The fixed penalty for using a hand-held mobile phone when driving in the UK has increased from £60 to £100 today. As before, there’ll also be three points added to the driver’s licence.

This follows a consultation in June last year and a government announcement about the changes two months ago.

This week we're talking about BlackBerry's options for the future, Vodafone's 4G launch, Apple's patent victory and LG's new smartphone.

We also discuss ZTE selling its Firefox phones on eBay, Nokia's acquisition of NSN, the cost of phone calls in Europe, the controversy about recycling bins that monitor footfall and the new face promoting HTC.

Although the European Union has created a ‘single market’, Europe’s mobile phone users aren’t seeing the benefits they might expect.

That’s the opinion of European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, who has been talking about the results of a study into phone call costs.

Mark Bridge writes:

August is traditionally known as the ‘silly season’… but last week’s mobile industry news was all very serious. Apple started with a move designed to reassure customers about unsafe iPhone chargers by arranging a discounted exchange scheme – and it ended the week with a patent victory in the USA.

The US International Trade Commission has banned a number of Samsung mobile devices from being imported to the USA.

It’s upheld a decision about two patents: one involved touch-screen technology and listed Apple founder Steve Jobs as one of the inventors, the other related to the way an audio socket detected the type of equipment that had been connected. Four other claims were rejected by the US ITC.