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The Nokia N8 could be the last N series device to feature Symbian OS: those are only rumors coming from CNET Asia. One of their sources would have confirmed that the N9 will be the first device with MeeGo.

According to CNET Asia, the Nokia Asia Pacific Marketing manager, Will Harris, declared to Joseph Hanlon that the N8 should be the last N series to have Symbian and that the following models will all feature MeeGo. It would mean, then, that Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 will be featured on X series and E series. We’ll have to wait and see.

Nokia and Intel have announced by the end of March that the first downloadable version of MeeGo, the OS that was born from the Maemo and Moblin platforms, is now available. The first version is, of course, indicated only for developers, as it might not be stable enough for end users.

But developers should be happy, as the OS, still in alpha phase, was released with the possibility of having applications developed to it. Right now, however, there isn’t much to be expected: a little more than a normal text interface to the Linux Kernel, but with the release, MeeGo could start going towards a stable release, hopefully soon.

MeeGo is the new platform that comes as a result of Nokia and Intel’s partnership, announced during the Mobile World Congress this year. MeeGo combines Maemo and Moblin, and Orange was the first company to announce the usage of this platform on devices featuring Intel Atom processors.

Orange has declared that the MeeGo devices (which is a generic term that includes smartphones, tablets and netbooks) will be sold together with a series of multimedia services from the mobile carrier. Orange hasn’t announced a date yet, but Nokia and Intel had declared that the first MeeGo devices would be launched by the end of 2010.

Another interesting news about the MeeGo: Valtteri Halla from MeeGo Technical Steering Group has announced that a build for the Nokia N900 will be launched by the end of March on a testing phase. It doesn’t mean that the N900 will be updated to MeeGo, but that the developers will be able of testing the platform on the device.

Intel and Nokia have come together to join the competition between Google, Apple and Microsoft when it comes to mobile Operating Systems. The two companies have merged their forces together to create a new OS, MeeGo. The first devices featuring this new OS should be seen at the second half of 2010.

MeeGo is a fusion of Nokia’s Maemo OS and Moblin, the mobile OS from Intel, both developed on Linux. Maemo is the platform currently present on the N900, while Moblin is featured on some devices such as the LG GW990, and some Acer and Foxconn netbooks. Both systems, analyzed on themselves, are still on a very primitive stage when compared to Apple’s and Google’s platforms, and that’s probably why Intel and Nokia decided to join forces.

At the current stage, the new system will be developed based on the Moblin core system, but it’ll use the Nokia Ovi Store for applications, and it’ll be managed by Lunx Foundation as an Open Source project, aiming to be developed to work on netbooks and tablets as well.