All the big manufacturers have their own solutions, the App store for Apple, Nokia’s Ovi store and the Android Market place.

The best part is that many of these are free and most others are very cheap. So, what can you add to your new camera phone to enhance the pictures you take?

Retro Camera gives you the ability to take your photos as if you were using one of 5 vintage cameras and the ability to add different effects including film scratch, black and white & cross processing effects. This App comes in a free version and a paid version that includes an additional camera and more effects.

Whereas Retro Camera processes the picture as you take it (and this can lead to a delay of several seconds as the effect is applied to the photo) Vignette is an image manipulation solution with 68 effects & 56 frames. Styles include  Retro/vintage, LOMO/toy camera-style, Polaroid-style, cross-process, tilt-shift, photobooth and more.

Vignette also has free and paid for versions with extra features in the paid for application.

This video shows Vignette in action:

If neither of these fits your requirements FxCamera sits somewhere between the two and provides these features:

• ToyCam – cross-process Emulation (Green), cross-process Emulation (Blue), cross-process Emulation (Yellow), Super High Contrast, Blue Tone, Vivid Green, Warm and Mono (High Contrast).
• Polandroid – Vintage Film, Faded, Aged, Mono and No Effect. You have 2 options for Film Type as well Rectangle (3:2) or Square (1:1).
• Fisheye – Circular and Full-Frame.
• SymmertriCam – Landscape, Portrait and Multi Reflection. You also have the invert pattern option as well as several color filters.
• Warhol – No options available.
• Normal – Mono (Black and White), Sepia, Negative, Posterize, Solarize, and 2 different picture sizes to choose from.

Of course the effects with each of these packages will be dependent on the original photo but given the cost of the applications downloading and trying these out should be a must for anyone who uses their Android camera on a regular basis

Nokia have announced that their proprietary navigation and mapping product, Ovi Maps, will be made available free on selected handsets. This is to include free voice navigation both on driving and walking trips.
Previously, certain handsets were pre loaded with Ovi Maps, and came with a limited trial for the turn by turn voice navigation services.

The handsets that are currently able to download the full package for free are:

• Nokia X6
• Nokia N97 mini
• E72
• E55
• E52
• Nokia 6730 classic
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic
• Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition
• Nokia 5230

Once the maps application is downloaded there are a selection of both male and female voices to choose from, available in a number of different languages and these can be downloaded as required. Maps are available to download for free for over 70 countries.

Ovi Maps has the features you would expect from a satellite navigation solution, including a number of different views from 2D to 3D style road views, options to favour motorways, or not, and the option to choose real time traffic information. Data download charges will apply for some of these options, so if you are on a data limited plan, you should bear this in mind.

The Nokia E63 is a full email solution mobile, with a QWERTY keypad underneath a 2.36”, 320 x 240 pixel TFT colour screen. Like other similar E-series mobiles (particularly the E71 and new E72), the E63 has a central D pad style navigation button with 2 quick access buttons either side.

With a 2.36”, 320 x 240 pixel QVGA TFT colour screen and two customisable home screen modes, you can set up your E63 to work the way you want it, both for business and at home. Available in Ultramarine Blue and Ruby Red the E63 is possibly slightly less serious looking than the E71, but with many of the same features should still impress.

The camera has a 2 Megapixel resolution, (1600 x 1200 pixels), with digital zoom and LED flash. This camera will also record video at 20 x 240 (QVGA) with 15 fps and has a digital zoom feature. You can also use the LED flash as a flashlight by holding down the spacebar.

Connect the Nokia E63 to your pc through the micro USB connector, or use Bluetooth or the built in Wi-Fi. Get to your music with the standard sized 3.5mm av jack (something the E71 does not have), and enjoy the built in FM radio, or up to 18 hours of music playback with each battery charge.

There is 110MB memory, which is expandable with 8GB MicroSD cards.

There is no denying that the E63 is not as feature rich as the E71 (or soon to be released Nokia E72), but this is compensated in terms of affordability. You don’t get as high a resolution camera, or auto focus, and the GPS has been dropped. But there is the 3.5 mm av port for headphones that the E71 does not have the lovely blue or red colours and the same emailing capabilities that make the E63 a good choice whether you are considering a Nokia or a Blackberry.

If you have an iPhone, you may well be frustrated by the camera features, because whilst Apple have implemented a lot of things very well, the camera does not seem to be one of them.

Now I admit to not being a great iPhone fan, although I think the interface is exceedingly well implemented and the idea and adoption of Apps is very impressive. That said there are lots and lots of iPhone users who will not have a bad thing said about their phone and if you are one of these folks, then perhaps you should check out the App from photoshop.com.

This app will let you easily upload pictures from your iPhone to your free photoshop.com account, where you get 2GB of free storage. Once there you get a host of editing tools including cropping, rotating and flipping, colour editing, etc. And you can access this all from your iPhone.

One downside is that the service seems to only be available in the US at the moment – so for British based iPhone users, this tantalising prospect may just still be out of reach. If you have an iPhone and can get this app working, let us know!

The general Photoshop.com service is available to non iPhone users as well, you just don’t get the app to use the service on your mobile, but you can take advantage of the free 2GB storage and online editing tools.

Following the release of the Motorola Barrage ‘indestructible mobile phone‘ it got the Camera Phone Review team wondering how indesructable is indestrucitble?

Obviously if you take a hammer to a mobile, or any electronic device, it is likely to fall apart quite quickly, certainly to stop working, but what if your mobile does break? Obviously there are the immediate problems of replacing your phone and getting the contacts information (you did back it up, didn’t you?) onto your new phone.

But what then – it is unlikely to be worth very much if it is broken, although you could possibly get something for it as spare parts, but there is still your private data on the memory. Just because you can’t get it does not mean someone else can’t.

So should you smash your mobile to make sure the data is gone for good? It will all depend on what you may have stored on there and how broken your device is – a broken screen may make the phone useless to you but perfectly accessable to someone who goes to the trouble of replacing the screen.

There are some mobile antivirus products that will let you remotely wipe data by sending an SMS to your phone. If you have such a product installed that might work. And the new Windows Mobile 6.5 also has a back up and a delete function that will allow you to wipe files from your mobile clearing the storage before you pass it on to someone else – but the phone does need to be working for these to work.

In summary what you do with your phone will depend on the data you have on your mobile and how damaged it is, but if nothing else, make sure you back up your data regularly, so you can get access to it, if something terrible should happen.

Of course you have various options to display your photos but here are some of our favourites.

Get your digital pictures printed out

There are many services that will enable you to transfer your digital photos into good old fashioned prints, and you either need to take a CD, DVD or memory card to your local photo shop where they will carry out the service for you or there are a number of online services where you upload the photos you want printed and order them online. Snapfish is one such service, but there are others as well. Most will also have introductory offers: for example at the moment you can get 30 free prints from Snapfish.

Put a photo on your desktop

There are many places where you might be able to show your favourite digital photo, for example the desktop of your PC, your camera phone desktop, or on your PDA. The advantage of digital photos means that whenever you get bored with that photo, or you take a better one you can easily stop around.

Get a digital photo frame

A digital photo frame takes the desktop display idea one step further and allows you to display hundreds of digital photos in an electronic format, either as a slideshow, or by simply showing your favourite. Over the last few months the design and quality digital photo frames as improved immensely and of course the cost has also come down with digital photo frames now available for under £50. Visit Buy Digital Photo Frame for more information and a great selection.

And whatever option you choose, remember to back up your photos off your PC and onto a CD, just in case your PC stops working.

The phone opens with the touch of a finger and inside is a circular keyboard and wheel navigation device, all combined with an extra large display on the other side.

Equally innovative in its design is the charger which the Serene simply sits on open or closed, to power its battery. If closed and you receive a call the phone will gracefully open ready for you to answer. The opening mechanism is fully motorised enabling the handset to open of its own power, or if that is too ‘serene’ it can be operated manually. There is a built-in camera although the specification is only to VGA.

Weighing in at 115 g and with dimensions of 64.7 x 69.7 x 20 3.9 mm and a talk time of 3.2 hours and on standby up to 225 hours, this would seem to be a perfect little package. That is if your main concern is looks and style.

If you use Skype, then you know all about the benefits of free calls, particularly free international calls. And with a stand alone Skype phone costing upwards of £100 (of course access to the network is free if you use a PC), this looks lie a good deal. Free phone, with the starter price plan at £12 per month.

The phone comes with a built in 2 megapixel camera, music player and memory expndable to 1GB with an SD card.

If you don’t want to sign up to a contract the skypephone is avaialble on PAYG for only £49.99 and you get free Skype access for 30 days after you top up with at least £10. Becasue of this, the Skpyephone is going onto our Best Buys for Christmas list.

Given that certain games have been in the pipeline for many, many months, and also the fanfare in August, with which Nokia announced the proposed November launch date, one may have thought Nokia would have been certain that the development would be ready.

November is obvioulsy an ideal time to stoke up interest prior to Christmas. This delay may be another case of just too late, for N-Gage.

And this system is super affordable, when compared with professionally installed systems, as it uses your existing PC to control the system.

There are three cameras to choose from, one for indoors, one for outside and one disguised as a clock (the spycam). The indoor cameras simply plug into a power outlet and then transmit to the receiver station connected to your PC.

Once set up and running you can view the camera feed from any windows powered smartphone. If you don’t have a windows smartphone, then you can still receive emails with video clips, to check your home is secure.

Unfortunately it would seem this system is only available in the US, at least for the moment, but with the wonders of the internet, it can’t be too long before it is available for shipping to the UK.