14 DAY TRIAL // If anyone still doubts Apple's launching a 3G iPhone soon, more evidence to back that up comes from Chronic Productions. The independent developer has posted an iPhone 2.0 screenshot on its blog, depicting several 3G-related strings in the fifth beta of the upcoming iPhone firmware. Click on the image to the left to have a look.
A note-worthy find, of course, is the setting that allows users to disable 3G in favor of battery life. As you can see, there's a small description just below the Enable 3G toggle that says: "Using 3G loads data faster, but decreases battery life." Some of you may remember a certain Steve Jobs once saying that battery life was the primary motive for not hooking the iPhone up with 3G. AppleInsider notes that "while the 3G iPhone may see substantial improvements to the '2 to 3 hours' of battery life common on earlier 3G devices, it may fall short of rivaling the 'up to 6 hours' of Internet use advertised alongside the existing models." Unless, of course, next-gen iPhone batteries are up to the task.
"Well, when you have nothing to do all day, this is what happens," the developer writes on his blog. "Note that this is not fake, it is in the beta 5 .ipsw, but will normally not show up on an EDGE iPhone. Turning 3G on will just crash the phone if you use an EDGE phone."
So, while countless images of what could be the new 3G iPhone are surfacing on the web with the passing of each day, this here screenshot is probably the most solid proof that the new iPhone model is just around the corner. Keep an eye out for more stuff like this, should Apple roll out iPhone SDK (firmware 2.0) Beta 6.