Until now, neither Apple nor AT&T has sold the iPhone 3G online. Without much hullabaloo, Apple has quietly made the iPhone available online. You can now order an iPhone online from AT&T. The company is allowing customers the option of ordering an iPhone 3G on their store website for home delivery.

An iPhone 3G:

 - Is available in either 8GB or 16GB black/white configurations 

 - 8GB phone is being sold for $199US 

 - 16GB phone is being sold for $299US 

That’s not all. AT&T is also offering to revamp your existing iPhones starting at $149 for an 8GB model.

You can visit the AT&T online store for more information and ordering details.

However, don’t confuse this with activation. This means you only pay for the iPhone over the Internet and have it delivered to your front door. What Apple needs to do now is to pick up this challenge and allow online ordering along with activation.

This could potentially expand the market for the iPhone, as it could open the market for thousands of store-shy customers who are usually avid online users.

Finally the Firmware update we’ve all been waiting for folks. This latest leaked update ver. 1.1.3 will include many fixes and cool updates that we all wished for. I’m mostly excited about the multiple SMS texting feature. I’ve tried numerous hacked programs and they jsut don’t seem to compare to apples default program built into the phone.

Still no Picture SMS support!!! (Hopefully very soon)

Well the Apple iphone features that are included in this update are very cool and this is considered a major update.
The edit Home screen icon feature is top-notch (picture shown below)

Although this update is leaked and will probably be released during Macworld in 2 weeks from now, there is currently no way to hack or jailbreak this release. The only way to update is through itunes and Apple will make you use the default AT&T plan and apple default iphone features from the box.

I’m sure once it goes public the hackers will start working on a way to jailbreak this firmware update since it has so many coveted features in the apple iphone hacking community.  So if you can’t live without your iphone applications and added on programs and features, or if you have an unlocked SIM, then you will have to wait for a jailbreak solution to arise before installing this awesome apple iphone firmware update 1.1.4.

from iphonehacks.com

Folks at Gear Live with help from Natetrue, first published convincing screenshots of the new iPhone firmware v1.1.3. The features that one could expect from iPhone firmware v1.1.3 are as mentioned below:

* The ability to send an SMS message to multiple people
* Google Maps application can now pinpoint your location using cell tower triangulation
* Google Maps can now display the Hybrid map view
* You can now drag and drop application icons on your home screen
* The home screen supports pagination
* You can now add web bookmarks to your home screen

Below are couple of screenshots courtesy Gear Live, however you can follow this link to checkout the entire gallery on the soon-to-be released firmware.

Screenshot of the instructions on how to edit your home screen on iPhone firmware 1.1.3.

Screenshot of enhanced Google Maps, hitting the button on the bottom left on the iPhone  will pinpoint your location.

folks at Gearlive along with Natetrue have been kind enough to publish an 8-minute long video of the complete feature walkthrough of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update.

You can checkout the video courtesy Gear Live below:

An awesome Application for Text Messaging and SMS has been recently updated and works great. When the iPhone was released i was very sad to find out that i could not send SMS to multiple contacts, forward or delete just that one text message… Good News!

Now the Apple iphone program SMSD will allow you to manage and forward certain messages as well as delete incoming or sent messages.. You can forward messages and send an SMS to a group list now. Finally someone else feels my frustration with apple for the need for this simple SMS application.. I don’t understand why Apple would not include this in the first place. My only guess was that they had trouble figuring out how the ichat style texting would work with multiple recipients.

I love this new program, you can get it from your Installer App on the iphone once it’s been jail-broken or from google code here SMSD.

My only complaint about this nifty little application is that you must have a leading 1 before your numbers in the US. So contacts phone numbers in your address book will need to look like this: 1(555)123-4567, otherwise it will not show the name of the contact. If anyone out there knows of a script to add this 1 to my address book on my mac please email or leave a comment to this post as to where i can find this script or app. Thanks
Next we have a brand new MMS application which i have not got to work yet, only because i need to find my proxy settings for delivery of MMS messages. I guess they work differently then the traditional SMS style messages.

With this program this should let you send any photo you took with your iphone to anyone else who has an MMS enabled phone and account.. Now while you can send MMS messages which are picture text messages, you still can’t receive them on your iphone. I’m sure this developer is working on this part while i write this and Apple should have this all working by next year (fingers crossed)

Technorati Tags: iphone hacks, iphone hacks, apple iphone features, iphone news

Apparently Apple released this feature on the iphone before it was truly ready. Apple iPhone Visual Voicemail is an awesome feature that only AT&T offers right now. Soon i think all cell phone makers & carriers will be using enhanced voicemail features such as apples.

All iPhone plans include Visual Voicemail, an industry first, which allows consumers to see a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to previous messages. Just like email, Visual Voicemail on iPhone enables users to immediately and randomly access the messages that interest them most. Unlike most wireless plans that charge additional fees for new features, there are no additional fees for Visual Voicemail.

Apple’s already drawn a bit of unintended attention for the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail feature, and it now looks like its facing a bit more heat on the matter, with Klausner Technologies now suing both it and AT&T for alleged patent infringement. Specifically, Klasuner is claiming that the Apple and AT&T violated two of its patents by “allowing users to selectively retrieve voice messages via the iPhone’s inbox display” and, according to Apple Insider, its seeking damages and future royalties estimated at some $360 million.
Read more at www.topiphonenews.com

I knew that Apple would win numerous awards for this beautiful phone. Look at it and try to compare it with another cell phone that has the same kind of technology. It doesn’t exist. Apple’s iphone will change the cellular phone industry forever as many other companies are trying to make touch screen phones that are similar to iphone. Can they beat Apples gem? We can only wait and see what happens next.

1. The iPhone is pretty
Most high-tech companies don’t take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs’ basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won’t do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into “airplane” mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

From Time article read here: Apple iphone - product of the year