Picking up on a quote in the post I put up on the release of the (Android-powered) Samsung Galaxy, O2 (NYSE: TEF) now seems to be the place to go for smartphone exclusives:

“O2 has become the home of smartphones and launching our first Android-powered phone with Samsung is a key part of this,” said Steve Alder, General Manager Devices, Telefónica Europe.

This got me thinking – exactly how many smartphones OSs do they, or will they shortly, support? Well, by reckoning it’s:

• Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) OS – iPhone
• WinMo – O2 XDA Zest and Guide
• RIM OS – BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) Curve, Bold, 8310
• Series 60 – Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N86, N73 Refurb
• Android – Samsung Galaxy

and… soon enough….

• WebOS – Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre

Dang, that’s a lot of OSs right there! Let’s consider that a snapshot now, and then re-visit in a year’s time to see how things have changed. My prediction is that WinMo might be gone, as may Palm be (unless there’s a raft of devices that come out sporting WebOS), and both RIM and Android will increase. I’d imagine Apple and Series60 might remain the same.

What say you, IntoMobile readership?!

Boingo Wireless announced that it has joined the Symbian Foundation. As a member of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK)-led group, Boingo gains the “immediate right to license the Symbian Foundation platform, royalty free and without source code fees; participate in the governance of the foundation; and take part in joint marketing and branding campaigns.” As an end users, this means absolutely nothing to you. However, I’ve no doubts we’ll see Boingo’s clients being released for every Symbian version in the future.

Commenting on the move, Symbian’s David Wood said: “Symbian is pleased to welcome Boingo as the latest member of the fast-growing Symbian Foundation. Boingo is widely recognised as a leading enabler of mobile WiFi access. We look forward to seeing their innovative use of Symbian platform assets, and to their participation in community activities.”

We’ve seen companies making augmented reality apps for the iPhone and Android. What about Symbian S60? After all, it’s the single most popular smartphone platform worldwide, and some of the devices on the market have all the hardware required for this to work — i.e. GPS, accelerometer and compass. On that note, I’m glad to report that the first such application is in development as we speak. It’s called ARound Project and just as you would expect from these kind of apps, it overlays the image stream generated from the camera with markers of POIs around the user.

The good thing about it is that it’s plugin-ready, allowing third-party developers to customize the application at different levels. The bad thing, however, is that it’s still not ready for the prime time. This doesn’t mean you can’t give it a try, quite the contrary. Be aware, though, that not many device are supported at the moment, and the list includes Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N97, as well as several S60 3.2 devices such as the Nokia 6210 Navigator, 6710 Navigator, 5730 XpressMusic, and N86.

The screenshots we’ve seen look promising, though I must add I haven’t tried the app myself. If anyone of you folks give it a try, don’t hesitate to drop us a comment…

Lara Croft is back at Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s N-Gage in the title called Tomb Raider: Underworld. This time the adventurous beauty aims to retrieve Thor’s Hammer, and it’s your job to help her do that. Unfortunately, the new game (despite the fact that it’s new), is a simple N-Gage port of a limited Symbian version of the Underworld game released last year. That’s a shame, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be bored — quite the contrary, the game is super fun to play, at least for hard core Lara Croft fans. Rest of us will (or not?) give it a try, play it for few days and, well, find something better to do.

If this is something of interest to you, search for it in the “Showroom” tab, unce you update the N-Gage client…

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) doesn’t give up on its older phone models and it’s a good thing. On that note, the Finnish giant unveiled the latest update for its N85 handset. Three of us — Will, Simon and I — had these babies at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, earlier this year, where we use them to instantly share photos with IntoMobile audience.

Anyway, the update packs two important things: USB charging is improved, and once you update you’ll also find that Contacts include Ovi features that allow you to locate your friends and receive updates on what they are doing. You can also chat with your friends and share your favorite places with them. In addition, I assume some of the bugs have been fixed and the phone is now more stable as a result.

To update, simply type *#0000# on the home screen or go to Device Manager. Select “Options” > “Check for updates” and follow the on screen prompts. Alternatively, you can do the same thing through the Nokia Software Updater. As usual, we advise you to backup your phone prior to pushing the trigger…

After we caught the press shot of the N900 Rover, photo of another upcoming Nokia (NYSE: NOK) device found its way to the Interwebs. It’s the already-previewed, approved-by-the-FCC – Nokia N97 Mini! Nokia World is coming within a week when we’ll have much more to report about it. In the meantime, a bit larger image is available from here…

[Via: BeGeek.fr]

Symbian Foundation is stronger for one more member company – EB, Elektrobit Corporation, developer of embedded technology solutions for automotive and wireless industries. Under the deal, EB will have a seat on the Release Council, which coordinates the integration of contributions to the Symbian source code into stable and timely platform and tools releases.

Commenting on the move, EB’s vice president of Mobile Device Solutions, Petri Toljamo, said: “At EB, we master the lifecycle of mobile device designs — from platform and reference designs to products, their variants and product maintenance. This coupled with a decade of expertise in carrying out challenging Symbian projects, and our strength in system level understanding – covering both software and hardware design – will enable us to help the Symbian community in their quest to bring Symbian platform-based products to market. We are proud to be a Symbian member, and believe we can dynamically support developers across the wireless value chain, as collectively, we work toward developing new platforms and devices that enrich end-users’ mobile experience.”

The popular multi-network instant messaging client for Symbian S60 smartphones (and other platforms), Palringo, has been recently updated to better sing along touch-enabled S60 5th edition devices. Version 1.1.0 is more responsive than the previous release, and also packs tactile feedback support.

In addition, support for new account registrations is also included in the mix, hence making web registration obsolete. Moreover, Palringo now includes support for more languages and it also fixes quite a few bugs reported by the users.

Notice to S60 3rd edition device owners – you don’t have to update, it’s the “touch thing,” only.

For the record, Palringo integrates virtually all popular IM platforms — including AOL’s AIM, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Gadu Gadu, ICQ, Jabber and Windows Live Messenger — into a single application, putting all your IM contacts in a single presence-aware list.

[Via: SymbianFreak]

Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s native YouTube client for S60 has been updated — it’s now in the version 2.2.17 — to work with Symbian S60 5th edition smartphones such as the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N97, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Samsung i8910 OmniaHD. As a result, now you can watch videos in full-screen mode. Moreover, the new version of the app also adds more languages and countries to the mix: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Sweden.

But, and there’s always some “but”, the YouTube client still doesn’t allow users to log in and access their favorites and comment on clips. Hopefully, we’ll see this included in the next release.

In the meantime, if you own some of the devices mentioned above, point a web browser on your mobile phone to m.google.com and take it from there…

[Via: AllAboutSymbian]

I’ve waited with this article for quite some time now, trying to find good arguments to suggest our readers to go on and grab the N97, but honestly I couldn’t. Again, this is not to say the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N97 is a bad device – it’s just too expensive for what it offers.

Sure there’s 32GB of built-in storage, but I’m sure people would appreciate more the 4GB version for 200 bucks/euros/pounds less. Unfortunately, that kind of N97 doesn’t exist.

Plus and again unfortunately, that’s not the only bad thing about the N97, as I pointed in my previous article. That keyboard, slow CPU/insufficient RAM, plus the user interface are the main points for NOT buying the device. Keyboard especially, since we all know Nokia knows how to make decent keyboards from their other models such as the E75, E90, E71, and so on. On the same note, from the leaked photos of the so called N97 mini, we see it will come with similar keys which is a bad thing. Waiting for the first Maemo phone is all that high-end Nokia handset users can do at this stage, or at least that’s my take.

Anyway, the summary is – don’t buy the N97! It has all the bells and whistles of the high-end device (GPS, WiFi, compass, 5 megapixel camera, etc), but all that could be made to work in a much better way. Replacing a CPU is one thing that could make a huge difference and make the device respond much faster — but that would kill the margins. This way, Nokia kills its fans, which is a sad thing. Hopefully, the upcoming N900 Rover will be a completely different story — can’t wait to give it a try.