Nokia has just parted ways with its MeeGo platform, but the Finns are, reportedly, about to add another Linux-based platform with a windy name to its portfolio. Its name will be Meltemi and, unlike MeeGo, it will be designed with entry-level handsets in mind.

Although the company declined to comment on the matter, WSJ is confident that the company will be shifting the efforts of its software developers to lower-end products. Nokia is obviously looking to replace the S40 featurephone interface with a proper OS. Read more »

Skype has updated its Android app, making it possible for 14 more members of the Google OS family to do video calls. That includes a couple of Sony Ericsson smartphones (Live with Walkman and neo V), three LG Optimus droids (2X, 3D and Black), the Japan-bound HTC Shooter, five Motorola handsets (Photon, Droid 3, Bionic and Atrix) as well as a couple of Honeycomb slates (T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Motorola Xoom).

Those 13 new video-capable Android devices join the 27 who got the feature enabled with previous releases of the Skype application. There seem to be no other major improvements brought by the 2.5.0.108 update, but we guess the usual portion of bug-fixes and optimizations was delivered as well. Read more »

Flickr has unveiled two new mobile applications to join its Arsenal. The image and video hosting service has officially landed on Android and the company has introduced a new Flickr Photo Session feature to celebrate that.

The Android Flickr client is pretty standard affair – it lets you take photos, edit them, and quickly upload them to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter or wherever else you see fit. It also improves the browsing and navigation, making it easier for you to keep an eye of your (and others’) photo libraries. Read more »

If you’ve got a Symbian phone you are probably eagerly waiting for the Belle update to hit your phone. We did try to help make the wait more bearable with our detailed Belle review and now Nokia seems to have something more for you.

The company has created an interactive Symbian Belle demo that you can enjoy right from the comfort of your Facebook account. It even uses your contacts and everything. Read more »

If you are a BlackBerry PlayBook owner you should be eager to get the Tablet OS 2.0 because of the promised Android player. It will allow you to run native Android applications on the BlackBerry tablet.

Well, you should hold your excitement just yet. RIM engineers have explained the limitations of that Android player and you may not like what you are about to read. Read more »

We have an LG Optimus 7 that’s been lying aimlessly around the office ever since we finished off its review back in last November. It was still stuck on the original WP7 build since it always refused to update. We were really starting to think there was something wrong with it but honestly, we didn’t really care enough to research it.

Until yesterday that is, when the Windows Phone Mango update finally went live and we all turned our heads to the forgotten Optimus 7 up there on the shelf. And being the lucky boy that I am (I’m the rookie around here), I got the nasty job of finding a way to update it no matter what.

Well, I’m telling you, I was at loose ends with this task. I spent several hours of my time reading forums and trying what not.. until… the solution just popped up in my RSS reader. Thanks to this great tip, I managed to get our Optimus 7 go through two separate updates before I finally got to the coveted Mango as well (and saved my job along the way). Read on to see how. Read more »

Today Sony Ericsson announced that another block buster game will be landing exclusively on its Xperia PLAY smartphone. Square Enix will be bringing Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light to the gaming-centered droid in November.

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Of course, that exclusivity is only valid if you are talking about the Android platform. The title has been available on iOS-running devices for quite a while now. Yet the developer has assured us that with the rich set of gaming controls available on the XPERIA Play this will be the best place to enjoy the game.

We guess that the Android exclusivity of the Lara Croft and Guardian of Light will be limited to a few months with the game becoming available for the other devices on the platform after that.

There’s still nothing mentioned about the pricing of the title, but it shouldn’t be higher than the $2.99 that it costs on iOS.

Source

There are some good news and some bad news for the MeeGo fans out there. The good news is that their platform isn’t dead, despite Nokia giving up on its development. The bad news is that MeeGo will have to go through another transformation in order to live on. So it’s so long to MeeGo, long live to Tizen.

Latest news is that Intel has finally found the partner it was looking for to help it shape MeeGo in Samsung. The Koreans will join Intel and The Linux Foundation in the development of Tizen – a new open-source project, of which Meego will become a part of. Read more »

Mozilla has just released the latest version of its Firefox browser for Android. Firefox 7 is immediately available in the Android market bringing improved copy and paste functionality along with performance updates.

The changelog also includes built-in language detection on first run and new WebSockets APIs, which should allow web developers to build better web apps and sites. Read more »

For all the whining that goes on, waiting for carrier specific updates or other bits of goodness to hit, sometimes long after the vanilla content has made it into the wild, we have to hand it to Samsung.

Those in charge of releasing the source kernel for their devices are really on the ball right now. I’m talking overtly efficient, as the source kernel for the AT&T flavored Galaxy S II is now available and we’re still waiting on the device itself. Read more »

OpenMobile’s ACL should now be your go-to for apps on your MeeGo device. ACL stands for Application Compatibility Layer and it leverages both the runtime environment and the Dalvik Virtual Machine used by Android to allow support for 100% of the Android Market’s apps.

The video below shows a demonstration of the ACL running an x86 MeeGo tablet, laden with Android apps. Read more »

The headline may come as a shock to some but it’s true. It seems in an effort to make a great gaming phone, Sony Ericsson forgot to add some basic features in the Xperia PLAY that are expected in a phone that costs as much as it does.

Thankfully, the error has been corrected and after the latest firmware update, the Xperia PLAY is now capable of recording videos in 720p resolution, that too with continuous auto-focus. Read more »

Dropbox has become a popular third-party solution for cloud storage and file management, allowing users to sync files between specialized folders, across OS’s and more recently mobile platforms.

Currently the service is available in mobile form for iOS (as an alternative to iCloud), BBOS and Android users, but this recent partnership looks to sweeten the deal for those running the latest HTC kit. Read more »

The much anticipated WP 7.5 update – Mango is scheduled to start rolling out in a week or two says Eric Hautala (General Manager, Customer Experience Engineering at Microsoft).

When the update is released users will also get some model-specific software from the manufacturers of their smartphones. That is required as Mango is tuned to work with each phone and its apps perfectly. The update is said to arrive in the next couple of weeks . Read more »

Adobe announced that the upcoming versions of their Flash and AIR platforms will be out in October and published a laundry list of improvements. One of the biggest changes is the hardware acceleration of both 2D and 3D graphics. Adobe claims gives 1000x performance increase compared the old versions, which will allow devs to create “console-quality games”.

Flash 11 and AIR 3 will run on every platform you can imagine – Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, including 64-bit support for these OSes, but also Android, iOS, BlackBerry’s tablet OS and connected TVs. Read more »