Is this a result of new iPhones around the corner? Does Walmart still have a significant inventory of iPhones to sell off? Looking back a few years ago, Walmart was one of the first third-party distributors outside of Apple and AT&T to offer the coveted iPhone for sale.

With such a huge savings, one can’t help but speculate that a new iPhone is coming in the next few weeks and Walmart plans to have plenty of room to sell it.

The 16GB iPhone 3GS still carries the requirement of activation and a two-year service contract with AT&T. Couple this with AT&T’s recent increase in its early termination fee means that while this phone is a great value, it’s still going to be a while before you can upgrade to whatever Apple announces at WWDC in a couple of weeks.

Still, this could be a good value for some who may not wish to upgrade, who are dissatisfied with AT&T or who may not see any appeal in the rumored fourth generation iPhone. AT&T certainly hasn’t brought tethering to its customers and if the new iPhone does sport a front-facing camera, I get a sneaky vibe that the cost of the unlimited data plan is going to go up.

Walmart’s price for the 32GB iPhone remains unchanged at $297. Historically speaking, larger capacity devices tend to be the best sellers. Undoubtedly, the lower price on the 16GB iPhone 3GS will cannibalize sales of the larger iPhone, so it’s likely that Walmart’s stock of the smaller iPhones is very plentiful, compared to the 32GB version.

Adding to this news are rumors of a new iPhone around the corner is that Apple has slowed or stopped shipments of iPhones to its third-party vendors. Steve has something up his sleeve for week after next and Walmart intends to be ready.

Can you hang on two more weeks to see the new iPhone? Or is it time to upgrade your original phone to an iPhone 3GS for less than $100?

Of course, there are ways to unlock the iPhones that are simple enough for many computer users, but there lies the tricky mess of possibly voiding your warranty, so tread carefully. It’s likely you’re probably familiar with jailbreaking, risks and all, so I won’t belabor the point.

Buying the iPhone models off-contract won’t be cheap, since you don’t have a carrier helping out via a hefty subsidy, but as any contract-averse individual will tell you, you’ll end up paying far less for the hardware if you can avoid signing your life away for two whole years. Also you might sleep better at night knowing AT&T hasn’t successfully sunk its claws into you.

The now aging 3G 8GB iPhone will cost you $499, while the 16GB 3GS lists at $599 and the 32GB 3GS sells for $699 without subsidy. Those prices start to look a lot less reasonable now that Apple has announced the pricing for the iPad, even though when I bought the iPhone 3GS last year I had to pay full price since I was only a year into my three-year contract, it seemed perfectly fine to drop $700.

As for when you can get these unlocked devices, according to PC World, you might be able to do it right now. PCW writer Sarah Jacobsson called her local store and was told that they were already selling the devices unlocked. Apple hasn’t yet made an official announcement regarding the devices, or updated its web store to reflect the changes, but 9to5 Mac got early wind of the move, and Gizmodo later confirmed via official internal Apple documents.

It’s unclear exactly why Apple seems to do this every time the end of its current iPhone iteration is in sight, but a reasonable guess is that the company would like to sell off as many of the on-hand units it has before it has to deal with an influx of new 4th generation iPhone stock. Even if Apple plans to continue selling the iPhone 3GS alongside the next iPhone, which is likely considering the retention of the 3G last time as a low-priced budget option, Cupertino still probably wants to clean house and bolster sales ahead of the launch.

You’re only allowed to buy one per day, up to a maximum of 1o total phones, so if you’re aiming for an even dozen you’ll have to enlist the help of a friend.

And that was just fine for a while. The problem now is that we’re just months away from a new iPhone, and then what will we have? Three models of iPhone on the market? Each with slightly different capabilities? Catering to slightly different capacities? That’s just not the Apple way.

If this terrifying prospect was keeping you up at night, rest easy, because news from Europe of an innocuous packaging mixup hints at the upcoming availability of an 8GB iPhone 3GS. An eagle-eyed customer in Germany posted on the apfeltalk.de discussion board that his refurbished 8GB iPhone 3G arrived sporting a SKU packaging label describing something the same, only different — an 8GB iPhone 3GS.

Image by .david at apfeltalk.de

The customer, known as .david on the Apfeltalk.de message board, had this to say (translation by Google via Gizmodo):

Seems to be an iPhone 3G (back and no compass, FW) 3.0.1 on it. However, the packaging is clearly designed for an iPhone 3G [S] 8GB. Ordered was a refurbished 3G iPhone 8GB.

Vote: who have a refurbished iPhone 3G in a new packaging of the packaged iPhone 3G [S] 8GB, because the enhancement is clearly new. Which clearly indicates that the sale of the iPhone 3G [S] 8GB immediately imminent.

.david’s mind is made up; he’s certain this means an 8GB iPhone 3GS is on the way. Another possibility, of course, is that this is a typo. But I tend to agree with my Teutonic neighbor. Apple’s next revision to the iPhone is not too far away, and it makes sense to establish the 3GS feature-set as the de-facto for all iPhones moving forward. Because, y’know, that magnetometer makes a difference!

What’s your take on this? Obvious indicator of things to come, or some dispatch technician’s unfortunate mis-type?

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Well, forget it. Ain’t gonna happen. Not if the UK’s mobile market is anything to go by.

Vodafone UK has today announced the launch date of the iPhone on their network (it’s January 14, by the way) but once you’ve picked your way through their online pricing minefield, it’s hardly anything to write home about.

According to the Financial Times, Guy Laurence of Vodafone UK said the carrier has been busy preparing their network for the iPhone for the last twelve months;

We started preparing our network over a year ago so that iPhone customers will really feel the advantage of being with Vodafone. We will offer an outstanding iPhone experience wherever our customers live, work and travel, delivering speed and reliability – something our customers have told us they really value.

Yeah. We also value more competitive deals, Mr Laurence.

I did a very brief comparison of the three cheapest contract deals (not pay-as-you-go) offered by the three biggest operators in the UK: O2, Orange and Vodafone. Here’s what I found.

The cheapest contracts are all pretty lengthy –two years, in fact. That doesn’t sound unusual for those of you in America, I know, but here in the UK mobile contracts are often no longer than twelve months. Being locked-in for two long years is a ponderous proposition for many Brits who might be graduating (tentatively) to the exciting world of modern smartphones from their old Nokia 3310′s!

In addition, none of the carriers offers a competitive price for the latest model, the iPhone 3GS. The most affordable iPhones happen to be the elderly 2008 model. The stingy 8 gigabyte 2008 model, at that. So if you opt for a two year contract you’re getting a model that, in about six months (barely one quarter into the lifetime of your new contract) is going to be two models behind the latest and greatest from Apple. I’m just sayin’, is all.

Here’s how it breaks down, assuming the recession has hit you as hard as it hit everyone else and you’re looking to buy the most affordable iPhone package with one of the major UK network operators;

O2
For £34.26 ($55.22) a month you’ll get 600 free minutes of talk time and 500 free text messages. Data is unlimited. Assuming you never use more than the free talktime/SMS, this will cost you £822 ($1,324) over the course of the contract.

Orange
£29.36 ($47.32) each and every month gets you a measly 150 minutes of talktime and 250 text messages. The lifetime cost – £704.64, or 1,131.37 of your shiny American dollars.

Vodafone
For a few pennies more than O2, you can get last year’s low-end iPhone for £35 ($56.20) each month. For your money you’ll get 600 free minutes and unlimited text messages. The lifetime cost – £840, or $1,348.70.

Please don’t forget – and I can’t stress this enough – this is an unusually-long contract for the UK, and yet it’s last year’s phone.  Add to that the fact that, of course, no one ever stays within the allotted talktime and SMS quotas – everyone has a bill that costs the monthly fee plus additional talk time and messages. Frankly, it all adds up to quite an expensive deal, given the age and limited storage capacity of the model on offer.

I should add, too, that “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean “unlimited”. It means you’re allowed to consume as much data as the network provider deems “appropriate” for normal use. This tends to hover between 500 MB and 1 GB per month, which isn’t too bad unless you use your phone for watching YouTube videos eight hours a day. (Still, I take offense at the way network operators so casually use the word “unlimited” when it means nothing of the sort.) The trouble is that, if our providers start behaving like AT&T, their idea of “acceptable data usage” is going to change, and not in our favor.

The 3GS, on the other hand, is astonishingly more expensive than the 3G with little appreciable difference between the providers in terms of handset costs and tariffs. I wonder if this is because of the already-steep up-front costs they’ve shouldered in order to offer Apple’s handsets in the first place. If that’s the case, perhaps I should be more disappointed in with Apple’s aggressive pricing policies that those of my nationwide cellular network operators. In any case, at this point in time, I see no compelling reason to move away from O2 at the end of my current contract.

Was I expecting too much in terms of competitive pricing? Are these prices fair, given the investments which must be made by operators to offer the iPhone ‘experience’? Or is this a shining example of unfettered network operator greed? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Just released this morning, the new Ustream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes link) actually allows you to stream live video from your video-capable iPhone 3GS to the web, something which the recently released Qik app couldn’t (and still can’t) boast. It’s the first app to offer live streaming from Apple’s handset, and it even allows you to do so over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections.

In order to use the app, you’ll need to sign up for a free Ustream account if you don’t already have one. Ustream will prompt you to do so, and then allow you to register right within the app, without having to even pop out to Safari to complete the process.

As with any Ustream video, your live stream will be automatically recorded and stored on your Ustream account for later viewing. You can also notify your friends via Twitter that you’re starting a stream, and take advantage of Ustream’s built-in chat and Social Stream features to interact with viewers watching your video in real-time while you shoot. Obviously not something you can do while recording yourself, unless you are so intimately familiar with your iPhone that you can type when the screen isn’t facing you.

All of your recorded videos can be shared via the app to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but people wanting to tune in live will have to go to Ustream.tv. If you’re not within range of a data network when you want to make a recording, Ustream Live Broadcaster lets you record now and upload later, when you do find a reliable 3G or Wi-Fi connection.

Other features include the ability to start a yes/no poll, support for portrait and landscape recording, audio muting, video title editing, video resolution selection, viewer count and the ability to broadcast your phone’s GPS recording while streaming. It’s a very full-featured app, and one that I’m honestly surprised made it through the review process.

I think this app being released indicates a relaxation of some of Apple’s strictures regarding the streaming of live video, and possible the streaming of all video over a 3G connection. I expect an updated version of Qik with similar abilities to follow soon, and possibly a host of other apps that have been waiting at the gates for Apple to give the green light.

Interestingly, the app description says that both the 3GS and the 3G models are supported, although the sole purpose of the app is to broadcast live video as its recorded, which last time I checked wasn’t available on a standard, non-jailbroken iPhone 3G. Any users out there who have a 3G, get downloading (the app is free) and help us solve this mystery.

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The dawn of a new year never fails to make me excited about all the potential for new devices we’ll inevitably see released. This year is no different, and for Apple’s iPod and iPhone, there are some storms that have been brewing for quite a while that should break in 2010. Hope you packed a raincoat.

I recently came across my still functional (including decent battery life) 30GB iPod Video while rooting through my drawers looking for a proprietary USB cable. After I charged it and booted it up, the palpable feeling of the HDD platter spinning up, and the faint sound that accompanies said action reminded me of just how far we’ve come, and of how far we’ve yet to go with Apple’s portable devices. Here’s where I think we’re headed next.

The iPod

It’s long been the linchpin in Apple’s lineup of product offerings, and it deserves eternal respect for the role it had in reversing the company’s fortunes, but the iPod no longer enjoys the place of highest favor among Apple products, mobile or otherwise. I predict, as a general trend, a continued downplaying of the iPod’s role at Apple, and significant changes to the products on offer as a result of that trend.

Video Comes to the Touch

Probability: Guaranteed
The evidence all but guarantees that video is meant to come to the iPod touch sooner or later, and I predict it will be sooner, rather than later. Tear-downs of the most recently released iteration of the touch revealed a space perfectly designed for the same camera guts found in the new iPod nano, so unless Apple is just very interested in toying maliciously with Apple rumor hounds, this one is basically in the bag. It doesn’t hurt that it’s the next logical step for the rising star of Apple’s iPod lineup.

iPod Classic Gets Retired

Probability: Possible
It’s served long, and it’s served well, but the HD-based iPod Classic is not long for this world, in my opinion. Apple’s already streamlined the Classic to a single available model, and as the price of flash memory begins to trend downwards again in 2010, I think they’ll do away with the beast altogether and focus on turning Classic customers into iPod touch devotees.

Touch-based Control Returns to Shuffle

Probability: Possible
One of Apple’s most questionable decisions made in the service of sexy design is the loss of any and all buttons on the iPod shuffle. I think it will respond to mixed reviews and consumer skepticism by returning some form of manual (ie. non-voice) control to the device itself. That doesn’t necessarily mean buttons will return, if they can figure out some way to make use of the multi-touch tech it’s so clearly in love with.

Nano Gets Incremental Video Upgrades

Probability: Guaranteed
Look for the iPod nano to get steady improvements in the quality of its video camera, and in what you can do with said video on and off the device. Apple’s made its big changes to the device, and will now move into what amounts to a holding pattern in which it upgrades the upgrades it’s already introduced. And consumers will continue shelling out with each bump up.

The iPhone

Predicting where the iPhone will go is a bit more challenging than making calls about the iPod lineup. The upgrades made with the 3GS were logical enough, since many of them amounted to putting things in that should probably have been there in the first place.

The Usual

Probability: Guaranteed
There are the standard upgrades to be expected with any new model. These things include storage bumps (64GB next time around), improvements to the camera and video recording (bump up to 5 megapixels possible, but by no means a sure thing), and improvements to the processing and graphics rendering capabilities of the iPhone. They’re boring and we know they’re coming, so let’s not waste time on this.

New Look

Probability: Possible
The iPhone is incredibly recognizable, and that probably had something to do with the reason the 3GS still has the same distinctive look as the 3G. Other probable reasons include a rushed roll-out, and more emphasis on internal changes. I think next time around, we’ll be treated to a new look, and I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that we may have already seen some early prototypes of this design change.

Better Peer-to-Peer

Probability: Guaranteed
The future of mobile tech is in peer-to-peer interaction between devices. Apple knows this, and that’s why it opened up Bluetooth interaction between devices when it released iPhone 3.0. I think Apple will make further efforts to make P2P experiences technically better and more seamless in the next update. That might come via improved Bluetooth, or using the recently revealed Wi-Fi Direct tech that Apple’s thrown its support behind.

Physical Keyboard

Probability: Absurd
No. Just kidding.

The Big Picture

Flash-bang upgrades will all go to the iPhone, while the iPod line will get natural but relatively small and less showy enhancements. The reason being, Apple is using the iPod touch and its brethren to herd consumers towards the iPhone, which is the real cash cow and the better bet for long-term investment.

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China Unicom also sells the device through its own site, so the numbers are far from final, but they do probably at least hint at how the iPhone is faring in official outlets. Taobao.com’s iPhone sales also started later than the network operator’s, a couple of weeks after the iPhone’s official launch at the end of October.

The five iPhones sold include two 8GB models, and three 16GB devices. Taobao.com is the most frequented online retail site in China, and a go-to destination especially for electronics like cell phones and computers, so that’s a little like similar numbers being posted for iPhone sales at Amazon.com, were it offered there.

The problem is that China is already flooded with iPhones, despite how long it took Apple to come to an agreement with an official service provider for the device. Not only that, but unofficially unlocked devices brought in from other countries also boast Wi-Fi, something which Apple had to agree to remove from its production run for China at the behest of China Unicom in order to engineer a distribution deal.

There’s also the matter of price, which is no small concern. A 16GB iPhone 3GS costs around 5700 yuan (about $834) and the 32GB model will run you 6,999 yuan. It’s much cheaper in most cases to pick up an imported, unlocked international version. Pricing issues and the lack of Wi-Fi could account for why China Unicom itself reported only 5,000 sales in the first few days, a dismal number when compared with international launch figures.

It may seem like a loss for both China Unicom and Apple, but really, it sends a clear message to Apple’s other business partners going forward: If you let us do things our way, and don’t make any extraordinary demands that drag out the negotiation process and impede our ability to offer consumers exactly what we already know they want, everyone wins. If not, customers will seek other solutions.

As Apple looks to expand the availability of the iPhone, opening up the device to more and more carriers worldwide, it’s an important message to send, and best of all, the consumer wins thanks to reduced control residing in the hands of telcos, and more with hardware and software makers that actually care about user experience quality control.

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I love having the luxury of video capture on my iPhone 3GS, because it’s available to me anytime I need it. The only problem is, it’s either video or photo capture, so I’m potentially out of luck if I captured one and decidedly would have rather had the other. Yeah, I kind of like having my cake and eating it all in a single sitting too.

The good news — in this particular case at least — is that if you capture the event in video, you have a pretty good chance of getting decent still photos out of it when you’re through.

While this tip is aimed at iPhone 3GS users who can shoot their own video, it’s possible to use on any model when viewing video. The beauty of editing 3GS video that you’ve shot, is the frame scrubber that is made available for editing purposes. That feature just makes it a lot easier to pinpoint the image that you want to pull from the video content. (This becomes important when one frame is blurry, and the next is not.)

Once you’ve found the frame that you want to make into a photo in your iPhone album, we just need to capture it. For the best results, make sure the control bezels are hidden from the screen. Usually tapping the screen once will cause them to slide out of view. Then, to perform the screen capture, press and hold the Home button. While holding the Home button, click the Sleep button on top of the phone. You’ve now saved that movie frame to your photo library as a stand-alone picture file.

The quality of your resulting photo depends completely on the video that was captured first. If there are slow movements that limit or eliminate blur, that will give the best outcome to this process. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than no photos from an event at all!

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While the timing of both rumors happens to be concurrent, please note that it is very unlikely that if Apple were to release an 8GB iPhone 3GS in time for the holiday season, it would use the new RFID tech. It’s more likely that the RFID integration will come to fruition in later models of the iPhone.

$99 8GB 3GS

Rumors of the smaller capacity 3GS come via Boy Genius Report, which has proved fairly reliable in the past when it comes to predicting product launches by Apple. They claim to have heard news of the 8GB model from two separate sources at AT&T:

Definitely not confirmed, but rather interesting nonetheless. We’ve heard now from two sources that AT&T, and we guess Apple, are contemplating launching an 8GB iPhone 3GS at the $99 price point before Christmas. One source said this was AT&T’s way of combating the Droid madness.

It should be noted that BGR specifically points out that they haven’t heard any of this from Apple or any of its personnel, which could mean that AT&T is pitching the idea but doesn’t necessarily confirm that Apple is receptive. Still, a 3GS at the magical $99 sweet-spot would definitely take some of the wind out of Droid’s sails.

Of course, there is the fact that Phil Schiller said the Apple holiday lineup is set. That should mean no new products, right? Or it could mean that the 8GB 3GS was already on the roster and that it just hasn’t been announced yet. Still, if it is coming in time for Christmas, Apple is already missing out on some prime holiday buying time. We’ll definitely see it before Black Friday if we’re going to see it at all.

RFID

Apple is looking into integrating RFID swipe support into new iPhone prototypes, AppleInsider reports. iPhones boasting RFID capabilities could allow for things like making swipe payments, proximity alerts, and getting data from swiping RFID-embedded objects or even animals.

RFID tech is ideal for this sort of thing because it requires little power, since the data transferred is often small in size, usually only a number or a URL. There’s also the cost benefits of the tech, and the fact that they’re already in wide use. According to AppleInsider:

The cost of RFID chips is now down to just a few cents each in quantity, making it possible to apply them to a wide variety of uses. Shipping companies and retailers already use RFIDs to track packages much like barcodes; libraries use them to track books, farmers use them to identify animals in herds, and the army, theme parks and schools attach RFIDs to people.

The site also speculates that Apple could then leverage its existing iTunes accounts, broadening it to make it a method for paying for anything via your iPhone, so long as the vendor you’re dealing with is equipped to accept RFID payments. Such payment systems using cell phones have already been used widely in parts of Asia and Europe.

If Apple gets in early on widespread RFID adoption here in North America, it could see the kind of industrial and business success it’s been missing thus far. It might become as common to see an iPhone-based device on the loading dock as it is to see one in a Starbucks.

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It sounds like a decent deal, but I decided to download the app and find out just what the first real video editing app for the iPhone was capable of. Might I be able to become the next film ingenue sensation with only my 3GS?

Features

First of all, let me tell you right off the bat: This isn’t just a warmed-over version of the built-in Camera app, like so many photo effect apps tend to be. It not only allows you to stitch different clips from your device together, it also allows you to use 27 different transitions between them, including various wipes and fades.

You can also add text to your clips, including opening and closing credits and titles, and provide transitions for both. Only four font styles currently exist, but you change position to achieve different visual effects. Hopefully more styles will be added in later updates, or maybe as in-app purchases down the line.

Interface and Usability

The interface for ReelDirector isn’t going to win any design awards, but it is simple, fairly clean, and well-suited to its purpose. My main complaint is that while the app automatically switches to landscape view, which could be useful, there’s no toggle to prevent that from occurring, something I think every app should provide, including Apple’s own.

As for usability, ReelDirector generally performs well, but with a few issues that really prevent it from being an absolutely problem-free experience. For example, when you insert a video clip into your movie project, you have the option of trimming it, but once it’s in, you can’t go back and re-edit the clip itself. All you can really do at that point is change the transitions between clips. You also can’t live preview your movie in its entirety until you “Create” it, which can be a time-consuming process. The good news is, you can still go back and make changes after you output your movie.

Conclusion

It isn’t a replacement for iMovie by any stretch of the imagination, but ReelDirector is the first real movie editing solution for the iPhone 3GS, and for a pioneer, it actually works remarkably well. You probably won’t be taking home any awards at Cannes, since the app still lacks pretty basic elements like audio editing capabilities, but for home movies that look as good or better than the ones your uncle used to edit on his hulking early model DV cam, ReelDirector is more than capable.

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