Edge? Cellphone and Wi-Fi positioning? Blah. We want 3G. Faster download times and more accurate positioning are only two of many features consumers hope will be in the next generation iPhone. If my favorite rumor comes true, the new phone should retail for $199 (unlikely).

With a brand new crisp design and the reality distortion field in full effect, will users line up around the corner for the new phone? Is the hype equal to what it was the same time last year? I think not; the 3G iPhone is no revolution as the original iPhone was. I am no analyst, and Apple does have that “Wow” factor. We shall see.

Can you resist the reality distorter that is Apple? Will you be lining up for the new phone?

If you haven’t fired up Installer.app in a while, stop reading this article and go do that right now. The application just got a major update, and the main feature is a search bar that lets you search for applications in any directory. This will come as a welcome relief to anyone who has tried to find an application the old way- by scrolling furiously downwards for thirty seconds. The update also breaks down applications alphabetically and features a divider between each category.

News is extremely limited at the moment, but TUAW reports that another version of the iPhone SDK and iPhone firmware have been released by Apple, and are available now to download.

The news is still coming in from the developers that have gotten a hold of the new firmware and SDK. “This is Apple’s fifth beta release since the iPhone SDK was released in March. There’s just under a week left until the end of the Apple Design Awards submission period.”

The new SDK weighs in at just under 1GB and that is all that is known as of now. I am pretty sure more information about the unexpected release will be given out in the near future.

T-Mobile confirmed that Apple will be releasing a 3G-based iPhone and that Austrian T-Mobile customers would be among the first to have access to the device. Fear not, fellow Americans- Apple always releases its products in the United States first, and then in other coutnries. In addition, T-Mobile spokesman Hendrik Kasteel noted that “more flexible” data plans would be available for the new phone.

Interested? More info here.

We really don’t blame phone manufacturers for trying to copy the iPhone. After all, it’s easy to use, looks good, and doesn’t cost a fortune. But the simple fact is that any other phone manufacturer somehow manages to horribly screw something up in their phone’s production, and it ends up being bulkier, uglier, and more difficult to use than Apple’s product. HTC decided to give the touch-screen phone another shot, and launched the HTC Touch Diamond, which promises touch access to mobile web, photos, music, and other pretty unoriginal features. The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 (meh) but features a “3D interface” and 4GB of storage. The phone’s designers were challenged to create a phone that would be worthy of the Museum of Modern Art, and they came up with a series of diamond shapes on the phone’s back. If there’s anything it does better than the iPhone, it’s connectivity- the Diamond has HSDPA.

Vodafone announced that it would be releasing Apple’s iPhone in Australia later this year, as well as in New Zealand, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, South Africa and Turkey. That is a lot of places.

There have been quite a number of rumors indicating that Apple is looking to expand the iPhone’s internationally. An earlier Australian rumor suggested that the iPhone would arrive as an unlocked phone to be used on multiple carriers, though Vodafone did not comment on this possibility, so this may not be very true.

Either way, there is a lot on the plate right now and I can only imagine an unlocked phone would cause quite a stir. Only time will tell…

AT&T seems to have canceled their free iPhone hotspot service, which was launched this Wednesday. AT&T hasn’t made an official announcement yet, though, so the shutdown will probably be temporary. We’re guessing AT&T is developing a new system that prevents people from spoofing the system- an easy procedure at the moment. Hopefully, this will be nothing but a side effect of a premature launch, and we’ll be surfing the web from our iPhones- gratis- soon.

AT&T is now offering free access to all of their Wi-Fi hotspots- that includes Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, and over 71,000 other locations nationwide. If you try to connect, you’ll see the above page, which will prompt you for your phone number. Once you’re connected, you can access any website through Wi-Fi for free. What’s more, a clever MacRumors reader has figured out a way to get free Wi-Fi access on a laptop computer, too- just change the browser agent to Mobile Safari. Sadly, we’re guessing this hole will be patched by AT&T within the next few days.

This is a great move by AT&T. It’s always frustrating to have to pay for Wi-Fi, especially when you consider the fact that the only place you can’t find a free connection is in a Starbucks.

One of the best- and most frustrating- things about blogging is the speed at which information comes at you. I had just typed up a blog about a pair of leaked photos of 3G iPhone from a French iPhone site. Just when I was about to hit “post”, I decided to read some of the user comments on that site. Sure enough, the “3G iPhone” turned out to be nothing more than an LG Vu with (poorly) Photoshopped logos and a home button. If there’s anything on the phone that remotely resembles an Apple product, it’s the scratches. Pff. I didn’t like the design anyway. 

Everybody loves Google. It isn’t just their colorful logo, it’s the fact that they just get everything right, every time. Take, for instance, the iPhone scenario. Google has a platform of their own (Android) but they recognized the iPhone as a viable and popular platform, so they decided to support it too. And thank the Google Gods they did, because we’d hate to be using Yahoo on a day-to-day basis. A few months ago, Google introduced a brand-spakin’ new iPhone interface for their Search, Mail, Calendar, and Documents applications. Now, they’ve added support for Google Reader, Notebook, News, and Blogger. Plus, if you have Google Apps for your private domain, you can set http://www.google.com/m/a/your-domain.com as your default page, and all your personalized information will come up instantly.

Awesome. Here Google, have a cookie.