Cell phones and their operating systems are becoming an increasingly hot topic lately with consumers jumping ship from all of the different carriers in search of a better offering. While the iPhone has the largest corner on the market for smartphones they are losing customers left and right due to AT&T’s ineptitude.

Google Android is most peoples first thought due to the Google brand backing it. The downside to Android is that third-party developers are required to support 3 different versions of the operating system, as well as the additional customization done to it by the carriers.

Palm on the other hand was able to capture only a very portion of the market and is losing what little they do have due to their poor choice of carrier (sprint). As if Sprint wasn’t bad enough, Palm has decided to release updates to their operating system that have made the phone unusable.

You would think that with the abundance of phone choices there would would be one that would rise up and figure out we not only want good phones, we don’t want to be tied to crappy carriers.

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Palm Pre has finally made the jump from Sprint and into Canada! This is sure to make quite a few Canadians happy that they can finally get their hands on it. To commemorate this momentous occasion Palm has also added a few more applications to the App Catalog. It’s just too bad that they think a few more demo applications are going to appease the masses.

Now Palm has 45 applications including the new Tetris and Yatzee demos that were added today. I am all for adding more applications to the App Catalog but Palm really needs to wake up and start working with all of the developers out there that have been making them look slow.

For Canadians to get the Pre they will need to spend a whopping 199.95 CAD which is $183.88 so it looks like they are getting a slightly better deal, that is until you look at the contract. In order to get the Pre they have to sign up for a 3 year contract as opposed to the 2 year contract Sprint users get treated to in the US.

Check It Out> Bell Mobility via MobileCrunch

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When it comes to adding applications to their marketplace Palm appears incredibly slow. It has been 2 1/2 months and they still appear to be dragging their feet on their app store. The ironic part to all of this is that Apple took a year to deploy their app store but it has been such an immense success that consumers have gotten spoiled. Even non-Apple customers now expect that any smartphone they purchase has a large list of applications they can buy.

Palm will soon open up their App Catalog to developers wanting to sell their applications but if you don’t want to wait any longer there is always the “Un-Official App Catalog” where there are currently 148 applications you can download and try out. And what makes it even better is that you don’t have to worry about fake reviews from PR companies.

Check It Out> Pre Central

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Despite the Palm Pre being a game changer for the entire mobile phone industry, things are not looking good for them in the short term. Palm has been very quiet about exact sales figures and the initial rush of people buying them only lasted for a few weeks. Most recently the speculated sales numbers is just below 300,000 devices. Now today there is a report coming out that Palm is cutting their production plans of the Pre. Palm is still expected to sell 500,000 devices by the end of the year but things are looking to have slowed a great deal for them.

This is a good wakeup call to Palm to not be so stupid as to lock themselves into a single carrier, especially Sprint. I admit that I personally really want a Palm Pre but I am finding it difficult to bring myself to purchase one when the carrier is Sprint. When the phone is carried by Verizon I am sure that Palm will see a surge in sales of the device but I think it would have been a much wiser move to offer it to multiple carriers from the beginning.

Check It Out> Tech Trader Daily

While I have always been against hardware manufactures altering operating systems, this story from yesterday takes the cake. As is typical, cell phone manufactures customize the images that their customers use. Usually this is just adding a few basic applications to the devices and plastering their name all over the place. For one cellular carrier this was apparently not enough.

Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates based in Abu Dhabi, sent a text message to their BlackBerry customers asking them to click on a link and install software updates. The problem with these “updates” is that the software was actually a SpyWare application. “Independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could … enable unauthorized access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smart phone,” Research In Motion, makes of the BlackBerry, said in a statement.

This is a perfect example of why carriers should not be allowed to modify the operating system on cellular devices. Devices such as BlackBerrys are used for businesses and as such contain a lot of private information. This makes them a very attractive target for stealing valuable information and identities.

My suggestion to everyone concerned with their data is to only accept OS updates from its manufacture as they have a lot more to lose if they do something like this.

Check It Out> Yahoo! Tech