Apparently there is a super secret prototype in the halls of Apple. A prototype of an iPhone with a slide-out keyboard. The idea would be to focus on the BlackBerry market, which is actually pretty smart. According to the Register:

And he has taken this beyond just chatting: actual prototypes - not just mockups - have been sent to senior executives at some operators. I’m not allowed to even hint which operators… but I can report that the keyboard has “issues” which are not yet resolved.

Back when the original iPhone launched I was upset that a few short weeks after I got my phone it had scratches all over it. To keep this from getting any worse I got my hands on a product from Zagg called invisibleSHIELD. The stuff is made from a super strong and invisible film the military uses to protect the blades of helicopters from scratches and nicks.

Zagg cuts the stuff to the exact fit for the iPhone and has for the last three weeks been offering pre-order kits that protect the screen and body of the iPhone 3G. Zagg says that so far it has had 50,000 orders for the iPhone 3G kit.

You probably know this already, but the iPhone and unshielded speakers don’t mix very well when they are close. It always ends in a buzzing noise. Well, one clever person came up with a solution that’s nothing more than a hand cut Red Bull can and double stick tape.

Of course it’s possible that it will hurt your reception, but it doesn’t seem to be that noticable. Red Bull is optional, any flavor drink would probably work. I think I would prefer a Mountain Dew or Dr. Pepper.

iPhones will now control aircrafts from the ground, thanks to some geeky iPhone app developers. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley have apparently broken Apple’s terms and conditions when they used the iPhone to guide unmanned aircraft. The Apple Software Developer Kit agreement states that the applications are not to be designed or marketed for automatic or autonomous control of aircraft.

Too late now. And why would they care anyway, they’re having way too much fun. The team uses Mobile Safari to input coordinates and then selects tasks for the unmanned flight that are relayed to the aircraft through a web server. Check out the video below.

I think most of our readers probably know that nothing like this is really ever free, but O2 has announced that when the new iPhone 3G launches in the UK on July 11 they will be offering it for free with certain monthly tariffs. Both the 8GB and the 16GB models will be given away if you want to pay a little more each month for an 18 month contract.

The new tariffs from O2 in the UK are already published and are offering the 8GB iPhone 3G free with a £45 (~$88) or £75 (~$146) monthly plan, and if you are going with the £75 plan you might as well get the 16GB model since it comes with that plan at no cost as well.

In case you haven’t noticed, Apple has a new phone. Something about an iPhone 3G something or other. The question is, will you be getting one? We want to hear from you. Yay or nay? Or could you care less? And is Steve Jobs alright? He was looking a little thinner then usual.

Steve Jobs and Apple officially announced the new iPhone 3G today set to ship July 11, Shortly after the 2nd version of the popular mobile handset appeared on the Apple Store giving some long-awaited answers and putting many rumors to bed about the changes to the iPhone.

Lots of applications and lots of games were highlights of the presentation today for the iPhone, showing off what can be done and what has been done with the iPhone SDK. Also included in this model is GPS mapping, support for more business-centric applications like Microsoft Exchange and of course the faster 3G wireless connection. Based on these features it’s very apparent that Apple was listening to requests and complaints after the launch of the original iPhone. Major issues like a maps with no GPS and an internet browser with too slow of a connection to use are no longer, or at least much less of an issue.

Today at WWDC Steve Jobs made the official announcement we’ve been waiting for - the 3G iPhone. For the most part the new model looks very similar to the original, but along with the high speed connection Apple did add in some other improvements.

Some of the new features highlighted today include a full plastic back, improved audio, a flush headphone jack, even thinner edges, solid metal buttons, GPS and all of this for a $199 price tag for the 8GB model. Apple is boasting that with the new 3G connection web pages load 2.8 times faster than the previous iPhone model and is faster than both the Nokia N95 and the Treo 750. The battery is expected to give 5-6 hours of web browsing, 8-10 hours of talk time (5 hours of 3G talk) and 24 hours of audio playback on a single charge.

The Application Store is coming in July. It’s chock full of applications too. Here’s a brief rundown. eBay has an auction application for the iPhone—available from the store for free. Loopt is an application that uses CoreLocation services to find people near you, you stalker. A dedicated TypePad client will be available for free. How about the AP delivering a news channel, that can handle photos, news, and video from the AP network. Mow Cow is a music application that allows you to have a band in your pocket, just be careful where you play. Major League Baseball even got in on the act with a baseball app for stats, results, and video. Modality will let you see anatomical images and really zoom in for some queasy fun. And that’s not a complete list either.

Good news for those who want more games on the iPhone. Super Monkey Ball has 110 stages and your choice of four monkeys. They showed a quick run-through during the keynote, and it looks like the graphics are superior to anything else on the phone. Pangea also demoed some games, like Enigmo and Cro-Mag Rally, where you can use the iPhone as the steering wheel. Some are describing the games as having very nice high-quality graphics, and being “totally playable”. Digital Legends was also on hand and demoed a God of War-type game that only took two weeks to develop. That one supposedly has graphics that fall between the DS and PSP. Expect that one in September.

Is Apple getting into solar power? It looks that way. According to Tradethenews.com, the company filed a patent involving placing solar cells on portable devices. This means that Apple’s iPhone or other devices could have photovoltaic cells stacked underneath LCD touch screens, which maximizes the area available for harnessing and soaking up the power of the sun.

According to the filing, performance info in regard to the performance of a device’s solar cells could be displayed on the main screen next to battery power, which makes sense. It could also appear on top of the actual cells, which could be displaying the Apple logo. Imagine less charging of devices. Then one day no charging at all. Nice.

Apple has put out an official announcement that Steve Jobs and a number of other suits from Apple will be kicking off the Worldwide Developers Conference this year in San Francisco. The press release says that this years conference will showcase both the OS X Leopard and the OS X iPhone, but we’re thinking there will be a new iPhone announcement, too.

The event meets the expected timeline for the launch of the 3G iPhone, the UK has run out of iPhone stock and we wouldn’t believe that Jobs would launch the 3G version overseas before launching it stateside first. WWDC 2008 runs for five days from June 9th to June 13th with the keynote from Jobs and crew on the 9th starting at 10am; we’ll be listening.

We had already seen some iPhone price cuts overseas for what many felt was to help clear out the non-3G inventory of phones in Europe, but now it appears that O2 has complete run out of stock with the 8GB and 16GB iPhones. We’ve still seen no official word on the release date, price or specs of a 3G iPhone but we can’t imagine it could be far off now that the inventory in the UK is depleted.

O2

Apple has recently announced the beta release of the 5th version of the iPhone SDK, which contains the framework, tools and compilers for making your own custom applications for Apple’s iPhone operating system. It provides also provides a simulator to run your apps on, which represents both the iPhone and the iPod touch. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of changes to this kit other than bringing it up to the latest OS version, but the download is free and there’s no sense working with the older version.

iPhone Developers

Good news for more Apple fans around the world as Vodafone announced today that it has made an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to ten new markets sometime yet this year. Vodafone says it will offer the iPhone to its customers for purchase and use on the Vodafone network in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey.

Vodafone