We’ve all been there. Desperately needing to make or receive and important call, but staring straight at the little bars of sorrow that is the signal levels of your mobile phone.

It happens more often than I’d like it to on my iPhone, but I’ve managed to work around the issue by carrying around a PAYGO Orange phone too. Drastic measures, some may say, but it seems to be working for me. Unlike the poor souls in the video below who could well do with a second blower as back-up.

*Warning, this clip does contain some swearing…

Yesterday saw the official unveiling of Motorola’s first stab at an Android-powered handset, the Motorola DEXT. The mobile also plays home to the debut of MOTOBLUR, the company’s software that sits on top of Android and lets you manage your social networking and communications feeds in one place.

We already knew Motorola had an Android handset planned, that wasn’t really news. Although we were surprised to find lots of Orange logos around the building when we headed over for the launch last night. Yes, that’s right, Orange (or T’Orange or O-Mobile as it may or may not be known in the future) has nabbed the DEXT as an exclusive.

Although everyone was either very tight lipped or just not in the know as to how long this exclusivity will last once the handset hits the shops next month.

Check back on the site later today for our first look review of the Motorola DEXT. In the meantime, the video below shows the DEXT in action.

Orange has announced that the quirky LG watchphone (LG-GD910) will be available exclusively on its network, with the devices going on sale from 9am next Thursday, 27 August.

The Bond-style gadget calls people when you tell it to and plays you music to while away the time waiting for the bad guys to turn up, or just waiting for a cab.

The video below, courtesy of LG’s official UK blog shows a demo of the new gadget at this year’s Mobile World Congress show.

Although it is shiny and quite cool, it will leave quite a dent in your pocket - setting you back £500. Although Orange has promised that this beauty is just one of several ‘future phones’ it’s planning on selling this year. We can’t wait.

Kind of. That’s the gist of a report from Down Under that has identified a possible link between children who rely on predictive text on their mobile phones and them not exercising their little grey cells enough.

Boffins at Melbourne’s Monash University have suggested that the laziness that predictive text brings with it could make children more impulsive and less thoughtful. Which, in theory, could lead to mistakes later down the line.

“We suspect that using mobile phones a lot, particularly tools like predictive texts for SMS, is training them to be fast but inaccurate. Their brains are still developing so if there are effects then potentially it could have effects down the line, especially given that the exposure is now almost universal,” Professor Michael Abramson, said in an interview with the Telegraph.

“The use of mobile phones is changing the way children learn and pushing them to become more impulsive in the way they behave.”

What sort of mistakes and impulsiveness is on the cards we don’t know. It’s obvious that anything that does the job for us (whether predictive text to stop us typing a whole word or a microwave to cook our food quickly) will make us a bit lazy and less active (either physically or mentally), but I’m not quite sure it is a Sliding Doors-type life changing issue whereby those that don’t use predictive text will somehow go down a completely different and better path.

There’s no doubt that mobile and communications technologies (such as email) have changed our lives for the better. But, there’s a down side to everything.

More than a third of UK teenagers have been bullied via mobile phones or email, according to the Beatbullying charity. Perhaps more worryingly, the form of abuse they’re suffering is so-called ’sex texts’ whereby they’re exposed to sexually explicit images or content. Most often, this harassment is coming from other teenagers, but, in some slightly more disturbing cases, the bullies choosing ’sex texting’ as a method of intimidation are actually adults.

“This is about campaigning for the rights of our young people and for digital safety. We need to address the fact that sexual peer to peer contact is being exponentially facilitated through new technologies,” said Beatbullying’s chief executive Emma –Jane Cross.

“The Byron report made a commitment to protecting our young people in this complicated new online era, the Government has a duty to ensure it meets these recommendations. We need to take series note of what has happened in the US and Australia. To avoid similar cases here, politicians must work together with organisations like Beatbullying to create an intervention and prevention task force in schools and communities.”

She concluded: “This needs to be part of the solution if we are to educate our young people, teachers and families about the consequences of their actions and how to keep safe online as well as offline.”

The meaning of protective parents has been taken to a whole new level thanks to communications technology.

It used to be that worried parents would get their offspring to telephone them or text to say where they were and confirm they were OK. If the children were traveling further afield, then email really came into play.

But a mother worried about her son’s gap year travels has ensured she can keep tabs on him with a GPS device.

Harry Wilder, 19, from Oxford, is wearing a GPS tool from Traakit which reports back within 15ft of his exact location, texting his mum if he deviates from the path previously agreed.

“I feel like I am sort of with Harry on his travels which gives me peace of mind and means he doesn’t have to check in with a phone call,” Harry’s mum told the Daily Mirror newspaper.

“I have no way of knowing if a street in Australia is dangerous but if he was in Bangkok, for example, I could see if he walks in an area which might not be safe and ring or text him.“

Her son, who’s been down under since April, doesn’t seem to bothered by the Big Brother-style antics.

“It has actually worked in my favour because if they can see where I am, I don’t get constant phone calls asking how I am. From a security point of view, it is quite useful and if one ever was in a situation where you couldn’t get hold of him and you needed to speak to him, it would make me feel much happier just knowing where he was,” he told the newspaper.

To keep a watchful eye on her son, Harry’s mum just logs into a website every day and she is furnished with real-time progress updates.

It’s a nice dream. An all-inclusive society where everyone is paying dirt cheap prices for their mobile calls, no matter to whom or when they are.

In the business world, we’re pretty savvy when it comes to making our budgets work for us and getting the best deal on call and data plans. Some consumers are equally as demanding of mobile operators, but others are paying way over the odds without even realising.

That could soon be a picture of the past, however, thanks to a new online comparison tool called BillMonitor, which has just received accreditation from communications watchdog Ofcom.

The tool aims to find the best deal for your usage needs across - based on either an analysis of your bills or a quick and easy tariff search - the big five networks. It was developed by maths boffins at BillMonitor with the help of scientific advisors from the University of Oxford - that’s a whole lot of brain power.

…They’d be the best in the world.

It was unfortunate that technology was the thing that let the electronics giant down during its big press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

After a massive scrum (same thing every year) to get into the conference itself, the lead executive was just hitting his stride when he paused fairly abruptly. An aide rushed to his assistance with an old school paper script and then it was a case of business as usual.

Don’t get me wrong, Samsung announced some cool stuff (Ultra Touch and Blue Earth) during the press conference. It’s just the company was talking up the fact that it’s the only company that can truly ‘do’ convergence due to the breadth of its portfolio (which spans, MP3 players, TVs, cameras, phones and more). If only it designed and developed auto cues too, eh?

It’s that time of year again. I write this while sitting in Starbucks on the Carrer de Pelai in Barcelona. In just a few hours, I’ll be heading off to a Sony Ericsson event to see what the mobile giant has up its sleeves for the coming months and years. Then, there’s a whirlwind of press conferences and meetings over the next few days before heading back to Blighty on Wednesday night.

Yep, you guessed it, today is the eve of Mobile World Congress. The biggest and brightest event in the mobile industry’s calendar.

The masses will be descending on the Fira de Barcelona tomorrow morning, armed with press packs, delegate briefing documents and a collective thirst for mobile knowledge. And I’ll be one of them.

Stay tuned to see what the week ahead holds.

So, Twitter has dropped its SMS offering in the UK because it’s costing the company too much ( http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/218880/twitter-drops-uk-text-message-support.html).

I must admit, I did always wonder how long it would last. It