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The transistor radio revolutionized the way some sports fans followed sporting events, as spectators could now listen to their favorite commentators while at the game.

Similarly, handhelds, smartphones and mobile phones have changed the way people follow their favorite teams and sports. With the Olympics in full swing, baseball turning towards home and football season just around the corner, we thought we'd highlight some recent announcements made with the sports enthusiast in mind.

-- Olympic sponsor Samsung has released three limited edition mobile phones in honor of the 2004 summers games. These handsets, the SCH-E470, SPH-E3200, and SPH-E3250, give owners a chance to literally take home the "Gold," as each handset is colored gold with 18K gold trim around the LCD. The mobile handsets are also numbered and only 1000 are being manufactured.

--Acotel offers a multimedia message service (MMS) that delivers Associated Press coverage of the Olympic summer games. The service combines news and entertainment services with multimedia, text messages and downloads. In addition to mobile entertainment in the form of ringtones, wallpapers and games, subscribers can access breaking news and headlines, previews, schedules, results and other pre- and post-event coverage

-- Handmark's Pocket Express wireless service provides up-to-the-minute news from the summer Olympics via its Reuters News channel. Reuters' Olympic news appears in the Reuters News > Life channel. It should post as many as 100 stories per day during the games.

--Trondent's Infuzer service delivers Olympic event coverage right to a user's PC or PDA calendar. The service, which supports all scheduled competitions, offers daily summaries and updated medal counts. Final results are sent to a calendar entry after completion of an event, while another feature dynamically updates any changes in the Olympic schedules. Team sports update at the end of each day, re-populating the data to reflect the match-ups for the next round of play.

-- Now available for owners of the Nokia 6600 imaging phone and soon to be available for the Nokia 6620 is Nokia Sports, an application an and service that streams multimedia sports information right to a user's mobile handset. Nokia recently signed Major League Baseball on for the service. It plans to offer real-time scores and statistics, live audio broadcasts of every game (with the choice of the home or away team's broadcast), as well as daily video highlight packages, game images, league news, current standings and more.

--Toysoft's mySchedule NFL 2004 includes all 32 team's preseason and regular schedules, DirecTV and Local TV listings, AFC and NFC standings, and rosters. Other features include 2002 alignment, NFL All-time standings, detailed Quarterbacks, receivers, rushers and kicker stats as well as weekly scoring and score summaries.

--If American football isn't your cup of tea, then Football Director for Pocket PC, a soccer management game, might be for you. The game allows you to manage everything from front office to player selection to game strategies. Players can make decisions about pre-season, match and cup play, attacking play styles, defensive strategies, formations, and levels of aggression. Create teams with hundreds of real players using 2003-2004 season stats from over 90 real clubs in four divisions.