Ok…so like most things Apple, there is much hype and speculation about the next generation iPhone (commonly referred to as the “3G iPhone”). Will it have a glossy black back? Thinner? Thicker? GPS? Better battery life? Video conferencing? Wait…here is a sample mold from some manufacturer in China showing what the form factor might be…..it goes on, and on, and on….my RSS is literally choked with it.

What I haven’t seen thus far are any reports on the 2 features that I really, really want to see in the new iPhone. Two things that, IMHO, Apple should have included in the original iPhone….features that are present even in generic “giveaway” mobile phones at most of the major carriers:

1. Real MMS messaging. It is actually pathetic that Apple would roll out the original iPhone with no MMS. For the 3G…for God’s sake Steve….do not make customers wait another generation for this! We all know that it is pure planned obsolescence! As much as I like the iPhone….lack of real MMS in the 3G just might make me look to Sprint’s new Samsung “iPhone Killer,” or maybe one of the new offerings from HTC.

2. A2DP Stereo Bluetooth. The LG Chocolate and Fusic have it, as do the Samsung blackjack and SYNC. Sure it may be an affront to battery life…but let me decide that. I’m currently using the icombi ipod adapter on my iPhone with a Motorola S9 for Gym use…and I love this set up. What I don’t love is when the adapter becomes removed from the phone in mid stream. Built in A2DP solves this problem.

Google told The Financial Times this week that it has seen 50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset. “We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times during this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Huh? How can this be? 50 Times more traffic than any other handset? Even by conservative estimates the iPhone comprises no more than 20 - 25% of the overall smartphone market. With these percentages, the numbers just don’t seem to add up. Perhaps this phenomenon is due to the fact that there is a dedicated Google search box on the iPhone? I have a different theory:

It’s the browser, stupid.

The iPhone - quite simply - has the best mobile web browsing experience of any current and prior mobile device. In spite of the fact that there is no 3G internet, mobile Safari on the iPhone is as close as you can get to “real” desktop web browsing…and people like that.

Prior to switching to the iPhone, I had a Treo 700p. Full 3G Internet, Sprint TV, Bluetooth DUN, the works. I can honestly say that even though AT&T’s Edge network leaves much to be desired in terms of speed, I do much, much more browsing on the iPhone then I ever did on either the 700p or any other phone I’ve owned. The usability of mobile Safari on the iPhone makes you actually want to use the Internet when you are on the go. If there is one “killer app” on the iPhone, I’d say it has to be Safari followed closely by Google Maps - maps only coming in second because its available on platforms other than the iPhone.

For those unfamiliar, this is a hotly contested topic on the Internet and one of the most requested myths for the “Mythbusters” to tackle. The basic theory behind the myth is that a plane attempting takeoff with a conveyor belt underneath that matches the aircrafts speed will not take off. Since I’m both an airplane geek and a computer geek (hey at least I’m not a physics geek) I have spent some time round’ the proverbial water cooler debating this one…so the results were of particular interest to me. Click below (requires Flash) to see the final, overly dramatized conclusion…

Oh Yeah….and not to say “I told you so,” but…..

I made one last ditch attempt to get on 1.1.3 last night, after I noticed that Conceited Software had released a new package for the Devteam 1.1.3 jailbreak. This one left my beloved iPhone in a perpetual (and peculiar) state where it was stuck in restore mode but was activated and had phone-only functions. Further, iTunes would no longer recognize the phone. I tried and tried but I could not get the phone to go into a real restore mode. Luckily, I still had ssh access to the device, so I manually pushed over the official Devteam realease and ran it from the command line. This was enough to get the phone into restore mode, and iTunes recognized it as such.I breathed a sigh of relief and did the 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 procedure. Needless to say…I’m back on a jailbroken 1.1.2 firmware and I’ve sworn off iPhone hacks for the time being!

So Sunday was a rainy, dreary day here in the PHX. The kind of day we don’t get but a couple times a year. What a great day to stay inside and try my hand at a 1.1.3 update!

I’ve been rollin’ with a jailbroken iPhone since day 1 of the switch from my trusted Spint Treo 700p. I started with 1.1.1, updated to 1.1.2 (with some pain I might add) and now I’m running 1.1.3 after several attempts to get to this firmware. There is a long, convoluted process for me to go through each time one of these updates fails.

The basic process calls for downgrading to 1.1.1 (which I can’t activate because of the modem firmware I’m on), tricking the iPhone into enabling Wifi, jailbreaking the 1.1.1 install, installing “OKToPrep,” updating to 1.1.2, jailbreaking the 1.1.2 firmware, then applying the 1.1.3 “soft update.” Whew!

The first attempt, using the Nate True “rogue” soft update, left me with a spontaneously rebooting iPhone. No worries, I simply forced the iPhone into recovery mode and used the process above. Then on Saturday the Devteam released their own jailbreak soft update. There as even a version you could install and run right from Installer.app! Sweet!

This version of the soft update worked flawlessly, except for the for the fact that I could no longer ssh, sftp, or use Term-vt100 to get a shell. Being the Unix geek that I am….this is a deal breaker for me. Back to the drawing board….

Finally, I tried the Devteam update that you run from the iPhone in a shell. I’m currently running this…and everythng works…save for 2 issues:

1. Upon reboot, the iPhone goes into recovery mode (which requires iPhuc to rectify).

2. Custom ringtones no longer work.

Everything else is 100%. Unfortunately # 1 is also a deal breaker, so I guess I’ll be downgrading to 1.1.2 in short order….