The Summer of 09 - a hedonistic mobile free-for-all

Gadget lovers are heading into sweepstakes season, with every major player in the smartphone market getting ready to launch their Next Big Thing in the next few months.

If you spend as much time as I do reading the gadget press then none of this will be new to you, but assuming you have a life, here's a wrap-up of what to expect over the summer:

Apple - New iPhone(s) expected in June. The best-known Apple watcher is saying that Apple's "keynote" event at its WWDC conference on June 8 will be the launch of the new operating systems for both iPhone (OS 3.0) and Mac computers (Snow Leopard). He thinks the new hardware will get launched at a secondary event later in the month, that will also function as a welcome back party for Steve Jobs, who has been on six months of sick leave.

Nothing revolutionary is rumoured for the new iPhones - more memory, video recording, FM radio, different colours etc seem to be the conventional wisdom. When the fundamental hardware is this good though, all Apple really needs to do is tweak the features.

Blackberry - The Blackberry Storm, the great shining touch-screen hope of the company, was an absolute dog of a phone, everyone agreed. Huge, flaming, fail. So the word on the net seems to be that the next generation Storm II will get released sooner rather than later. Crackberry, the internet authority on all things BlackBerry, is thinking about a July release.

The good news? They have got rid of the hideously awful "clicking" touchscreen, which was one of the many failings of the original storm (along with: no WiFi, gimped web browser, no QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode, no multitouch). The new Storm II will reportedly have WiFi and a iPhone-style capacitive touchscreen, meaning multitouch and general niceness all round.

Nokia - I've written about this enough already - the N97, Nokia's best phone ever (but still no iPhone) launches on June 2 in Dubai. Here is our video of the phone, and my thoughts on it.

Samsung - Samsung have a new phone, codenamed the Jet / S8000. It has an iPhone-style touchscreen, and judging by this early leaked video, it looks pretty alright. Samsung are preparing for a big launch of a whole family of new phones, and I expect to see this one available in the UAE before the end of the summer.

Palm - The Palm Pre looks great, particularly the new Web OS operating system that Palm have developed - these guys have always been extremely cluey when it comes to operating systems and usability for handheld devices, so expect good things from the Pre. Read more about it on the Palm website, or check the very positive review ("Simply Amazing") over at Gizmodo. Launches in the US next week, absolutely no idea about a UAE launch but my Spidey-sense tells me this may be an iPhone-style operator deal that could take upwards of 12 months to make it here.