesis even more interesting is the fact that it features a 3.5-inch external display and a 3.2-inch internal display.

The 5-row keyboard on the LG Genesis (US760) includes a dedicated number row, as well as 5 shortcut keys to the left and a 4-way navigation pad to the right. The LG Genesis also comes with a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 1500mAh battery, 430MB of internal storage and a 5MP camera with flash.

Other specs include 8GB microSD card storage, Dolby sound, DLNA media sharing and support for Wi-Fi Hotspot sharing. We are unsure at this stage exactly how much the LG Genesis will cost, will recent rumors have suggested that US Cellular will offer it for $249.99 on a two year contract.

Do you like the sound of the LG Genesis smartphone?

According to a recent engadget.com article by Vlad Savov, Nokia’s Finnish store has just put the E7 handset up for pre-order, with a price tag of €599. They’ve also revealed that the all-business device is expected to arrive sometime in February of this year.

The expected arrival time coincides with previous reports, which suggested that the E7 would be arriving early 2011. As noted over on the Finnish website here, the E7 smartphone features a 4-inch touchscreen, business and messaging apps, a full QWERTY keyboard and an 8MP camera with HD video recording.

You can view a hands-on video – courtesy of the guys over at Engadget – through a previous article here. As Jamie Pert noted, the brief video shows us that the E7 will feature pinch-to-zoom functionality and 3 different customizable home screens.

The Galaxy S has just sold more than 2 million units in Korea, it’s become their biggest selling smartphone after being released only 6 months ago. It has appealed to the Koreans and outsold the iPhone, which is not an easy task.

When you compare the global sales of the Apple iPhone 4 to the sales of the Samsung Galaxy S, you may be a little surprised. The iPhone 4 and Galaxy S made their way onto the global market at about the same time; the iPhone 4 sales have reached the heights of 14 million up to October, whilst the Galaxy S is at a respectable 9.3 million.

Zach Epstein of BGR.com also mentions that the Samsung Galaxy S will become the first Android handset to reach 10 million marker, this is expected to happen by the end of the year.

What do you think of these figures? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

You can control the “Sphero” using a smartphone’s Bluetooth such as an iPhone or something along those lines. You might be wondering how it works and also why would you want to do it? The device is made by a company called Orbotix and it is basically a little robotic ball that will communicate with your smartphone’s tilting functions and make the ball move. You can see that in the video at the bottom of this article courtesy of Engadget.com.

The Sphero will be appearing at the 2011 Consumer Electronics show, you can read a little more about it from the official Orbotix blog here. They say that the idea of it is to be able to play a game with it, like challenge a friend to go through a maze or to get two of the Spheros and have a Sumo fight against one another. These are some great ideas but I can see other things copying the idea soon.

Can you imagine having a racing car that worked in a similar fashion? Imagine being at home making little tracks for you and your friends to compete against one another, it would be like real life Micro Machines!

What do you think of the Sphero? Would you get one? What do you think will be coming next? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

However, with every device there are advantages and disadvantages. Just a few to mention on the good side are a build that feels sturdy, a responsive touchscreen measuring 3.5-inches diagonally and nice Orange-specific widgets. It you don’t like the Orange skin; it can be removed quite easily.

The disadvantages of the San Francisco include a rather disappointing 3.2-MP camera that features auto-focus, but no flash. When taking stills the result is reasonable, but the video quality is less than impressive.

Another downside is that it doesn’t come with any Twitter or Facebook apps installed, but you can easily get them from the Android market. What do you find is good and bad about the San Francisco Phone?

Source: Techradar.

Christina Warren of Mashable is reporting that Visa in partnership with New York City Transit, NJ TRANSIT and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are testing both Visa payWave enabled smartphones and payment cards.

Instead of purchasing or refilling a Metro card travelers just wave their devices in front of a contactless reader. Visa is working with the Bank of America to also bring the technology to retailers in the city. The devices have a special sensor installed which can transmit payment information to card readers at fare gates. This will speed up queues at transit stations, and does away the need to buy a transit card.

The New York subway program is only deployed across 28 stops along the Lexington subway line, but if the trial proves successful will be expanded. The technology has been used by Visa in London, Istanbul, Kuala Lampur, Paris, and Singapore. Check the video below to see the technology in action.

This is certainly interesting, the fact that people assumed that Facebook would build their own phone, even though they have no experience of building hardware. Mic Wright from Electric Pig points out that not even Google made their own smarphone, the Nexus One was built by HTC, but the search engine giant just worked more closely so its Android system could work much better than on a custom UI version.

Wright does point out that Facebook is up to something though; this was evident with the poor denial about the existence of a handset. What this is we have no way of knowing, maybe they are working with a cell phone maker of mobile OS developer such as Google on developing an App that has greater integration than ever?

We never like to surmise what a company is doing, but the idea of Facebook developing their own branded phone just seems far-fetched. They are much better off working more closely with the current smartphones on the market, and stick to what they know best, and that is offering their users the best social experience.