Today is just a massive day of news.

This ‘Enable 3G’ option can be found in the latest iPhone 2.0 Beta 5 that has been distributed to developers. This option is normally hidden but one developer has claimed to have activated it.

After seeing this image i decided to decrypt the beta5 rootfs dmg and check out the network.plist and what do you know..i found it

{
items = (
{
cell = PSGroupCell;
id = “ENABLE_3G_GROUP”;
},
{
cell = PSSwitchCell;
default = YES;
get = “is3GEnabled:”;
label = “ENABLE_3G”;
set = “set3GIsEnabled:specifier:”;
},
{
cell = PSGroupCell;
id = “3G_TEXT_GROUP”;
isStaticText = YES;
},
{
cell = PSTitleValueCell;
label = “3G_TEXT”;
},
{

if you dont know what all this code is about, this section (part of a mass code in network.plist) means the 3G option is present meaning the image is legitimate.

Although the iPhone 2.0 firmware includes the 3G code, current iPhone owners will not be able to take adavantage of it without buying a new iPhone. It is also noted that Apple is giving users the option to switch to EDGE speeds in order to increase battery life due to the fact that 3G has higher power consumption.

Be sure to check back soon as news about the 3G iPhone seems to being coming in left, right and center as the Worldwide Developers Conference draws near and is expected to be the moment when Apple reveals the second generation iPhone.

Image Source: macrumors.com

It’s coming. For the first time, we have solid information that the one and only iPhone is coming down under. In what could be considered a surprising annoucment, Vodafone has isseud a release that confirms it will be carrying the iPhone not only in Down Under, but in many other countries, including our neighbours (must not make sheep joke) New Zealand. A while ago some keen eyed law-types noted of a rule that potentially stops a phone  having one carrier, and this news has resurfaced once again. The announcment was cleverly worder and didn’t mention any deal exclusivity, so mine (and therefore iPhoneAE’s) money is on several carriers having the iPhone, as well as Apple selling an unlocked version. This is truly excellent news for us Aussies, but still no date of arrival, but a June release sounds good with the WWDC and the new Sydney flagship store opening. Keep yours eyes peeled because I don’t doubt the’ll be more news coming our way soon. (Oh yeah, the yellow is for Optus, Blue for Telstra)

After a meeting with Taiwanese Electronics companies, there has been confirmation that a 3G iPhone is due out in Q2 (april - june) of this year.

The original hold back on producing a 3G iPhone was the wireless chip consumed to much power. But after recent advances in this technology, there have been reports that this issue has been addressed.
AT&T also announced in early Feb that they will be deploying 3G technology to 80 cities around America in 2008.

So all this news tied together really starts to confirm that the 3G iPhone really isn’t all that far away for America. Question is, what, or even better, when will Sir Jobs enter the Australian mobile industry?
Also will be interesting what will be announced on March 6th at the iPhone software developers conference.

I used to feel special. . . no privileged . . . superior even. Walking down streets in Sydney chatting on my iPhone and enjoying the odd looks I got from those parsers by noticing my shiny iPhone. But nowdays I am starting to see iPhones everywhere I look, in fact some bastard had his on in Clovefield!!!

So, now I am really interested in the ongoing debate in regards to the number of unlocked iPhones out in the wild. It goes without saying that every phone I see in Aus is part of that number. Apples insistence on holding out supplying iPhones to the Australian market seems now to only be hurting their potential launch figurers rather than helping.

I could sit here and write a detailed coverage on this issue, but this has already been expertly done by many proper journalists out there. So rather than taking it from me, follow the story in the links below and jump into the comments with your thoughts.

•  News.com.au
• BBC News
• Reuters
• ZDNet

After the upgrade many Australian users may find that the order of SMS’s has gone out of wack. This is due to the fact that the patch now has the iPhone looking to your carriers clock for the time. By default the iPhone worked on US time, your carrier is AUS time. This is where the issue kicks in. Good news is it is easy to fix however.

To fix it just change your iPhone to auto-sync with the network so the clocks get back in sync. Click here for instructions from the Apple site 

In one of Apples worst kept secrets, the 1.1.3 firmware for the iPhone was released this morning at Macworld. It does everything we expected and a couple of minor new features we did not already know about. Sadly no news on the rumored 3G model or Ausralian release dates.

MAJOR WARNING FOR AUSSIE iPHONE USERS - Don’t Upgrade. This will lock your iPhone. No hack has yet been released. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will see some news. Keep checking back and we will keep you posted.New features of this update include:

1. Send SMS messages to multiple recipients at once (still not by group though)
2. The 1000 SMS limit is now lifted
3. You can now “pre-type” with two thumbs (i.e. type, type, lift thumb, lift thumb — instead of the usual type, lift, type lift, which is a big slow-down).
4. Gmail IMAP is now officially supported
5. Faux-GPS on Google Maps via mobile tower triangulation
6. Google Maps showing the hybrid map view
7. drag and drop icons on the home screen and bookmarks on the home screen (i.e. Webclips)
8. Videos now can use chapters and subtitles
9. Display lyrics on music when played.

Looks like Australia is not the only country missing out on the iPhone. It has been well publicised  that Apple had been in close talks with a China Mobile to take the phones into Asia. Today it was announced that those talks have failed.

It is not like this was unexpected though. Reuters noted a while back:

“Analysts had expected talks to fail at least initially, predicting that both parties would eventually lock horns over revenue sharing and a plethora of technical difficulties. Experts said last year that the iPhone would have to navigate a spate of technical, content and fee issues unique to China, including a standard revenue-sharing agreement that China Mobile would be sure to dislike, before any launch could proceed.”

At least China can always depend on the cheap iPhone knock-offs that CECT manufacture. (yes, sadly the image on the right is a real photo of the CECT el-cheapo)

Are you a Google user? Then you will probably want to check out iGoogle, the new iPhone formatted version of the popular search engine. Like the typical Google page,it can be customised to display various Google widgets including RSS feeds, crosswords, Gmail, etc but is now on a single column tabbed screen.

You can see a demo of it on your computer by clicking here or point your iPhone to http://www.google.com/ig/i

So next Tuesday is THE day for all us MacAddicts to crouch down round our monitors as we do every year to wait for the “bang” the Steve will pull out of his hat for the year. Yes, of course I refer to Macworld 08.

This year, thanks to MacRumors.com, they have offered a live streaming service specially sized for the iPhone, so no matter where you are, you can watch steve in realtime on the mobile device.

All you have to do is point your iPhone’s Safari browser to MacRumorsLive.com on the day to see Steve in all his (somewhat miniature) glory. The site is not up yet, but will be activated clower to the event. Lets hope for some juice Aussie iPhone news from the event.

According to Crazy John’s head of sales and marketing Stephen Morley we won’t be seeing the iPhone in Australia any time soon. “I don’t believe the product is imminent here in Australia,” Mr Morley was quoted saying in a recent newsletter.

Vodafone has said it expected the Australian release date to be delayed until the 3G model was available. This does make allot of sense since 3G has hit major saturation points in most capital cities and is much faster than EDGE which is only available on Telstra.

Last October Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo said the carrier had been in talks with Apple, but there have been no confirmations from Apple or other networks about an Australian deal.