Opera launched new versions of its mobile web browsers for pretty much every mobile operating system imaginable today… except Android. And that’s only because the Android apps received the same update a few weeks ago.

But if you’re using iOS, BlackBerry, S60, or J2ME you can grab Opera Mini 6.5 for your device. Opera Mobile 11.5 is also available for S60. And MeeGo users can check out a new Opera Mobile Labs 11.5 release for tablets and netbooks.

The key difference between Opera Mobile and Mini is that Opera Mini relies on remote servers to compress data before sending web pages and other content to your device, while Opera Mobile uses your device’s hardware to render web content (although you can turn on Opera Turbo mode to enable the same sort of compression).

The biggest change in the new versions is a tool that helps you visualize how much data you’ve used — and how much data you’ve saved by using Opera’s compression technology. Opera has also made it easier to bookmark a website quickly by tapping a star in the URL bar. Sure, that feature is pretty common in desktop web browsers, but you don’t see it on many mobile browsers yet.

Nimbuzz offers mobile apps that let you chat with or make free calls to other Nimbuzz users, or cheap calls to phone numbers. The iPhone app supports video calls, while you can also make voice-only calls from the Nimbuzz Android and Symbian apps.

Now the company has also  launched a PC app for Mac or Windows which means you can place a call from a desktop or laptop computer to your Nimbuzz contacts.

Sure, Nimbuzz is hardly the first company to offer this feature. Skype has had a cross-platform video app for ages — and Skype Linux as well as Windows and OS X.

But if your contacts are using Nimbuzz rather than Skype for one reason or another, it’s nice to know you can now call them from your desk without pulling out a phone first.

The new Nimbuzz PC app is available as a free download. You can also use it as a cross-platform instant messenger app. It supports Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Windows Live, Yahoo, and AOL messenger services, among others.

Nimbuzz will be rolling out video calling support for Android and Symbian soon as well.

via IntoMobile

Symbian’s days may be numbered, but Nokia has promised to continue supporting the operating system through 2016, even as it gets ready to start releasing smartphones with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 in the future. But apparently the partnership between the two companies isn’t a one-way street. Microsoft has also developed software that could make Symbian a heck of a lot more useful soon.

Starting soon users with devices running Symbian Belle will be able to install a new Microsoft Apps Suite. That includes:

• Microsoft Document Connection is for viewing documents on your mobile device. It supports email attachments and SharePoint documents.
• Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast lets you view PC presentations on a mobile device.
• Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile is a communications tool with support for IM, voice, and web conferencing.
• Microsoft OneNote will sync notes with users’ SkyDrive accounts.

Sure, the Symbian operating system is on its way out. But if you’ve already got a Nokia C6-01, C7, E7, or N8 you can now download the latest version of the doomed mobile operating system to breathe a little new life into your device while we wait for Nokia to chuck to Symbian to the side and start selling phones with Windows Phone 7.

The Symbian Anna software update adds an attractive new user interface, an improved on-screen keyboard that works in landscape or portrait mode and which doesn’t cover the whole screen as you type, and a faster web browser.

There’s also support for Near Field Communications technology if you’re using the Nokia C7, and better support for data encryption.

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Nokia will start offering smartphones running Windows Phone 7 in the US and other markets later this year. But for the next year or two the company will continue to offer phones running the Symbian operating system as well as cheaper “feature phones” with web browsing, chat, and other internet apps — it just won’t offer them in the US.

All Things D reports that once Nokia starts selling Windows Phone 7 devices in the States, it will pull out of the Symbian and feature phone spaces.

The single-minded focus on Windows Phone 7 for the US also helps explain why Nokia has no plans to launch the N9 smartphone running MeeGo software in the United States.

Symbian phones were never very popular in the States anyway. The operating system was one of the dominant smartphone platforms in Europe up until recently, but the OS has been losing market share to iOS, Android, and other platforms in recent years.

Nokia has already promised to offer support and software updates for Symbian phones for the next 5 years, so if you’re currently using a Symbian smartphone you might not need to replace it anytime soon.

App store GetJar has announced that it’s garnered over 2 billion total downloads. GetJar sports a large catalog of free applications for pretty much every smartphone platform except iOS, including BlackBerry, webOS, Android, Symbian, and even HTML5 web apps.

GetJar offers more than 150,000 apps in total, and the company has managed to score a few Android exclusives. The company’s app store was the first to offer Angry Birds or Cut the Rope before they were offered in the Android Market and other stores — although that hasn’t always worked out well. GetJar couldn’t handle all the traffic from the Angry Birds launch and developers Rovio made a version of the game available in the Android Market the same day.

Facebook is GetJar’s top app, with over 100 million downloads reported.

To put GetJar’s success in the context of the major application incorporated offerings, Apple’s App Store surpassed 15 billion downloads in late June. The Android Market topped 4.5 billion earlier this month. For a small, totally free, alternative application store, GetJar has been reasonably successful. The company credits its growth to its “open approach to the app marketplace” and giving developers for all platforms “a free space to distribute their applications.”

via IntoMobile

The iPhone Dev Team has released a software update which you can use to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 5 beta 4. Apple released the latest beta version of its upcoming mobile operating system to developers yesterday.

Redsn0w 0.9.8b4 is available for Mac or Windows. In order to jailbreak your device you’ll need to connect your iPhone or iPod to a computer using a USB cable and follow the instructions in the software, choosing the iOS 5 beta 4 IPSW file when prompted.

The result is a tethered jailbreak. That means you’ll need to plug in your device and run redsn0w again any time you reboot or you’ll lose your jailbreak.

Jailbreaking an iOS device allows you to install the Cydia Store for apps that aren’t available from the official App Store. So far it’s been possible to jailbreak every beta version of iOS, which bodes well for the anyone hoping to be able to jailbreak the full operating system once it’s released later this year.

Sure, Nokia plans to switch from Symbian to Windows Phone 7 for its future smartphones. But those phones won’t be ready to go until next year and the complete transition could take a full two years. In the meantime Nokia is continuing to do a little work on the Symbian mobile operating system and today the company announced that a handful of phones will ship with the new Symbian Anna interface starting in July.

The phones that will get the new software are the Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia C7, and Nokia C6-01. Nokia will also make Anna available as a download for customers that already have those phones in August.

Symbian Anna includes a faster web browser, better text input, a more powerful map applications and new icons. The update also adds business communications and security features, mobile check-ins with Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, and an enhanced social client.