In June of 2008, Nokia has announced that it is acquiring full ownership of Symbian to make the operating system open source. Symbian a leading mobile phone operating system in the world is used not only by Nokia mobile phones but by other phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Sharp, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sendo and Sony Ericsson. The decision to take the open source route is one of the biggest if not the biggest open source conversion project. It was a bold move on the part of Nokia. I could just imagine the amount of license agreements that needs to be ironed out in order to open source all of the source code in the mobile operating system.

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With the continued growth of the mobile space, Samsung has announced it’s foray into the mobile operating system space. Samsung has announced it’s own open mobile platform called Bada (means “Ocean” in Korean). Bada joins the already existing mobile OS such as Android, Blackberry OS, iPhone OS, Maemo, Symbian, WebOS and Windows Mobile to name some.

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Version 1.2 of the Palm Pre’s Web OS was accidentally leaked to one of the Pre Central forum members while he was trying to re-install back the standard WebOS. It has several improvements including one in zoom animation and some fixes like saving images from the web browser working in version 1.2. Below is a video. Check out some photos at Pre Central.

It looks like a couple of Android updating issues have cropped up recently. One of them is regarding users of the T-Mobile G1 mobile phone. I4U has posted an article saying that T-Mobile G1 users may not be able to get updates beyond the current Android version 1.5 due to phone memory limitations according to an Android developer. Continue reading …

Wow! This is a shocker. Nokia has bought Symbian several months back with the intent of open sourcing the mobile operating system and using it in its next generation of touch screen based mobile phones. The acquisition cost about 400 million USD and from what I’ve read Nokia is considering to dump the mobile platform in favor of it’s Linux based Maemo open mobile platform. Maybe it’s the reason that leaked info about the next generation N900 Rover tablet is getting a 3.5 radio chip built-in. Continue reading …

One great thing about open source is that creativity of people are unhindered. A lot of upcoming Android based mobile phones will be available in the market pretty soon. Some of these well connected phones will sport a user interface that has been enhanced to provide a better user experience. Of the several planned UI enhancements I’ve seen on the web so far, one of them is really sleek and stands out. Continue reading …

The Inquirer has an exclusive walththrough of the upcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 being dubbed as the Windows Phone operating system. The operating system is running on the new HTC Touch Diamond2. The demo shows off some of the new features of the OS, the Market Place (online app store for mobile phones based on Windows Mobile), A demonstration of the “My Phone” service which allows users to archive their phone data, remotely wipe data on lost or stolen mobile phones based on Windows Phone OS and restore your data to a replacement mobile phone.

All BlackBerry mobile phone users can now start downloading the new BlackBerry AppWorld v1.1 software into their BlackBerry cell phones. One feature of the new AppWorld that stands out is the ability for BlackBerry users to archive the applications they have into a microSD card. Apps on a BlackBerry smartphone is installed in the mobile phone’s flash memory, with the new archiving feature, you can store the app on the microSD™ card and restore it when you want to use it.

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Choice is good!? Not that we don’t have a lot of operating system choices these days. Even so, Google has just announced it’s new operating system project — the Google Chrome OS.

According to Google, the new operating system, which is scheduled to be released next year, will focus on netbooks and desktop PC’s. The operating system will be an open source software based on Linux. Google Chrome OS will focus on lightweight, speed, simplicity and security as the driving force in the creation of the operating system. It looks like Google has already been talking to several manufacturers to come up with netbooks using the OS.

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This is really getting exciting, the upcoming models of connected phones will soon be able to display a web page like this one here at connectedphone.com without having to scroll horizontally. I think this is one of those features that essentially blur the line between what a computer is and what a mobile phone is.

EE Times has written an article that the next iteration of the Android open mobile platform, version 2.0 aka Donut, will support QVGA, HVGA and WVGA resolutions, developer’s revealed in one session. Google developers were reluctant to provide details, but WVGA generally refers to an 800 to 854 x 480 pixel resolution.