Here's an orange (warning: large image).
http://www.dailycolorstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Orange-2For-Post-113.jpg
And here is the same orange in 16x.
I don't see any texture.
This is a misunderstanding. Of course you won't see any texture because it's not exaggerated; but a pixel artist will intentionally exaggerate certain features of an icon to make it more recognizable. Doing otherwise just doesn't work that well. A pixel artist can't afford to be too naturalistic or literal.
The rest of your post is good advice, though.
Here's an edit illustrating some of my crits:
* Set the background to neutral gray so that color adjustments are more accurate
* Increase contrast generally
* Texture on orange
* Adjust apple lighting/shape to be better defined
* Sculpt pear more
* reflections on blueberry(? I think this is supposed to be a blueberry -- I got confused after it became a strange sky-blue color in recent versions)
* removed banding in many places
@NeithR: Texturing looks noisy because you are doing noisy textures
As I say and demonstrate above, you need to a) minimize single unconnected pixels (they do look like noise, almost always); make coherent shapes, and b) exaggerate the texture and try to imply its existence with only a few pixels.