I’ve had my Sony Tablet S for almost a year and it keeps getting new updates. The Ice Cream Sandwich update also brought along something called “small apps” that can run over the top of other apps for multi-tasking. Now, another software update has been pushed out to the Sony Tablet S, bringing more “small apps,” plus a new feature called Guest Mode.

The new Guest Mode is similar in some ways to the multi-user function on the new Nook tablets. For the most part, smartphones and tablets are an individual experience, but what if your friend wanted to borrow your tablet briefly? With Guest Mode, they are given a completely separate session with separate home screens and logins from the main account. This way, they can’t snoop around in your Facebook or Gmail.

You can password protect Guest Mode and hand-pick which apps they can (and can’t) use. You can even have multiple guest modes, in case you want one for your colleagues and another one that’s a little more censored for the kids.

The update also brings along more of the “small apps” that came along with the first ICS update. The browser is still there, making it easy to check things while still in another app, but they’ve added a handy calculator, voice recorder, and countdown timer, as well as faster access to the universal remote. I particularly like having that calculator there.

There are also some other changes, like a new “Walkman” app for music-playing and a new “album” app for viewing your photos, but these don’t really change your experience all that much. If you’ve got a Sony Tablet S, just wait for the update to get pushed to you over the air and run through the steps. The update takes about five minutes and then your tablet will restart itself. It’s still ICS and not Jelly Bean, but I am digging some of these incremental upgrades.  If you’re interested in buying one, the price has dropped to just $329, not too bad for a 9.4-inch, Tegra2 tablet.

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You can tell that Research in Motion rushed the BlackBerry PlayBook to market. They didn’t want to miss the wave, so they released a product that wasn’t quite finished yet. Despite being out for just three months, the PlayBook is set to receive its fourth official update. And this is a good one too.

The newest update from RIM offers several new functions and features. First, you can now do the pinch-to-zoom thing while watching videos. That’s not a huge deal, but I think it’s a nifty addition. You can also finally view your photos in portrait mode, save attachments to your SD card or your phone’s internal memory, and go international with support for 15 additional languages.

For the corporate and business crowd, it’s also great to see that you can finally extract those ZIP files that your colleagues have been sending you via e-mail. You will need to use Bridge and port from your BlackBerry smartphone, but at least you can see what Joe from accounting means when he refers to the 15 TPS reports he just sent you.

This is the V1.0.7 update, and unfortunately it’s been stalled. Blackberry yanked it down and posted an explanation on Twitter, “Some users were experiencing issues with Bridge & 1.0.7. We expect to release an update with a fix later this week.” Sounds like Blackberry rushed this update too.

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According to Chevron WP7 unlock guy Chris Walsh, the “massive” update will bring not only custom ringers and copy/paste, but also Bing turn-by-turn directions and some form of multi-tasking. These features aren’t exactly fancy, but they really help to make for a more complete package.

Remember that Windows Phone 7 is relatively new to the smartphone sphere, as far as platforms go, and that it took iOS and Android far more time before the respective smartphone operating systems felt mature. Yes, this is just a rumor for now, but if Microsoft is pushing out updates at this kind of frequency, we can’t even begin to imagine what they’d have in store for us by this time next year.

Can Windows Phone 7 really take Microsoft out of the Windows Mobile basement? Time will tell, but this shows promise. [Mobile Burn]

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