Last night Andy Rubin, vice president of Mobile at Google, posted a tweet on Twitter that Google is now registering 500,000 Android device activations everyday. The Android adoption, however, is faster in the smartphone category and the tablets appear to be only a small percentage of these activations.

The iOS devices activation figures, on the other hand, include all the devices in the Apple bouquet including iPad, iPod and iPhone. “Combining iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, we reached just under 189 million cumulative iOS device sales through the end of the March quarter,” Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer told investors earlier.

The new announcement from Andy Rubin has come about seven months after he earlier tweeted that 300,000 Android phones were being activated every day.

Honeycomb, the tablet optimized version of Android was unveiled in December, along with the launch of Motorola Xoom. In summer, Google usually faces some competition from Apple which releases a new version of iPhone at this time, but this year Apple has said nothing on the iPhone front. The race between the two companies continues to be tight, the Google strategy of working with numerous hardware companies has enabled it to increase sales at a fast clip.

Spice Mobile, now called S Mobility, has launched Transformer phone. It has also tied up with one of the largest movie franchises in the world, Transformers 3 &#151 Dark of the Moon.

Matching the sci-fi technology of the Autobots in the movie, the phone too transforms from a bar to a touch phone. The phone will have a keypad, which is an attachment that you can remove to make it a touch-only device.

This handset will have pre-embedded Transformers 3 content such as video, wallpapers etc. and will be branded with the Autobot logo.

The phone has a 2.4 inch touchscreen, a 1.3 Megapixel camera, 8 GB expandable memory, FM, MP3 player, FM transmitter and stereo Bluetooth, GPRS, WAP and Java. It is available in yellow, red and white colours.

Kunal Ahooja, chief executive officer, S Mobility, said, “With its form changing capability, we have yet again tried to offer a product that will appeal to the ever trendy youth since it is as per their requirement and affordability. The tie up with Transformers 3 movie is further expected to raise its appeal quotient.”

Transformer costs Rs 4,600. The handset is available across India at more than 50,000 retailers including the Spice Hotspot retail network, which has more than 750 stores.

With the announcement of the Nokia-Microsoft tie up many people thought that the future of Symbian was sealed, but Nokia might just have totally different plans for its operating system as it gears up to launch four new smartphones running on Symbian and powered by 1 GHz processors.

This news comes at a time when Nokia has decided to outsource Symbian related activities to Accenture in October this year.

Flashfly, a Thai website, has even revealed images and specifications of the Symbian smartphones that Nokia plans to launch.

The four Symbian smartphones in Nokia’s lineup are Nokia 701, 700, 600 and 500, which are codenamed Helen, Zeta, Cindy and Fate, respectively.

Nokia 701 and 700, along with a 1 GHz processor, will feature the upcoming version of Symbian, called Belle. Along with the new operating system the new smartphone will also get the Ovi Browser version 8.1 offering better and richer web browsing alongwith native Flash support.

On the other hand it is expected that Nokia 600 and 500 will be based on Symbian Anna, and one of these could be the upcoming 1 GHz-based S40 smartphone we had reported about a couple of days back.

It may be recalled that some time after the S60^3 we saw the recent launch of Symbian Anna, the official successor of S60. Immediately after launching Anna Nokia has started thinking of the next step, and that is Belle, which will be the official successor of Symbian Anna.

Even though Nokia might be focusing more on the new Windows based smartphones as of now, information available in the public domain suggests there are ambitious plans for Symbian’s future.

Chinese search company Baidu is working on an Android clone. Baidu has already created a Twitter-like application for the Chinese market, and such a practice is not uncommon among Chinese firms.

According to everythingandroid Baidu, a company listed on the New York stock exchange had been growing very fast, and is perfectly capable of developing a mobile operating system. It is indeed developing its own mobile operating system which is similar to Android.

The new OS will not be an overlay, like HTC Sense or Samsung touchwhiz, which are user interfaces sitting on top of Android. What Baidu is purportedly working on is a clone of Android, to be marketed against Android in China under the name Qiushi.

Android itself is built using Linux, an open source operating system, but that has been done legally. What Baidu is apparently doing can be challenged as an intellectual property violation.

However, Baidu can avert that situation but changing bits a pieces and claiming to have built its OS on Linux.

If indeed this new OS is built, it is likely that it will find its way into India, as the Indian market is flooded with Chinese phones, marketed by Indian mobile phone companies.

This new OS will give Indian companies the opportunity to bring smartphone capabilities at even cheaper prices, and to make it a win-win situation for the Indian consumer.

However, Baidu hasn’t confirmed that it is indeed working on an operating system at all, simply stating that the project in question is a mobile ad product.

Nokia has big plans to raise its Series 40 handsets for matching them with mainstream 1 GHz processor-bearing smartphones. South African blog Excellular managed to capture blurry images of a Nokia 600 handset codenamed Cindy that features Symbian Anna user interface. Nokia 600 Cindy seems to have a 3.2 inch capacitive touchscreen display and may eventually get launched as Nokia N6.

According to the specifications leaked to Thai website FlashFly, Nokia 600 Cindy will have a 1 GHz processor and 5 Megapixel camera.

The device will also come with a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip and built-in FM radio. Some apps, such as Skype, Shazam, YouTube, F-Secure, Vlingo and PDF reader will come pre-installed on the handset.

It is expected that the handset will support 3G networks and will be attractively priced &#151 targeting the youth.

No official word on the brand name or model number of the leaked device has been announced. Considering the state of the leak and the device, you may expect this handset to show up by the end of this year or maybe early next year.

The Google Android team is working on its next flagship device, which is to be launched by the end of this year. This smartphone will be the first handset to feature the Android Ice Cream Sandwich update. BoyGeniusReport was tipped, stating that the phone is likely to be branded as Nexus Prime and that it will be Google’s third flagship device after Nexus One and Nexus S. Nexus Prime is to have a dual core 1.5 GHz processor, and will probably display 720p resolution on a Super Amoled HD screen.

According to BoyGeniusReport, Nexus Prime will run on a dual core 1.5 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 processor. This processor is capable of supporting full 1080p HD video playback and 1080p stereoscopic 3D. To compliment that, the 1.5 GHz processor will be coupled with PowerVR SGX540 graphics that will power the next major Android update, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich. Nexus Prime will not have a custom interface and will deliver a “plain vanilla” Android experience just like the Nexus S and Nexus One did.

Google’s flagship handset will flaunt a Super Amoled HD display, which sort of hints at Samsung being the hardware manufacturer. It’s quite possible that Google ordered displays from Samsung, but that’s just a possibility. As hinted earlier, the Nexus Prime won’t have any hardware home button on the front panel and will have capacitive buttons instead.

It is likely that Ice Cream Sandwich will be delivered to existing Android devices in the market in due course of time after Nexus Prime is launched. Rolling out the latest Android updates for different existing devices is challenge for several handset OEMs and the process often leaves smartphone owners frustrated. Hopefully, with the launch of Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Google plans to change the way the update cycle for older and existing handsets works.