The leaked document reads:

In order to unbrick the iPhone in store (which is a requirement of the iPhone Sales Process), you must have iTunes version 7.6.3b4. Installed on your computer. This version has a special ‘Activation Only Mode’ that must be enabled and used in store.

Pretty interesting stuff, though it would not really be that useful anyway; you’re still required to sign up for a contract to get the iPhone in most country’s.

You can see the full leak here.

After yesterdays rumours of a very highly priced 3G iPhone in the UK, O2 have today revealed the much speculated pricing – and we’re pretty damn happy!

Let’s get straight in to it… The 8gb 3G iPhone will cost £299 (pretty close to our prediction of £279!) The 16gb will cost £359.99. And guess what? All users get 6 months FREE unlimited 3G and WiFi access. That is pretty fucking awesome. Sign me up for the 16gb model.

You can get more information directly from O2 by clicking here.

Update: Mysteriously, all mention of these figures have vanished from the O2 site in the past ten minutes. Maybe they were not supposed to upload this information so early? Hmm, strange.

Early this morning, Vodafone Italy announced they will be offering a pay as you go (no contract) version of the 3G iPhone (following O2’s announcement for the UK) and have set an out of contract price of €499/€569 for the 8GB/16GB models, respectively. This is pretty steep; certainly higher than what we predicted, though if you compare it to other contract-free smart phones, it is competitively priced.

As of today there is still no news on the UK pay-as-you go pricing.

Following the rumour that O2 would offer the iPhone for free to customers yesterday, they’ve now confirmed this and announced several other things. Here’s the details…

• O2 to Launch iPhone 3G in the UK on July 11(as previously announced by Apple)
• Available on consumer tariffs, business tariffs, and Pay As You Go (!)

Pay As You Go is fantastic news, and I wasn’t expecting it despite the rumours. No price has been announced for the phone on PAYG just yet, but we’ll keep you informed.

The price for the 8gb phone on a £30/month tarrif will be £99 (pretty good deal, we guess), but if you choose a higher £45/month tarrif you’ll get the 8gb model for free.

The price for the 16gb phone is £159 on the £30 and £35 tariffs, £59 on the £45 tariff and it will be free on the £75 tariff.

Based on the prices outlined above, we’d guess that a Pay As You Go version would cost around ~£199 for the 8gb model, and ~£249 for the 16gb model.

Finally – the second generation iPhone has been announced and people can finally stop spreading rumours!

Here’s the feature list we’ve all been waiting for…

• 3G

• Full Plastic Back (with thinner edges)

• Improved Camera

• Cheaper

• Flush Headphone Jack

• Improved speakers/audio

• GPS w/ Google Maps integration

• Better battery – two hours extra talk time, seven hours of video, 24 hours of audio.

The iPhone 3G is being released in over 70 countrys.

The new model will cost $199 for the 8gb version, and 16gb will cost $299.

July worldwide release! Woo!

That’s everything that we know for now folks – we’ll update as we get prices for the UK and other countrys.

Yep, Mobile Me was real after all! It’s basically Microsoft Exchange, but for normal people; all of the features are here… Push email, contacts and calanders, as well as a ton of other little things. For example, say you have a date in your calander on your Mac… If you change it on the Mac, it’ll automatically update on your iPhone. That’s basically how the whole thing works – pretty cool!

There will also be a web based application where you can access everything from any web browser.

Update on browser application: Very impressive AJAX application, looks just like a desktop application. There are web based versions of all the typical apps; iCal, mail, etc. Changes made on the web are automatically pushed to all other devices (Macs, iPhone, etc).

There will be a 60 day free trial of the service.

Mobile Me replaces .Mac completely – current members will automatically upgraded to the new service.

More details as they come.

The video is pretty long and boring, but you get the idea. This is pretty awesome stuff, and I’d love to use a real SNES controller with my emulators.

Finally, some news that actually has real substance to it. The patent for the highly rumoured “3G iPhone” has finally surfaced, and thus, a hurricane of information has been unleashed. You can view the patent by clicking here, but it is pretty lengthy, so we’re going to take you through all significant things here.

First of all, pretty much all of the features that we’ve been hearing about are mentioned in the document; 3G, GPS, even video chat and IM – it’s all there. Does this mean that it’s now confirmed and not rumour? Technically, no. Apple could list features in the patent that did not make it to the final device, but this is highly, highly unlikely. So if you want our verdict: yes, all of these features are now confirmed. If the features are listed in the patent, that means that they have at the very least TESTED the features out on the phone at some point in time. We can’t think of any major reasons why Apple would remove any one of those features. Now let’s take a look at a few of the less significant mentions…

Instant Messaging Module – probably iChat, we presume?
Blogging Module – this is an interesting one… Have Apple created a first-party blogging application?
Search Module – again, we’re not sure, but this sounds like Finder on the Mac, except for the iPhone.

Another interesting quote from the patent is “an optical sensor is located on the front of the device so that the user’s image may be obtained for video conferencing while the user views the other video conference participants on the touch screen display” – again, this just adds to the solidty that video conferencing is really coming to the iPhone. Now… This plus the IM module detailed above really makes us think twice about the leaked photos from yesterday – they may actually be real.

One thing is for sure – we’ll find out tomorrow!

We’ve just got word that US cellular giant AT&T will be completeing it’s 3G rollout next month by rolling out coverage in six remaining markets; what a conincidence it is that we’re suppost to be getting a 3G iPhone around the same time… As of today, their 3G rollout is around 73% complete.

They went on to say “that it has 3G in 275 markets” and “by year-end, the AT&T 3G network will be available in nearly 350 markets.”

Sounds pretty good to us.

According to Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann, the T-Mobile division has shifted more than 100,000 jesus-phones since the launch in November of 2007. Obermann also mentioned that the iPhone was currently the “most popular multimedia device” and that sales were more than “meeting expectations”.

During the short press conference, Obermann was also asked of the possibility of a 3G iPhone, to which he responded “No comment.” – ah, poo.

With the release of a brand new SDK, we had saw this coming – and it’s definitely a good thing. iPhoneDevCamp is a non-profit conference for iPhone application developers, and is taking place in San Francisco this August. The idea behind the event is for like-minded application developers to meet up and share ideas, discuss best practises when developing for the phone, and push the boundaries of Apples little device.

The first iPhoneDevCamp was all the way back last July, just a few weeks after the device was released. There was no SDK then, nor were there any (hacked) 3rd party applications, so the conference was entirely based on developing web based applications; things have now changed, and the target of the conference will now primarily be the SDK, though web-based applications will still be discussed.

The Future’s Bright

There are ten new countrys which will get the almighty mobile device; Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and last but not least, Switzerland.

What is also interesting however is that Swisscom also announced recently they had signed a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in Switzerland; will we begin to see multiple carriers of the iPhone?

iPhone: Missing In Action – John Appleseed to blame?

We knew it would happen sooner or later with the arrival of a second-gen iPhone just around the corner, but we didn’t think it would happen this soon. It seems Apple has completely halted production of all first gen phones; both the 8gb, and the not-so-long-ago-released 16gb model.

It started with O2 in the UK, who announced that they were slashing the price of both models of the iPhone, resulting in the bargain price of £179. Shortly after – boom, they’re out of stock.

Apple (yep – those guys) were soon to follow, as all iPhone stock vanished from both the US and UK Apple online and retail stores.

This can only mean one thing.

The 3G iPhone is coming – and fast.