iPhone rumours and mobile newsbites

A 50-foot wave of iPhone news and rumours came crashing down on the shores of our sister site Pocket Picks this week, proving again that interest in Apple's new toy is no flash in the pan. The week began with a high profile ad slot for the iPhone, aired during the Oscars ceremony. An Apple employee also took the time to further stoke the iPhone fire with a double-pronged pair of 'no 3G' and 'the price offers tremendous value' tongs.

On the rumour side of things, the obligatory (and strangely overdue) video dissection of Steve Jobs' January unveiling of the iPhone offered up a few speculative titbits, while an anonymous tipster claiming to have seen a version of World of Warcraft running on the device also helped to keep Apple fanatics foaming at the mouth. Elsewhere the iPhone received its first mod (sort of), confirmation of a Bluetooth headset and official word that Namco is working on games for the device.

The transformation that mobiles are undergoing from portable telephone to electronic Swiss army knife was further evidenced this week by the veritable glut of new labour saving applications. ALON released a dictaphone app for Symbian phones, the Palm OS gained MS Outlook connectivity, Adobe announced a Flash lite update that will enable video playback, Lubisoft announced a petrol tracking app (pictured above), and Lawson revealed a collaboration with NTT to make Japanese convenience shopping even more convenient with a new phone wallet system.

Turning to the silly, those little mobile straps that the Japanese are so fond of proved that they can be more than just a jangley appendage for attaching Pikachu figurines to, with FSC's new line offering an innovative way of ridding 3G phones of their cheapo headphones. EMOBILE was also keen to flaunt some Japanese innovation, announcing that its new handset, the EM-ONE, has gone into production. This cunning little piece of devilry has both a touchscreen and a two-way sliding panel, providing both a keyboard and some easy access MP3 controls.

And finally some news nuggets gleaned from good old-fashioned market research. It turns out that John and Jane Q Public are no longer motivated by price when buying a new handset, instead choosing to base their decision on its features such as whether a handset can play Porn Manager 2, display videos of people hurting themselves on YouTube and store hundreds of MP3s. A sign of the times, as Prince once sang. Does anyone still remember Snake?