Well, after we covered the upcoming PS3 firmware update, v2.40, we hope you weren’t one of the unfortunate people who had problems with the new firmware, which Sony soon pulled. We’re hearing that it’s likely v2.41 will be released this week, which should be what v2.40 claimed to be.

Of course, many people won’t care about their PS3 this week, as they continue to try to get the O2 website to accept their iPhone 3G upgrade order, which has failed for many people.  Some people are claiming that it’s deliberate marketing ploy by Apple to keep stocks limited to add to the hype.

ShoZu have been busy people. First of all, they’ve announced ShoZu for iPhone, which should be available in the next few weeks, in line with the updated Apple iPhone 2.0 firmware, and the Apple App Store. ShoZu allows you to take photos, and then ShoZu will organisee uploading those pictures to your selected sites in the background. A very popular Symbian S60 app, and now available for the iPhone, supporting the same range of sites. As well as the traditional upload facilities, there are now facilities for downloading pictures from your friends, reading and commenting on your and your friends’ photos / posts, interaction with Facebook, and geotagging your photos for you. It even supports a variety of “Citizen Journalism Sites”, such as the BBC website, Scoopt, CNN and ITV.com.

ShoZu supports many sites, and the other big news is that they have recently added support for Ovi, the new Nokia sharing site. Interestingly, two months ago they only support 29 site; now they support 46, and looking through the list the majority of picture based sites we could think of were included. Although they support Twitter, they need to expand their range of text based sites (such as Plazes and Jaiku that add location information to the messages) to complete their support and claim to be able to support the majority of Web 2.0 sites.

Some content thanks to Jonathan at atmaspheric | endeavours, and Darla Mack at her website.

We’re nearly there, so we thought we’d provide some more details on the iPhone launch, courtesy (in the main) to berble.com. Firstly, it looks like O2 stores will open at 7:02am (in comparison to 6:02pm last year), to allow a greater amount of time throughout the day to process the credit checks and activate the phones instore for all those who want to walk out of the store on the first day. Secondly, for upgraders, your phone will be sent out to you in the post, and you will not need to go to the store at all. berble.com’s O2 contact also stated that upgraders will be provided with a “Jail Break Code” to allow the old iPhone to be used on any network. Finally, it looks like the 8GB iPhone 3G will cost £299.99 on PAYG, with the 16GB version costing £359.99. Although that sounds a lot for a phone, let’s remember people were paying £269 for the old version *with* a contract, so £299 without a contract is not that unreasonable.  Included in that price is 6 months WiFi and Internet access, and after those 6 months, a monthly topup of at least £10 will keep those features available.

Expect many many more people to be walking around with iPhones over the next few months.

Anssi Vonjoki, Nokia’s VP of Mobile Markets, has stated that Nokia will launch a whole range of touchscreen phones in 2009, not just high end smartphones, but “from the very low segment to the highest one featuring this type of functionality.” We’re not sure that Nokia would want to redevelop both S60 and S40 to support touchscreen, so these phones are likely to bring S60 phones down to more consumers.

LG have had some success with their touchscreen phones, from the Viewty to the latest LG Secret, and of course there’s the iPhone.  Whether Nokia can achieve the consumer experience to the same level as Apple waits to be seen.

Here’s a roundup of a few additional points and information that have been released since the initial launch earlier this week.

Firstly, there are rumours that O2 are going to allow the iPhone 3G to be tethered to a laptop via Bluetooth, ie you can get access to the internet from the laptop via the iPhone. This is unconfirmed, and some people have indicated that the early iPhone 2.0 firmwares do not contain this functionality, so unless Apple pull something out of the hat at the last minute, this may not happen. Of course, many people argue that the iPhone has enough capability that you won’t want or need to use your laptop at all!

On the more positive, Unlimited WiFi will be available on the iPhone 3G at 9,500 hotspots covering both The Cloud and BT’s OpenZone network, which will be added in on 11th July, the iPhone launch date.

There’s no front facing camera, despite what a few people are claiming, so no 3G video calling.  Whether this was something that was dropped from the development to meet the timescales, or whether it was a purposeful decision (after all, how many of us make regular video calls, compared to voice calls…?) we’ll never know, but for now, there’s no capability.

There’s some questions over navigation apps, with some people claiming that companies like TomTom will not be able to release SatNav software because of a clause which prevents real-time navigation apps.  We believe that this clause relates to the use of the SDK to access the Google Maps data, which, of course, TomTom will not be using.  As such, we doubt this clause will prevent a wide raft of SatNav applications becoming available.

All in all, we suspect there will be a lot more news about the iPhone between now and a month’s time.

After Nokia extended their map coverage into 9 new countries, NavNGo have announced they are about to release maps for Argentina, Brasil and Colombia.  In combination with their 3D mapping, they are trying very hard to compete with the established players, and if they can get their iPhone application we covered before released soon, they could become even more popular.

In contrast, within hours of Apple’s iPhone 3G launch yesterday, TomTom confirmed that they have their SatNav software working on the iPhone 3G, and plan to release it soon (although they have yet to announce an actual date).

Finally, here’s an interesting picture…

This appears to be (if it’s not fake) an iPhone running Navigon’s software, so it looks likely that all the major players are planning on iPhone solutions this year.

Navigon picture courtesy of Navigadget.

Tonight Apple launched the iPhone 3G as expected. The device has a number of improvements over the previous iPhone…

• 3G Data support
• Available in 8Gb (Black) and 16Gb (White) versions
• The back of the device is now black plastic
• Improved audio
• Headphone socket now flush with the device
• Built in GPS with Location Based Services (eg news specific to your location)

Alongside this, Apple have released more details on the type of applications that will be available via the App Store, and even some key new features coming in the new iPhone 2.0 software (which will be available to existing iPhone users and iPod Touch users for a small fee). One of the key new features is the Mobile Me service (which replaces .Mac); this offers a nice integration between the iPhone, your PC and your Mac. For example; read an email on your iPhone, and it will get marked as read on your other devices; that’s the sort of integration we’d like to see more people promoting (of course, it can be done today with other services, but how many of them promote such a tight integration facility?).

Much more detail can be at Apple, and it will be available in the UK on July 11th.

Well, it’s been discussed and rumoured for some while, but Broadcom have confirmed the new 3G iPhone will have a GPS chipset within it. This is, apparently, to comply with the 911 emergency rules in the US; that is, the ability to be able to locate the device and provide that information to the emergency services whenever an emergency call is made. Given all the other hints, it’s looking likely that this will be accessible to the end user.

More information here.

Apple have released OS X 10.5.3. It features fixes for AirPort and network reliability issues. It also includes Time Machine and Time Capsule updates and a few other updates.

It’s not clear whether XSKN have photoshop’ed this, or whether it’s genuine, but it appears that they have released details of their new 3G iPhone case in advance of Apple announcing the device that goes within the case.  It seems to fit another rumours and stories, and if accurate, the most interesting points are that it shows the new device with a much more pronounced curved back, space for a front mounted camera (for video calling), and a better positioned headphone socket.

Story and picture courtesy of Engadget.

Well, no big surprise, but more and more companies are confirming the 3G iPhone is coming in the next few months. Various telecom operators are stating they will be announcing the next generation of iPhone in the coming weeks. It also appears that Apple may be launching an Internet Tablet type device in June too. Apart from having a more powerful processor, the rumours are suggesting a 720×480 screen size, in a slightly larger form factor than the current iPhone.

According to Engadget, who have apparently seen an internal O2 memo, the iPhone 8Gb, which was recently made £100 cheaper, has now gone End of Life, and will not be stocked anymore. Whether this is simply a move by Apple towards higher capacity devices like the 16Gb version, or whether it’s in anticipation of the oft-rumoured 3G iPhone no one is quite sure, although we’re likely to find out in June…

Along with all the general rumours over the release date of the 3G iPhone, it appears some websites are claiming that the new 3G iPhone will contain a GPS Broadcom chip, providing built in GPS functionality. We’ve no idea if this is true or not, but hopefully we’ll find out in the next few months…

As from today, the iPhone should be £100 cheaper, ie it now costs £169 plus a contract. This should apply to both Carphone Warehouse and to O2 shops. Although stocks have been limited over the last few weeks, this seems to support those theories that stocks are being finally cleared out for the 3G iPhone to appear in June…

For those who have bought an iPhone in the last 30 days from a Carphone Warehouse store, even better news; “Launched 10 years ago and already responsible for customers receiving millions of pounds, the Ultimate Price Promise means The Carphone Warehouse will automatically give vouchers to the value of £100 to anyone who has purchased an iPhone from the store in the last 30 days.”

Here’s an interesting rumour we’ve picked up on via the internet. It appears that Nokia might be trying to beat Apple to the launch of the first 3G touchscreen smartphone, by announcing the 5800 Tube in advance of the iPhone announcement in June. Although they’ve both been beaten to touchscreen mobiles (like the LG Viewty), it would be an interesting turn of events if Nokia beat Apple to this crown. It’s unlikely, but an interesting rumour nonetheless…

In rumours and news that does not surprise many, it appears we are likely to see an announcement (and possible actual release) of the 3G iPhone within the next few months. The exact date is likely to be the June Developers Conference, and the launch of third party applications using the SDK.

In the last few weeks, there have been all sorts of agreements over various technologies on mobile devices, so we thought we would summarise them all…

• Adobe has announced it will be producing a Flash player for the iPhone, despite Steve Jobs not being happy with it (claiming Flash Lite was too light, and normal Flash was too “bloaty” for the iPhone)
• Nokia has announced the new Microsoft Silverlight technology will become available on Nokia Symbian S60 devices, traditional S40 devices, and their range of Internet Tablets.
• Microsoft has signed a deal with Adobe to bring Flash Lite to Windows Mobile devices, which will be used within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser. The deal also includes Adobe Reader LE for reading PDF documents.

It’s nice to see the main competitors supporting each other’s technology, and not limiting us users, and ensuring each technology has a future irrespective of your chosen mobile device.

As we (and others) predicted, the Apple Airport Express has been released, although it is not currently listed in the Apple UK Store. In the US, the price has remained the same as the elder unit, so we expect to see similar pricing when it does come to the UK.

There are rumours that Apple is about to announce an 802.11n version of the Apple Airport Express, which may arrive as early as tomorrow. The only known difference though, is the wireless support. More news as and when we get it.

The iPhone Dev Team have announced they have already managed to jailbreak (allow running of additional programs) and successfully SIM unlocked (allowing use of other SIMs) the new iPhone v2.0 firmware, which was only released as a beta (as part of the SDK beta) last week. This bodes well for the formal release in June.

Combining the skills of the user development community with the possibility of Sun releasing JME for the iPhone and you start to wonder how long Apple will be able to continue to really control the iPhone applications we can install.

Story and picture courtesy of Engadget.