Pimp my mobile!

Don’t want to pay the ‘nerd tax’ for
an iPhone? alan connock upgrades his handset for free

The iPhone might be the latest and flashiest mobile, but at nearly £300 for the handset alone it will be very expensive on launch next month. However, even a bog-standard internet mobile can get close to the iPhone's wizardry with some easily downloaded applications.

Google Maps is a fabulously useful addition to your phone. It's not sat-nav proper so it can't fix its location automatically, but put in a street-name or point of interest and the software will show where you are (choose between a map and/or satellite

view), then give you directions to where you want to go. And it operates as smoothly abroad as it does in Britain.

Those nice people at Google also provide a cut-down version of their email application, Gmail. It's already the best free webmail service, and the version for your phone is just as good -

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simply install it and you're ready to go. One word of caution, though: it doesn't seem possible to log out of the service, which means that anyone picking up your (unlocked) phone would be able to read your email.

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