News

The refurbished iPhones are back! Now available through the AT&T website. Both iPhone 3G models, the 8GB and 16GB, are available with free two-day shipping. Including the refurb discount, this puts the price of an 8GB model at $99 and the 16GB at $199.

Besides being a great deal, the phones come with a warranty of at least 90 days. Apple can provide more details about the specific length of your warranty on their website if you provide the serial number. According to AT&T, these refurbished devices are previously owned, and have been unused or lightly used and returned within the 30-day trial period.

Picsel Technologies and Picsel Research, both based in the UK, have filed a lawsuit against Apple in the Delaware US District Court. Picsel alleges that Apple is illegally using patented screen rendering technology in the iPhone and other devices.

The company has apparently licensed its technology to companies such as Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Palm, Samsung, and others representing 250 million mobile devices worldwide. The technology in question speeds up rendering to make actions like panning and zooming appear smoother.

Apple does not approve of your sense of humor. That is unless you're downloading one of the 80+ iPhone apps related to farting, belching or puking. Next time you're sitting down to watch the cable television show South Park, make sure you have permission from Papa Jobs. The South Park crew was working on an iPhone/iPod Touch app for the AppStore but has now been forced to abandon its work on the project.

Rejected twice from the AppStore for being potentially offensive, the South Park application was already receiving glowing reviews last fall. For fans of the show, the app would have offered a multitude of clips, news, and wallpapers. There was even a feature to associate popular South Park characters to people in your contacts list.

Guess what's back in the news. If you guessed a $99 iPhone then you just won the prize. Analysts at Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets are predicting some changes in the Apple iPhone lineup this summer. However, the $99 iPhone predicted by Mike Abramsky doesn't resemble some of the earlier mockups of an iPhone "Nano" we've seen previously.

As you can see by the specifications above, the cheaper and highly subsidized version of the iPhone would have similar dimensions as its current model counterpart. The main differences would be lack of 3G or GPS support and a less expensive (and less included bandwidth) data plan. Along with the introduction of the basic model, Abramsky and others expect that Apple will also introduce an upgrade to the full-featured iPhone 3G.

The same streaming Sirius XM radio stations available to subscribers on the web are coming to the iPhone. The application, scheduled for submission to Apple for approval today, is named the uSirius StarPlayr. Streams will be available via Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE.

Development of the app is part of the StreamSmart project, which plans to release StarPlayr on a variety of mobile and desktop computing platforms by 2010. The iPhone application is expected to price between $12.95 and $19.95. Users must have a current subscription to satellite radio, and can expect to pay an additional $2.99 per month for online stream access starting in March.