Free mobile apps can consume considerably more battery life than paid-for versions, according to new research produced at Indiana’s Purdue University in association with Microsoft.

Researchers found that battery life was adversely affected by advertising, which often helps fund free games but may use the phone’s network connection and GPS location software.

A new Juniper Research report says a growing consumer acceptance of in-game purchases and a sharp rise in smartphone adoption will push sales of in-game products & services from $2.1 billion last year to $4.8 billion in 2016.

In addition, tablet-based gaming will increase; a third of mobile games revenues will come from tablet downloads by 2016.

Sony Ericsson is showing visitors to this year’s CES trade show what a Sony smartphone is expected to look like. Assuming, of course, all goes to plan with Sony’s plans to buy Ericsson out of the joint venture.

The Sony Xperia S is the first smartphone from the ‘next generation’ Xperia NXT series and is expected to go on sale worldwide in the next month or two.

Mobile game business Moblyng has closed down, according to a report on VentureBeat.com. The company produced HTML5 games for mobile devices.

California-based Moblyng launched as ‘FlipTrack’ in 2007, before changing its business plan and moving into gaming.

In this week’s edition of The Fonecast we start with an ombudsman’s plea to sort out ‘unlimited’ data tariffs in the UK. We then move on to mobile music before covering mobile wallets, mobile gaming and the mobile patent wars. There’s even time for a little digital art.

As always, you can listen to the programme on our website audio player, via iTunes, by subscribing to our RSS feed or by downloading the MP3.