New iPhone, Steve Jobs, iPhone 3.0... What to expect from tonight's WWDC keynote

It's less than an hour until the start of the keynote presentation at Apple's WWDC show in San Francisco, and Pocket Gamer's elite liveblogging crew (i.e. Jon) are poised to bring you all the news as it happens.

As a primer, though, here's what blogosphere buzz has led us to expect or hope for from tonight's keynote:

Time for an annual refresh of the iPhone itself, dontcha think? It's widely expected that a new iPhone will be unveiled tonight, possibly to go on sale next month.

Video recording (and editing), more memory, a faster processor, a toastmaking peripheral... It's anyone's guess what the key improvements would be. Other than that the last one is sadly the most unlikely.

Offering spice to the mix is the notion that there may be TWO new iPhones being unwrapped tonight, one more powerful model, and one cheapo handset possibly aimed at the developing world.

We know all about the iPhone 3.0 software and its many new features for developers, from micro-transactions to downloadable content to iPod library access to rumbling to... Well, more than 1,000 APIs.

But we don't know when the update will be made available for us punters, as opposed to developers, who've been playing with beta versions for some time. That should change tonight, though.

We're half-hoping the update will be available immediately - we'll certainly be poised with our pointer over the Check For Updates button in iTunes during Phil Schiller's keynote. However, it may launch alongside the new iPhones next month (if, indeed, there are new iPhones coming next month).

Chatter among developers tells us that games will play a role in tonight's keynote, although nobody seems to know a.) which games, or b.) how major or minor that role will be.

They could be the centrepiece if Apple wants to show off a powerful processor in a new iPhone, or they could be on the margins as further proof that the App Store is doing well.

If the iPhone 3.0 software is a big part of the presentation, then it would be logical to expect any games demoed to use its features - what price some kind of first-person shooter online deathmatch with voice chat, for example? Or Schiller blowing his next day's salary on jumpers for his The Sims 3 character?

This is highly speculative indeed - already there've been a spate of supposed Steve sightings in and around WWDC this morning, in the same way that the Rolling Stones are ALWAYS "spotted" backstage at Glastonbury preparing to play a secret set, without ever actually doing it.

But with Jobs due to return from medical absence later this month, there has been chatter that he'll put in a cameo appearance today.

We've put two and five together, and predict confidently that if there are new iPhones, which allow video-calling, then Jobs will be on the end of a live link-up via an iPhone. Our confidence is probably misplaced, of course.

A Steve appearance would be a huge, huge deal for WWDC, of course. Expect an ovation to make that Susan Boyle YouTube video to pale into history if so. If we were Jobs, we'd go for a Bruno-style hanging-wires entrance, obviously.

Less of a prediction, more of a stone-cold certainty. Sorry.