It isn’t the only solar charging case on the market, but Novothink’s Solar Surge is the first to receive an official thumbs up from Apple, and thus noteworthy indeed.

The case features an integrated solar panel that should yield 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network or 60 minutes on EDGE after 2 hours of sun exposure. Plus, the battery is a rechargeable 1500 mAh 3.7 V lithium-ion that offers 120% capacity of the iPhone 3G. The Solar Surge for the 2G iPod Touch will be available later this month for $70, while the iPhone 3G/3GS version will come in sometime in the 4Q of 2009 for the same price.

If you are into this sort of thing, the Solar Surge is probably the most compact and practical solar iPhone charger on the market—and the price point seems to be in line with many standard charging cases, making it an even better deal, and fits in with any “green” consumers ideals quite well too.

AT&T has confirmed that multimedia messaging capabilities will come to the iPhone a few days late, on Sept. 25 — just after the end of summer — bringing to an end months of waiting and speculation.

The service will be available with a software update on the launch date. The update will arrive for customers as a download from iTunes. The feature will only be available for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users.

“It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one,” AT&T said. “We support more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world so we

took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we expect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers’ patience and hope they’ll understand our desire to get it right from the start.”

AT&T officials said they have been working for months to prepare their systems and network for MMS capabilities on the iPhone, which is expected to bring a great deal of additional bandwidth the the wireless provider’s network. Officials have admitted that the additional bandwidth consumed by iPhone users has been taxing on their data infrastructure, thus the delay in MMS support.

Apple is rumored to have struck a deal with the music industry and obtained the right to sell “ready-made ringtones,” and company officials are reportedly rushing to have them available for next week’s event.

Music industry sources reportedly told CNet that Apple will announce and begin to sell pre-cut ringtones at its press event Sept. 9, if they can be prepped to sell in time. In 2007, iTunes granted users the ability to create their own custom ringtones with certain enabled song. The feature cost 99 cents to select a 30-second segment for ringtone playback on the iPhone.

Given that most individual songs on iTunes sell for 99 cents in their entirety, to charge anything above

that for just a section of the song might seem odd. However, consumers in the past have shown a willingness to spend up to $3 on a ringtone. The report did not have a final price on ringtones available, but did say the song clips are expected to sell for “far less than $3.”

While the pre-cut ringtone feature is technically new, it will not likely be a large announcement for Apple at its Sept. 9 iPod-centric event. Not only are custom ringtones already available on iTunes, but CNet noted that sales of ringtones dropped 24 percent from 2007 to 2008, likely due to the fact that users have figured out how to make their own from pre-purchased songs.

Mobile advertising firm AdMob has released its July 2009 Mobile Metrics report along with a supplemental presentation in which the company reveals the results of a survey of over 1,100 iPhone, iPod touch, and Android users to obtain data on application usage.

The study reveals that iPhone users download approximately 10 applications per month on average with 25% of those being paid applications. iPod touch users download over 18 applications per month on average, with only two of those being paid applications.

The study also found that approximately 50% of iPhone users download at least one paid application per month, while only 40% of iPod touch users do likewise. Users who do download paid applications average approximately five paid downloads per month and spend an average of

$9.49 (iPhone) or $9.79 (iPod touch) per month for an average application price of just under $2.00.

Extrapolating the survey data to the estimated user bases of 26.4 million iPhone users and 18.6 million iPod touch users, AdMob suggests that the total App Store market size may be nearly $200 million per month, or approaching $2.5 billion per year. In contrast, the Android market is estimated at approximately $60 million per year.

AdMob’s survey method of soliciting respondents via ads within its own network, which serves 7,000 mobile web sites and 3,000 applications, may skew the survey results somewhat by attracting users more likely to be engaged in mobile applications, but the results do still provide an idea of the substantial market for App Store developers and Apple itself.

Even though Nokia’s Symbian mobile operating system commands the lion’s share of the worldwide smartphone market, the world’s largest handset maker is looking to Linux to take on the iPhone.

Sources have told Reuters that Nokia is positioned to announce its first Maemo-based phone next week at an event in Stuttgart, Germany. Originally designed for Nokia’s Internet Tablets line, the Linux-based operating system will now reportedly transition over to at least some of the handset maker’s cell phones.

Now, a Linux derivative is primed to play a “key role” in Nokia’s top-tier lineup, reportedly offering more flexibility for the company than its Symbian operating system. Tero Kuittinen of MKM Partners said that Maemo is a better option for a line of complex devices that would benefit from

“rapidly evolving user-interface software.”

The report seems to confirm weeks of rumors that Maemo would make an appearance on Nokia phones after various screenshots surfaced online. However, Nokia has insisted that it is not abandoning Symbian.

Last month, Nokia told investors that its global market share would likely recede over the next year, as it loses ground to competitors Apple and Research in Motion.

Recent numbers showed that Symbian still has a 50.3 percent total market share, but that number is well down from the 72 percent the platform had in 2006. This as Apple’s iPhone has continued to gain on the market leader since the debut of the iPhone in 2007. In the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone represented 14 percent of global smartphone sales.

The iPhone could offer an automated home screen providing local weather, time, maps and contacts based on the device’s location, according to a new patent application from Apple.

Revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office this week, Apple’s filing dated Feb. 21, 2008 for “Transitional Data Sets” describes an invention that would display specific applications automatically populated based on dynamic factors like location. The application notes that conventional user interfaces on mobile devices are clunky and cluttered. The new invention would aim to cut down on the number of icons by giving users what they need at a particular moment in time.

In one example, the iPhone would utilize location-aware applications, and populate the home screen with those based on the city in which the user is currently located. Included pictures

show an iPhone home screen with a “San Francisco” button, which would take the user to a location-aware screen on the device.

“The user can create a set of location-aware applications that can be populated by transitional data sets,” the patent filing reads. “A transitional data set is a data set that can change based on the current location of the mobile device… as determined by a positioning technology (e.g., GPS, cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi).”

In addition, the feature could change the icons of applications to represent the current location of the phone. The patent filing describes an icon showing the Golden Gate Bridge when the phone is in San Francisco, but that icon could change to an image of the New York City skyline when the phone is in the Big Apple.

You just blew some cash on an iPhone, why spend any more on a dock? Using just the stuff that came with your iPhone you can make a sturdy and novel-looking stand.

For what they are, docks of all sorts—not just iPhone docks—can be a bit on the pricey side.

Who wants to pay too much for something that amounts to a hunk of plastic that holds a USB cable in the right spot? Not Flickr member Sayesbury that’s for sure:

[View with PicLens]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vt/sets/72157622052509758/

He built a zero-cost dock out of the packaging and parts in the iPhone’s box.

“I wanted a dock stand for

the iphone, but I could not believe Apple want[s] £35 for it.

Seeing as the iphone already comes with a dock plate, it was just a simple matter of [gluing] the dock cable to the plate and mounting it onto a box.

You will have to trim the bottom of the dock plate so the dock connector will sit square on the plate.”

The box the iPhone comes in is quite sturdy and once slightly modified makes a great stand, he claims. You could even weight the bottom of the box if you wanted it to be extra-stable. Well, that’s one way to save a few dollars.

Apple’s iPhone held onto a 13.7% share of global smartphone unit sales in the second quarter, outpacing Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, which now claims just 9% of the market, according to Canalys.

“Apple has revolutionized the smart phone sector, leapfrogging more experienced rivals,” Canalys senior analyst Pete Cunningham said in the company’s report. Sales in the second quarter did not include much of the surge in new sales spurred by the release of the iPhone 3GS.

In the North American market, the iPhone grabbed a 23% share of smartphones sold, despite being tied to a single carrier in the US. Apple’s US debut occurred months before sales were expanded to other countries, and international sales of iPhone really began a year

later with the launch of the iPhone 3G. RIM held a commanding 52% share of US smartphones.

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Nokia maintained a 64% share while Apple took second place with 13.6%, followed by third place RIM with 10.3%. Those numbers indicate Apple has been much better at competing internationally against Nokia than RIM has, despite its having been in the smartphone business for nearly a decade compared to Apple’s barely two year old iPhone assault.

Worldwide, Nokia still leads smartphone sales with 44.3% of the market, but that represents a significant slide over the last few years. As recently as 2006, Nokia’s Symbian platform accounted for over 72% of smartphones sold; now it represents just 50.3%.

Apple on Friday offered a rare glimpse into the exclusive agreement between the iPhone maker and AT&T, when it officially responded to an inquiry from the Federal Communications Commission and explained its role in the absence of Google Voice from the App Store.

Apple filed a series of official answers to queries from the Federal Communications Commission, and provided the answers publicly on its Web site. In the responses, Apple stated that Google Voice was, contrary to media reports, not rejected from the App Store, but remains under review. In addition, it stated that the software has been delayed solely by Apple.

Apple did note that it continues to fulfill the obligations of its contract with AT&T. The contract states that Apple will not allow the iPhone to access voice over IP services via the AT&T cellular network. Apple said it is unsure whether Google Voice includes VOIP elements in how it routes calls. However, the contract with AT&T

did not specifically prohibit the Google Voice application from being approved — that issue was entirely with the application’s apparent mimicking of the iPhone’s core features, Apple said.

AT&T also issued a statement Friday denying any involvement in the state of apparent limbo the Google Voice iPhone software currently finds itself in. AT&T and Apple both stated that AT&T was never contacted by Apple for consultation on the Google Voice application, but that the decision was made solely by the iPhone maker. In the AT&T statement, Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, external and legislative affairs, encouraged Google Voice users to access the application from the Web.

“Let me state unequivocally, AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store,” Cicconi said. “AT&T was not asked about the matter by Apple at any time, nor did we offer any view one way or the other.”

A new report from Taiwan states that Microsoft intends to debut a touch interface for Windows Mobile 6.5 in early 2010, along with version 7 later that year to compete with the iPhone.

Citing sources at Taiwanese handset makers, DigiTimes reports that Microsoft will launch the latest upgrade to Windows Mobile on Oct. 1, 2009, but that a touchscreen upgrade will come in February of 2010. Following that, Windows Mobile 7 is also expected in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The two operating systems will reportedly represent a dual platform strategy from Apple’s rival to the north.

“Microsoft will not phase

out Windows Mobile from the market,” the report states, “but will lower the OS price when it launches Windows Mobile 7.”

Currently, Windows Mobile 6.5 doesn’t support capacitive touchscreens, but that may change in early 2010, if the report proves true. The upcoming version was always viewed as an interim product before the launch of Windows Mobile 7, which aims to provide an experience similar to that of the iPhone.

The strategy would allegedly allow the lower-priced Windows Mobile 6.5 to compete with the free, open source Android platform, while the premium Windows Mobile 7 option would be geared toward the iPhone crowd.