HTC and Samsung took their bitter rivalry to Twitter on Friday with an unsavoury spat that saw the former accuse the latter of 'paying students to write fake reviews' of the competition's products.

It all started after Thursday night's Mobile Awards ceremony at which HTC took the 'Hottest Phone of 2013' gong for the HTC One handset, which is also currently TechRadar's number one phone in the world.

From its UK Twitter account, HTC tweeted: "Last night we won the 'Hottest phone of 2013' at the Mobile Awards #HTCOne, Ouch @SamsungMobileUK"

To which the Samsung Mobile UK guys fired back: "@htc_uk That's okay guys, our arms were full with the other three awards we took home last night. You can have that one!"

Gettin' nasty

After that it got straight-up nasty, with HTC's UK PR team (perhaps nursing sore heads after a night quaffing cheap awards ceremony bubbly), swinging its handbag with this potentially-libellous accusation.

The company wrote: "@SamsungMobileUK all those students you paid to write fake reviews of your competitors finally paid off. Pay rise, maybe?"

Wow. Got any proof guys? If so, by all means spill the beans...

That left LG to wade in with a picture of the late British film director Michael Winner in his role from an insurance ad campaign along with a modification of the commercial's catchphrase: "Calm down dears, it's only a phone."

The LG tweet also featured a link to the LG Nexus 4 phone, ensuring its name wasn't forgotten within the conversation, and that was the end of the matter.

Pugnacious

HTC has been pretty pugnacious towards Samsung on social media lately, with plenty of tweets mocking the Galaxy S4 launch event, which was admittedly pretty mockable.

It seems the company has been given the green light from the Taiwan for a more fiesty Twitter strategy as it seeks to reign in Samsung's giant sales lead.

That's all well and good, but as our mother always told us, 'If you can't take it back, don't dish it out.'

The first snap of the rumoured Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom cameraphone has reportedly emerged online, ahead of the company's mobile event in London on June 20.

The seemingly well-connected SamMobile site has received a photo of the purported device that, as we'd been led to believe, looks like a compact camera spliced in half and glued to the back of a Galaxy S4.

The hybrid device is thought to be the follow up to last year's Samsung Galaxy Camera with the added bonus of being able to make phone calls and utilise the entire cellular functionality of a smartphone.

It's said to be packing Android Jelly Bean, sitting beneath Samsung's own TouchWiz UI, while a 1.6GHz dual-core processor is rumoured to be powering the device and its 4.3-inch display.

Last of its kind?

Like the Galaxy Camera, which impressed our reviewers upon launch in 2012, the Galaxy S4 Zoom is thought to pack a 16-megapixel sensor with, like the names suggests, a decent sized optical zoom.

The report claims this'll be the last of the Galaxy S4-branded devices when it arrives, following the recent launch of the Galaxy S4 Mini and the Galaxy S4 Active.

The Korean giant is holding a launch event in London in less than two weeks where the Galaxy S4 Zoom could conceivably make its debut.

Do you think the pic is genuine? Let us know in the comments section below.