The long rumored iPhone nano could be on the verge becoming a reality, according to a rumor out of Taiwan. Moreover, reportedly smaller version of Apple’s world changing smartphone will pack quite a wallop as it’s expected to bridge incompatible CDMA and UMTS wireless systems, raising hopes once again of the iPhone coming to Verizon.

With the world going mad, mad, mad for the Motorola Droid and HTC Android from Verizon, AT&T is purportedly looking for a strategy to counter the hype. Then again, slashing the price of Apple’s flagship phone so early in the product cycle might be more than Steve Jobs is willing to give this holiday season.

For the cynical, the obvious conclusion here is that Ma Bell’s marketing team didn’t have anything to counter Verizon with so the company decided to hit back with a legal filing. Although there may be some merit in AT&T’s legal machinations, bringing in the lawyers is a “jump the shark” inflection point in the two companies’ increasingly nasty competition for subscribers.

Palm said, “Tit,” and now Apple’s answered with a cursory “tat.” The ongoing war between the two companies over iTunes syncing rumbles on with neither side apparently willing the concede let alone play nicely with the other.

The upcoming Android mobile phone from Motorola is being hailed as the best thing since sliced iPhone. Is it all based on nebulous futures and hype, or are there some facts behind the latest iPhone killer?

A new study shows that Ma Bell’s hefty Apple handset subsidies coupled with high customer acquisition costs and heavy, heavy data use once those subscribers are on board likely means America’s second largest wireless carrier must wait until the final months of a two-year contract to turn a profit.

Before the end of 2009, the San Jose, CA-based imaging software giant will release Flash Pro CS5, allowing developers to create rich, interactive applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch — the same crap that chokes and crashes your computer today. Thereupon, given that 80,000 of the 85,000-plus apps already available on the App Store might charitably be described as “junk,” what chaos will the Flash developer community — millions of coders — reek on on the platform?

One hapless Big Apple iPhone user went to the Apple Store Genius Bar to see if something was wrong with his phone after experiencing a lot of dropped calls — AT&T said everything was good on their end — only to be told more than one-in-five of his calls were being dropped. Imagine his surprise when the Genius helping him said on average iPhone users in Gotham were fairing even worse than he.

Although the data is far from conclusive, it increasingly seems like long-term mobile usage is having negative impacts. But not all handsets were created equal, which has me wondering exactly how good or bad Apple’s game changing smartphone really is.

San Francisco is the center of gravity in the tech world and what happens there reverberates around the nation and world. Thereupon, Ma Bell could have the digerati singing their praises if they could do just one simple thing — make calls go through a reasonable percentage of the time in that one city. Why is that so hard?