June 19, 2009, 3:24 PM — You have to love the Apple community, who are willing to go to such great lengths to impress their fellow nerds with their TOTAL DEDICATION to spreading information. Take the folks in France who got a hold of a new iPhone 3GS at a midnight sale and then immediately started taking it apart, just so they could put pictures of the poor dismembered phone on the Internets. The really big piece of news from inside the device is that the phone is capable of 720p high def video. The software can't do this, of course, but one of the intriguing things about the iPhone platform is that it seems designed to allow hidden hardware capabilities to be activated by software updates once Apple decides the time is right.
Of course, one might legitimately wonder what possible purpose an HD-capable chip could have inside a device with a 320 by 480 pixel screen. You can output video from an iPhone to a TV, but only via non-HD component and composite connectors. Still, iPhone OS 3.0 supports exciting new hardware accessories, so maybe we'll see HDMI or MiniDisplayPort outputs coming soon?
Meanwhile, according to one-paragraph post on a blog I've never heard of quoting anonymous sources, MMS and tethering are coming to AT&T in July, and the latter will cost $55 a month! Obviously this unconfirmed tidbit has set the Mac rumor world ABLAZE. $55 strikes me as pricey; I'm not saying that in terms of AT&T IS EVIL OUTRAGE, just that I can't see it being worthwhile to me to do, with Wi-Fi being relatively easy to come by these days. It is competitive with other broadband plans, though, so theoretically you could, say, jettison your DSL line and use this as your sole Internet broadband connection, if mobility is important to you. But keep in mind that even if this figure is true, the bandwidth cap for this -- and make no mistake, there will be a bandwidth cap -- hasn't been revealed yet. EXCITING UPDATE! AT&T says via its Facebook page that this rumor is false. Wait, what? Facebook page? That's it, I officially hate the social networking future.
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