The Motorola Android phone may or may not be an iPhone killer (probably not) but it looks like this first solid platform for the Google Android operating system will heat up the smartphone wars.

Despite a signed deal between Apple and China Unicom, plus what appears to be a deal between China Mobile and Lenovo for the O1 Android phone, China Mobile still appears to want the iPhone.

After years of letting industry have its way on just about everything, we’re now seeing a reborn federal telecoms regulator and Apple’s iPhone App Store shenanigans, among other transgressions, have caught the attention of agency’s chairman and watchdogs. Although there’s just as much danger from too much regulation as there is too little, so far things are looking good.

An open source effort to work around (hack) Apple’s iTunes + iPod + iPhone lock-ins has been the subject of repeated threats from Apple’s legal team. Now, the company that hosted the forum at the center of the controversy is fighting back and, assuming the case ever gets to court, could make it a defining moment in the fight against digital rights management (DRM) and the more egregious applications of the copyright law.

Users download their apps from the App Store for the iPhone or iPod Touch, test it on the old maxim of suck it and see. If it is not what they want  — one hesitates to use the word ’sucks’ — do not use it again. The price is free or minimal. There is no compulsion to force yourself to like and use the program. And most users don’t. Most vote ’suck’

iPodMe converts movies for your machine. It is wonderful. Not to say that iPodMe is the best free program for iPod Touchor iPhone. Life is too short to test them all. But for what it does it appears to be the best.

Apple would appear not to have been joking when it said it would vigorously defend its intellectual property behind the iPhone.

Apple’s hot selling, zeitgeist defining handset shows its versatility in the hands of third-party developers. But, will we ever live to see a triple boot iPhone running OS X, Windows and Linux side-by-side?

Mozilla’s CEO put paid to any notion of the popular browser Firefox coming to the iPhone. But we haven’t really seen a realmobile version of Firefox, have we?

With the World Wide Developers Conference 2008 just a few days away, the iPhone buzz has reached a deafening roar. Though the iPhone 2 is expected to bell of the ball, Steve Jobs should be unveiling the long-awaited iPhone Apps store. In an interesting move, those apps might not be free, as Apple is encouraging developers to charge for their products.