Forget the old-fashioned caller ID. A coming wave of “social” mobile phones will tell you everything you ever wanted to know and more about the person calling you.

An application called Robo.to, for the Apple iPhone and handsets that run Google's Android operating system, will this year offer information about callers, including personal videos, photos and their location.

It is an example of the “social address book” – the reinvention of a core handset feature that carriers will try to exploit to earn fresh revenues and win back consumer attention lost to iPhone applications and media companies' services.

With Robo.to, when the phone rings, a user can see a video recorded by the caller as a “status update” that shows their mood and where they are.

The screen can also feature their latest Twitter tweets, name and title from the Linked- In professional network, recent images on the Flickr photo service and a map of their location.

Rey Flemings, chief executive of Particle, Robo.to's parent company, says the service should come into its own in 2010 when phones feature a forward-facing camera for video calls.

Handset makers are also trying to exploit the popularity of social networks to boost their phones' appeal. Motorola's latest phone, the Cliq, features “Motoblur” software that merges tweets, e-mail and Facebook status messages under the address book listings of contacts.

Handset makers aim to meet the priorities of carriers with new capabilities. The merging of information draws users into using more multimedia and data to update networks, increasing revenues.

“Carriers want to help users socialise their address books. That's the big 2010 emphasis as it unlocks so much power,” says an industry executive.