While TiPb is still waiting for an iPhone 3.1.1 bug-fix update, not to mention iPhone 3.2 betas to start dropping, it looks like the competition is getting their OS on this week:

• Palm webOS 1.2 didn't re-enable the iTunes hack (kudos Palm!) but did bring some nifty new features including Amazon MP3 downloads over 3G, the foundations for paid apps in the App Catalog, improved cut and paste, and much more.
• Android 1.6 Donut is expected to hit now'ish as well. A new Android Market is coming with it, but not multi-touch -- at least not yet.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 still doesn't seem to be official, but is leaking out all over the place (would that Apple had such porous pipes!). It'll make your Berry more Berry, though it doesn't seem to integrate a real browser yet, despite what the commercials say...
• Windows Mobile 6.5 might be on 30 Windows Phones by 2010, though even Ballmer is finally admitting Windows Mobile 7 should have been out this year. Bottom-line, it's a skin-job, and even though it looks hawt'er than a old style centurion, it's still a machine on the inside.

What does that mean for the iPhone? Even if RIM looks locked in stasis, Palm and Microsoft appear to have up-hill battles re-gaining their traction, and Android is still slowly ramping up, Apple can't afford to coast. A new OS from RIM, a Palm-style rebirth from Microsoft, and webOS and Android gaining marketshare are all possibilities. Many of these updates have interesting new features that hopefully Apple is looking at and working their own magic on.

So, let's get on with the 3.2... and 4.0. March is only 6 months away, after all, and Apple needs something else to wow Smartphone buyers with at the next SDK event...

Google's next iteration of their mobile OS, Android 1.6 Donut, is set to give sugar highs again in October, with support for CDMA radios, QVGA and WVGA resolutions, and to quote from sibling site, Android Central:

Android 1.6 'Donut' also brings Quick Search Box for Android which is basically universal search that searches locally on your phone and through the internet at the same time, new text-to-speech APIs, and the beautiful new Android Market we leaked a few weeks ago. There's also updates to the camera's interface, improvement to the camera's loading time (39% faster), and a neat battery usage indicator that details which applications are using the most power.

CDMA support will now doubt make all those longing for an iPhone on Verizon lose their minds just a little bit more. Support for different screen sizes is more of a mixed bag, however. It means device manufacturers will have more form-factor freedom, but it also means developers will have to deal with Windows Mobile- and BlackBerry-style platform fragmentation (either working harder to support all the different screens, or choosing not to support some and increasing confusion for users). iPhone, graphics power aside, hasn't had to worry about this... yet.

Quick Search, like Palm's webOS search, going beyond the device to bring back answers from the cloud isn't something iPhone supports, but is something we hope Apple's looking into.

Still, it's great to see Google keeping up with the updates. Anything in there that makes Android more compelling to you?