Bad news for users of Motorola Milestone here in Asia-Pacific.

While American owners of the popular Droid – a CDMA version of the GSM Milestone – are already getting Android 2.2 updates, users here will have to wait until early next year to get the OS update that gives them speedier operation and Flash support, among other goodies.

When some Microsoft folks recently asked me how users and techies felt about its upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, I told them “you’re lucky to still be in the news”.

Until the past few weeks, when favourable first-looks of Microsoft’s totally rebuilt smartphone OS came online, the only OSes that anyone was talking about were Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

For an example of how fast a dominant OS can fall in interest level, look at Nokia’s Symbian OS that now powers most of its phones, as it transitions to the more advanced MeeGo. Who thinks anything great of Symbian now?

And compared to Nokia, Microsoft was worse off a few months ago – it only showed glimpses of what Windows Phone 7 was about at February’s Mobile World Congress and nothing more.

So, it was with a bit of surprise when I saw how well Windows Phone 7 was built, during a hands-on preview at the Microsoft offices here in Singapore last week.

Having lost crucial market share to Android and iOS, Microsoft has clearly done the right thing by building its new OS from ground up. Gone are the clunky “halfway house” touch offerings on Windows Mobile 6.5. Absent too is any lag that you get while moving around menus. In fact, pretty animations accompany most actions – without slowing things down.

With folks like Sony Ericsson and Nokia doing their thing outside of CommunicAsia, what new gadgets can you see at this year’s show?

Well, Samsung seems to be the brightest light at the show here. I’m particularly intrigued by the Galaxy Beam, which looks a little like a Galaxy S with a bit more heft in the shape of a small projector. Yes, you heard right, this little guy doubles up as a projector to screen your presentations.

Back to life with the Android Xperia X10 and X10 mini launched early this year, Sony Ericsson has just unveiled the Xperia X8, an “in between” member of the Android Xperia family that it promises to be “affordable”.

The “mid-tier” touch-screen device looks essentially like a smaller X10. It has a 3-inch screen, 3.2-megapixel camera and 3.5mm audio jack – all the basics of a multimedia phone for youngsters.

Out in selected markets in Q3 this year, the X8 comes in five colours, including white and pink

Nokia gave the media a first-hand look at the upcoming Nokia N8 this morning, as it kicked off its usual pre-CommunicAsia show this morning with its Connections event.

After playing with the phone briefly at the media event, I’d say my impression of this nifty little number hasn’t changed from when it was unveiled two months ago.

Without a doubt, the hardware and multimedia are great, but the Symbian OS, even in its latest version, is not as attractive as Android or iPhone OS.

Just three months after launching the Milestone with StarHub, Motorola has released the updated Milestone XT, a souped up, no-keyboard version of its highly-successful Android predecessor.

We got a quick hands-on yesterday and came away mostly happy with the update. The first thing you’d see is the less “corporate” look. Silver-rimmed and without a slide-out keyboard, the XT is aimed at the more “casual” user who doesn’t need to text or e-mail as much.

Trust Adobe to hold a regional briefing on Flash on the day the Apple iPhone 4 was launched. The date, of course, had added significance now that Steve Jobs and co. have decided not to support Flash at all in any of its iPhones or iPads.

Despite that, Adobe predicts that 53 per cent of the more than 300 million smartphones to ship by 2012 will sport its Flash software to show off multimedia websites on the small screen. Currently, only 9 per cent of the less than 50 million smartphones have Flash.

This is a daring prediction, given that only a small number of Android Froyo 2.2 handsets – mainly the Google Nexus One – support Flash on the go. Other Android handsets such as the Motorola Droid/Milestone and HTC Desire are being updated in the coming months.

People sometimes slate Apple fanboys for living in a world of their world, not knowing and not wanting to know what’s going on outside of what Apple leader Steve Jobs tells them every year at one of his flashy presentations.

Well, the best proof of that during the iPhone 4 launch today, which you will not escape from reading on Facebook or news blogs because of the sheer amount of hype, is this funny launch video from Apple itself.

In it, an Apple marketing man goes through a list of achievements of previous iPhones, which are all legit. He then says that “for 2010, the iPhone 4 is the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone… and we’re bringing video calling to the world!”

Not sure which parallel universe he’s been on, but the rest of the world have been using video calls for years. And get this, Apple’s version works on Wi-Fi only (for now) and has been demo’d only for iPhone-to-iPhone calls!

The same criticism can be levelled at almost all the “new” features that Steve Jobs rolled out yesterday night (Singapore time)  at its much-hyped WWDC conference (Worldwide Developer Conference) in San Francisco.

Other than a high-res screen and an improved, slimmer design, the iPhone 4′s “new” features are nearly all  “me-too” ones that rivals have had for months now.

Here’s why you might want to do it yourself instead of waiting for the Google update which could take weeks:

1. You get Flash on your phone – and suddenly the PC web is finally on your phone. iPad/iPhone lovers who still claim that Flash is no big deal can either ignore the reality or face up to the facts.

   Flash games will now finally work on our phones. Porn, which you should not watch, apparently will now work (I didn’t see any since I am like John Marsten, a married man).  My friend Alex who had to use an iPhone with a StarHub line to connect his laptop to the Web to check on his castles in Lord of Ultima needs to know that he can now do it on a smartphone without any laptop.

2. You can use your Nexus One as a mini 3G router (you could do this before but you had to root the phone) – which means your friends on laptops connect to your N1 over Wi-Fi and your N1 connects them to the Net over 3G.
3. You can now install your apps on the micro SD card, finally ending fears that we might run out of space for apps.

As official details of Google’s new smartphone OS finally came from the company’s I/O conference in San Francisco yesterday, it must have dawned on most users – including Steve Jobs and his cult of ardent iPhone lovers – that this was a key turning point in smartphone development.

While the iPhone, through good tech and not a little hype, has drummed up interest in smartphones among even non-techies in the past two years, the arrival of Android 2.2, known as Froyo, from June this year clearly pushes Google-based phones ahead of the early leader.

As Mashable describes it, it is a “slap in the face” for Apple.