It may be half a decade old, but don't lie -- you still whip your Treo 650 out from time to time, toss on some jean shorts and pretend that the size of your stub is synonymous with the big times. If we just rung your bell, you owe it to yourself to have a peek at the video past the break. There are no step-by-step instructions to accompany it (they're out there, trust us), but man, you can just see the life seeping back into it as the code scrolls down and Android grows seconds closer to booting. It's glorious, really.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Contrary to popular belief (and reports from yesterday), it seems that Samsung actually isn't planning to ditch Symbian anytime soon -- or at least it's not prepared to tell the public. Shortly after announcing its own Bada OS, rumors began to fly that Symbian support would fade in the near future; according to a company representative speaking with Mobile Burn, however, that's simply not true. To quote:

"Samsung is an initial member of Symbian Foundation and continues to cooperate with Symbian Foundation. At the same time, Samsung supports various existing open operating systems including Symbian, Linux, Android, and Windows Mobile. To provide more choices to meet consumers' many different tastes and preferences, we will continue our 'multi-OS' strategy."

'Course, just because it's "continuing" to support Symbian doesn't mean that the hammer won't fall tomorrow, but at least for now it seems the Big S is safe from seeing one of its own jump ship. Phew.

Ballmer may have wanted it to be out yesterday, but it looks like the initial release of Windows Mobile 7 may now finally, actually be in sight. According to ZDNet Taiwan, the mobile OS is now on track for a release to OEMs for testing (the so-called "Maldives" program) sometime in the first quarter of 2010, and will be launched publicly sometime in the third quarter of the year (or about a year after the release of Windows Mobile 6.5) -- all of which more or less lines up with earlier rumors of a release to manufacturing in Spring 2010. If past history is any indication, however, it seems likely that the earliest builds of the OS could be circulating around the usual channels well before that -- probably right on the heels of the release to OEMs.

[Via WMPoweruser.com]

Because what the world needs now is yet another mobile operating system, Samsung has announced its foray into the field with Bada. Not much to reveal at this point other than some key PR speak: the name means "ocean" in Korean, the company's committed to "a variety of open platforms" in mobile industry and it plans this to be easy to integrate / customize based on carrier's experience. All real news should be coming sometime in December, when Sammy is saying it'll have a London launch event and reveal the SDK. Full presser after the break.

Man, remember LiMo? Amazingly, there are some 40 handsets on the market today based on the platform, but precisely none of them are boasting a profile as high as any one of the Android smartphones also on store shelves. As Motorola scrambles to re-make itself and prove that its CLIQ is a force to be reckoned with in the burgeoning Android phone sector, the company has also decided to remove itself as a "founding member" of the LiMo Foundation. The company recently noted that the outfit was sliding down to "associate member," stating that "at this time it feels that the Android platform gives it a richer, more consistent foundation with strong support for the ecosystem and developer community." That's a pretty damning statement to our ears, but we won't go so far as to call the breakup between Moto and LiMo official; we're guessing "it's complicated" would be entirely more appropriate here.

[Via phonescoop]

Sure, Android is a brand new operating system at a seemingly huge disadvantage to other, more entrenched household names like Windows Mobile or Symbian. Well, all that could change -- at least according to research just released by Gartner, Inc. The company's report claims that Android could claim upwards of 14 percent of the global mobile operating system share by 2012 (it now has less than 2 percent). This would make it the number two (behind Symbian OS) phone OS in the world. The main factors behind this surge, according to Gartner's report, are the fact that Android is a Google-backed proposition, a company which will continue to offer more cloud-computing services and apps which will increasingly draw users into its web. They also note Android's "blend" of app heaviness (making it like the iPhone) combined with the task-mastering of Windows Mobile and BlackBerry smartphones. We'll let you know when Grandma Elly has a Sholes -- that's the real test of success and popularity in our world.

Eager to get your pulsing palms around Nokia's N900? Yeah, we feel your pain. As if the phone itself and Maemo 5 haven't been talked about enough, Nokia itself has published a new video showcasing the Mozilla-based web browser. Only time will tell if said browser lives up to the hype, but if the video posted up after the break is any indication, we'd say things are looking good. Six minutes may be a long time to look at something you can't touch, but we're guessing you'd listen to six minutes of the host saying anything. Have a listen -- you'll see.

[Via HotHardware, thanks dafrabbit]

Unfortunately for those on the hunt for nitty-gritty details, the headline here just about says it all. In a shockingly vague release from Microsoft, the Redmond-based giant has announced that the first batch of Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets will launch on October 6th, or around three weeks after its Zune HD. If we're reading this correctly, it looks as if this round of cellies will be the first to be called "Windows phones," and aside from promising "new customer experiences" and superior browsing capabilities, they'll also feature Windows Marketplace for Mobile (an app store), Microsoft My Phone (a backup service) and Office Mobile. As for what phones we'll see, all we're told is that HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Toshiba, Sony Ericsson and a few other big time players are onboard, with just about every carrier in the world (save for T-Mobile USA) also voicing their support.

[Via MobileTechWorld]

Update: AT&T has informed us that starting on September 14th, customers with Wi-Fi-enabled Windows Mobile smartphones and unlimited / other qualifying data plans will receive unlimited access to AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide.

Looks like Apple's just released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5, a little over one week after its last revision. That's about half the time they've put between the previous updates -- seems the boys in Cupertino are really starting to churn these things out. You know the drill by now, we don't know yet what the update entails, but we'll tell you when we find out. Oh, and just like last time, it appears iTunes 8.2 is required.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Update: We can confirm that MMS "support" can no longer be turned on in Settings (in quotes because we could never get it working in previous betas anyhow), and we're hearing that trickery that allowed tethering to be enabled with the previous iTunes 8.2 build has been patched. Aww, you're no fun, Apple... thanks, Rene!

We've been waiting on pins and needles for confirmation, but it looks like an all-too-vague Reuters report actually is referring to the Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60. After a senior company official noted that a "Linux-based operating system" would be used in one of its two smartphones, we pinged Garmin directly to cut through the mystery and get down to the meat. What we were told was this: "The Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60 has a proprietary Linux-based OS, and we're still working towards delivering the nüvifone G60 in the first half of 2009 in limited markets, which haven't been named yet." Of course, the tandem is quickly running out in months in that window, so we're pretty jazzed to be all up on top of an imminent release. Now, if only we knew where those patience pills made off to...

[Via Boy Genius Report]

There's a mild chance that Sony Ericsson CEO Hideki Komiyama has been hitting the sauce just a wee bit too hard of late, but we're guessing it's mostly just an inability to comprehend his own company's situation. As SE pushes out awful report after awful report, the company's head honcho has just revealed that it'll be some time yet before it hops on the Android bandwagon -- as if it really has time on its side. In an interview with Reuters, he stated: "[Going Android] does require a lot of evaluation, as well as a lot of testing, a lot of acceptance from a consumer viewpoint, and there is still some time to go." He did confess that "looking ahead," he viewed it as an "important operating system," but he definitely gave no indication that we'd see an Android-based SE handset in the near future. Which is strange, really, considering that we'd already heard it would produce one during this calender year...

At Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 preview event last Tuesday, Sir Scott explained that it was "working with carriers around the world" to build tethering support in. We can't say for sure what that means, but it certainly sounds like it'll be up to the operator to activate (or not) iPhone tethering when OS 3.0 is launched to the masses. Pocket-lint took the opportunity to ping both O2 and Vodafone over in the UK, though neither company seemed particularly interested in giving a solid answer. The former simply stated that it was "working [with Apple] to ensure new features, including tethering, are fully supported on O2's network," but wasn't "making any announcements yet." The latter simply proclaimed that it was "discussing the situation" but didn't have anything to confirm. To us, it sounds like both carriers will eventually allow it, but we aren't too sure they'll be doing so with no extra fees woven in.

Palm fans hoping webOS gets the same kind of upgrade attention Apple's been lavishing on the iPhone take note: a deck of presentation slides has revealed plans to recognize revenue from webOS products over two years using subscription accounting, so Palm can "periodically provide new software features free or charge" to customers of its "webOS products, including the recently announced Pre." If that didn't make any sense to the non-suits out there, just remember this bit of number magic is why Apple treats iPhone and iPod touch users differently when it comes to updates -- the iPod doesn't get 3.0 for free because Apple doesn't handle the math this way. At any rate, number crunchers and MAC students can head on down to the read link for lots more invigorating stuff.

Apple's done a decent job of implementing features that we've all been clamoring for into its forthcoming OS 3.0, and aside from copy and paste, there's probably no one single feature add bigger than this. You heard right -- multimedia messaging (MMS) is at long last coming to the iPhone 3G (sorry, first-gen iPhone owners) after years of dealing strictly with SMS. During the keynote, Apple was pretty remarkably short with details, simply noting that MMS "support" would be added. Frankly, we don't expect anything mind-blowing; it'll probably look a lot like the current SMS setup, and it'll definitely make AT&T happy when you start firing away picture messages without first subscribing to an unlimited messaging plan.

Update: Apple's official PR on the subject has given us just a bit more to chew on. We're told that MMS will enable iPhone 3G users to "send and receive photos, contacts, audio files and locations with the Messages app," hinting that Apple may just smash MMS and SMS together into a single 'Messages' app in OS 3.0. Also of note, owners will also be able to "forward and delete multiple messages."