Finally: Orkut Mobile For Smart Phones

The boys and girls at Google have launched a smart phone version of Orkut that includes several features lacking from the "bare bones" version of Orkut mobile.

(Official Orkut Blog) Many people access orkut from their smartphones, many of which can support more advanced functionality. So today we are launching a new mobile orkut experience that is optimized for Symbian Series 60 (3rd edition) phones. The new orkut works on many popular phones, including Nokia's Nseries (N95, N82, etc.) and Samsung's SGH models. We have added a bunch of new features including photo uploads, picture galleries, click-to-call, and quick friend searches. Best of all, everything is available without the need to download any special client.

This is a great move by the Orkut team, as I was hoping that they would focus on courting smart phone users in general, instead of simply focusing on the iPhone (as not everyone prefers Apple--something my friends often remind me about ;-)).

Google previously released a feature on Orkut alowing users to receive SMS notifications for scraps (hat tip: Rahul) and I would not be too surprised to see Google developing an Orkut iPhone App (especially with the iPhone coming to India this August).

Note: Now that Orkut has a smart phone version of its site (at least for Nokia and Samsung smart phones), hopefully someone from Google will remember to add a link to Orkut on the Google mobile pages for both Nokia and Samsung.

(Image Credit: Google)