This month’s Custom PC magazine includes a six-page feature on the technologies behind smartphones in addition to my regular ‘Download’ column and news snippets culled from the Bit-Tech website.

Designed to offer a comprehensive yet readable look at smartphone technologies, the piece includes box-outs on the history of British chip giant ARM, a look at each connection generation from 0G to 4G and a comparison of resistive and capacitive touch-screen displays.

Each of the major phone brands are also summarised in their own box-outs – Android, BlackBerry, Apple and Windows Phone all get a mention – while Mozilla’s Seabird concept product is analysed.

It was a fun piece to create; and while the requirement to provide accompanying graphics with publishing rights caused a few sleepless nights Googling frantically, I’m more than pleased with how it turned out.

The ‘Download’ column this month looks at ‘accidental-on-purpose’ leaking of pre-release data from graphics giants AMD and Nvidia, and bemoans the role that technology journalists – myself included – play in pandering to the hype machine.