iPhone Firmware (5A240d) Shows Language Support for 7 New Countries

The latest iPhone SDK beta reveals that Apple is adding language support for the following countries: Sweden (Swedish), Denmark (Danish), Finland (Finnish), Norway (Norwegian), Poland (Polish), Korea (Korean) and Brazil (Portuguese). These languages supplement the SDK's existing support for English, French, German, Italian and Russian. There's more, though.

Apple rolled out firmware 2.0 (2.0 240D) to beta testers last week, including language input files from these new countries. However, as Computerworld notes, there are no new carrier files to indicate exactly which carriers would receive the iPhone. A carrier file containing APN setting strings stands for TIM in Italy. As such, it is believed that Italian folks will be able to grab an iPhone at their TIM store sometime soon, be it the 3G model or not. Again, there's more.

Another report, this time issued by theiphoneproject.org, says that a closer look at /System/Library/Carrier Bundles/ has revealed support for Ireland's O2 carrier. But this is the only additional find as far as career support goes. These guys also noticed that "aside from the language support for the 7 new countries, Apple has not yet added Carrier Bundles for them." If Apple has indeed chosen the careers for the respective territories, preferring not to reveal their names for the time being, it is fair to assume that "they will be the ones with the largest customer base in their respective countries," the same source notes.

Both Italian and Russian existed on the previous iPhone software without announcements that the iPhone would be available in those countries. Neither Japan nor China have their languages featured within the latest build of the iPhone software. It wouldn't be so strange, hadn't Japan and China been two potential 3G iPhone recipients. But they are. So maybe we'll see added support for these territories with the release of the next iPhone SDK. Share your impressions below.