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Enjoy the 2012 Olympics on the go with your mobile phone or tablet

The 2012 Olympics kick off in London this week, with the first football games starting up today. You can follow all the action on your smartphone or tablet with one of several available applications.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer

The official opening of the 2012 Olympics in London is Friday, but today we actually see the US Women's National soccer (aka football) team kick things off with a game against France. Given the large time zone difference between London and Seattle, I won't be around a TV for most of the Games so I started looking at my options on mobile devices. You can check out thescreenshot image galleryof apps for the iPad, Nexus 7, Android smartphones, Windows Phone, Symbian, and BlackBerry.

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NBC is where you can catch the Olympics on TV and if you visit the NBC mobile page you will see there are two main applications for iOS and Android; NBC Olympics and NBC Olympics "Live Extra". I downloaded and installed both of these apps on my new Apple iPad and Google Nexus 7 and so far they perform very well and will be my primary "go to" apps. I couldn't test live video since the Olympics haven't started yet, but will be carrying both of these tablets with me for the next couple weeks. You can also visit nbcolympics.com into your mobile browser and I personally found this to be the best alternative for Symbian.

Also read: Why the 2012 Summer Olympics might melt the Internet

The other main cross-platform free application I found is the London 2012 Results and Join In apps sponsored by Samsung. This app is available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, but unfortunately the current Android version keeps crashing on my Nexus 7. I like the "clean" look and fast performance of this Samsung-sponsored one on my Galaxy S III and Nokia Lumia 900 and will probably use this on my phones with the official NBC one on my iPad.

There is a very basic Symbian Olympics application, Olympics App, that looks to give you some basics. However, I found the NBC mobile page for the Olympics in Opera Mobile to be a better solution.

There look to be a few other choices, including some paid applications, so feel free to chime into the discussion and let us know which apps you plan to use for following the Olympics on your mobile device.

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