Bell Canada and Telus Wireless have confirmed (Bell press release, Telus press release) both companies would sell the iPhone in Canada starting in November, in time for the holiday season, ending the iPhone exclusivity agreement with Rogers.

The companies in a joint effort were able to upgrade their wireless infrastructure to 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) in order to support the GSM standard and hence the iPhone.

They will offer both the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS.

No pricing or exact availability was announced today. The new competition should help bring the price of the phone down. Prior to this news, the iPhone was offered by Rogers and Fido (owned by Rogers), so there was really no competition.

Read the full story

AT&T was previously scheduled to roll out MMS functionality for AT&T customers in the United States by September 25 as reported, but it now seems the feature is being rolled out early and it is actually already working for many customers.

Some users were previously able to use MMS during the iPhone 3.1 OS beta for a short time, but the service now seems to be rolling out to the masses a couple of weeks early.

AT&T previously noted bandwidth concerns over the main reason for disabling the feature.

It is unclear where the feature is firstly being enabled; we are unable to confirm that the feature is working but others are claiming the service works perfectly fine – either way, the feature will be rolled out by September 25.

The early roll-out could simply be temporary or a limited release while AT&T tests the feature.

Google today added a new feature to its Google Voice service that allows you to forward SMS messages to an email account, and even reply (with threaded SMS) directly by simply replying to the email.

Google Voice now lets you combine your SMS messages with your voicemail notifications with your other emails in your inbox.

To get the feature, you simply have to turn it on in the settings panel of Google Voice.

Google Voice is still pending approval by Apple to get the app working on the iPhone after a federal inquiry by the FCC.

Read the full story

China’s second largest carrier China Unicom has announced today that it has struck a multi-year agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone 3G S to China.

China Unicom currently has about 140 million subscribers, with about 690 million mobile phone users in all of China.

Not much was disclosed today, except the fact that the iPhone will become available sometime in the forth quarter of 2009. Neither revenue sharing nor pricing details were disclosed.

Reports indicate as part of the deal, China Unicom would

Read the full story

Apple has just started to seed the iPhone OS 3.1 Beta to developers on the iPhone Dev Center website. Apple has not disclosed information relating to new features with the update yet. Users who have already installed the update have told us about a few new features they’ve already noticed.

For example, new in iPhone OS 3.1, users can now shorten video clips and save the changes as a new video file instead of overriding the original video file.

Read the full story

According to a new Nikkei report, Sony is planning to add cell phone functionality to its mobile gaming device the PSP (PlayStation Portable).

The strategic move comes from intensifying competition from the iPhone that is being pushed more and more as a gaming device.

In fact, companies such as Capcom who have traditionally developed console platform games have announced they would also release select versions for the iPhone platform.

Read the full story

Yesterday we thought the first iPhone GPS turn-by-turn app to become available would be the MobileNavigator from Navigon.

Today, AT&T released its Navigator app, becoming the first full featured voice-prompted turn-by-turn GPS navigation app to become available on the new iPhone in North America.

The AT&T Navigator app offers voice-guided turn-by-turn notifications, 3D maps, automatic rerouting, POIs, local search, current speed, estimated time to arrival, search for lowest gas prices, search results also tell you how far they currently are, among other features.

The app is a free download, but requires a constant monthly fee of $9.95. The subscription also includes app and new map updates.

The app is now available on iTunes.

AT&T Navigator is built by Sunnyvalue, California-based TeleNav.

The AT&T Navigator seems like a good alternative, and a good option for anyone looking for a GPS solution who wants to use the service for say one month and only pay that small amount.

One of the biggest drawbacks of AT&T Navigator, compared to the other GPS iPhone apps such as the one from Navigon and the upcoming one from TomTom, is that the apps are downloaded in real-time on the AT&T app, meaning if you don’t have cellular coverage in an area, it simply won’t work. So, maybe the other higher priced GPS apps are more worth while, and even more cost-effective in the longer run.

It remains to be seen when TomTom will release their confirmed iPhone app.

The first more advanced GPS turn-by-turn navigation app to launch on the iPhone seems to be the MobileNavigator Europe app from Navigon. The app is now listed on iTunes and marked as “available soon” on the company website.

The app features 2D and 3D displays, most recent NAVTEQ maps with 2.1M+ European POIs, Real Sign Post display, Take Me Home function, Speed Assistant, portrait and landscape support, among many other features. The complete feature set can be found here.

The app currently only supports maps of select European areas. The total download size required on your iPhone is 1.65GB.

This app is very aggressively priced at $94.99.

The same company also offers its app on other platforms such as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

The other large players in the GPS navigation space such as TomTom will also offer their own iPhone apps (see the TomTom iPhone video here) given how lucrative the app store can be. The iPhone now offers TomTom the possibility of a real revenue stream given how closed the iPhone OS is when it comes to cracked software, compared to other platforms TomTom is available on such as Symbian.

The other big player in the space, Garmin, has opted to develop its own branded smartphone dubbed the Nuvifone (see hands on video) with its GPS app installed. Although unveiled on February 12, 2009, the Nuvifone is still not on the horizon for a release. Although unannounced, we can likely expect Garmin to also release an iPhone version as well to remain competitive.

Apple today released the new iPhone OS 3.0 for everyone to download, as promised at WWDC last week. Check out our complete iPhone OS 3.0 and WWDC roundup for complete details and features of the new OS. To download the new iPhone OS 3.0, simply follow these simple instructions.

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer

2. Launch iTunes, and highlight your iPhone in the left pain

3. Click on “Check for Update” in the iPhone Summary pain

4. Hit Download & Install

5, That’s it!

Update
– iPhone 3G S confirmed to run on an ARM 600MHz processor (double from before)
– Apple is offering a $30 MobileMe discount with the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S

Apple WWDC 2009 was filled with new announcements, and we’ve got everything you need to know right here. Everything you need to know about the new iPhone 3G S, OS X Snow Leopard, and the upgrades to the MacBook Air and Pro lines. We’ve got it all. Let’s start with the new iPhone 3G S.

We previously reported on the credible rumors of the new expected features (see our round up), but now, we got confirmation and a look at previously announced features such as:

Movie Purchase and Rentals from iTunes
Users will now be able to create a new iTunes account directly from their iPhone or touch, and can purchase or rent various TV shows, audiobooks, among other media content via iTunes U. However, it seems that files that are larger than 10MB will be restricted to WiFi downloading only.

Read the full story