Hello,
iPhone fans. We know that you’re tingling with excitement at what Wednesday’s Apple event will bring. Sure, the elusive tablet should grab the spotlight, but the iPhone may show its face during the infamous “one more thing” portion of the program. Will it be a new OS or will we get a whole new iPhone? Or maybe, just maybe, the iPhone will finally free itself of its AT&T shackles.

Unfortunately, we don’t know what will happen until CEO Steve Jobs (we figure he wouldn’t pass up this opportunity) takes the stage. And since plenty of speculation abounds, we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to say what we’d like to see. After you’ve read our wish list, be sure to add your own in the comments.

File management
We need a way to better organize apps and files on the phone. Heck, even home screen folders like we get with
Google Android would be nice. Even better, just give us an integrated file manager that’s not an app.

FM radio
Yes, we know this is highly unlikely, but this is a wish list.

User-replaceable battery
This is unlikely, too, but we still don’t like the idea of paying Apple to replace the battery and having to go without a phone during the process.

Multitasking
Apple proudly boasts that there’s an “app for that,” but with so many apps available, the iPhone needs to be able to run more than one simultaneously. The need is even more apparent now, as Palm WebOS and Android devices show us how it’s done.

USB mass storage and file transfer
iTunes is great and we know that Apple likes to control the experience, but we should be able to transfer all files of our choice.

Flash support for the Web browser
At the iPhone 3.0 announcement last March, an Apple exec hinted we might get this in the future. Hopefully, it will come tomorrow.

Tethering
We’ve been hearing about this for a while, as well. The functionality is there, but AT&T has to get around to supporting it.

A mark-as-read option
This would come in very handy when scrolling through a long list of new e-mails.

Multitouch
We love our multitouch, so why not expand it across more applications?

Outlook syncing for tasks
This is a relatively minor point, but it would be nice.

A Verizon iPhone
We’d accept T-Mobile, too, but Verizon would really make it interesting.

Microsoft enthusiast and blogger Long Zheng noticed something interesting in the
Zune PC software update released Tuesday.

The software contains three new hardware identifiers, which are used to load the appropriate driver when a particular device is plugged in to a USB port on a Windows PC. Those identifiers all contain the cryptic string “Phone.Device.” The identifiers for the original Zune devices are different, saying “Zune.Device.”

This is the clearest evidence yet that Microsoft is planning some kind of Zune support for mobile phones. As I’ve been predicting for almost two years, this is not going to be a Microsoft-manufactured phone. Microsoft’s not Apple, and it generally doesn’t build hardware, although it might dictate hardware designs to a few select partners. Instead, I think these are three specific models of Windows Mobile 7 phones oriented toward consumers.

As I wrote last week, I believe the rumors that Microsoft is also planning a separate set of Windows Mobile interfaces and hardware reference designs for business users, and that these business phones might not come with the Zune media playback function.

I also believe the Windows Mobile media phones (or whatever they end up being called) are going to be different from the devices designed by Microsoft’s Premium Mobile eXperiences (PMX) group, which will probably be successors to the Sidekick (Microsoft acquired Sidekick designer Danger in 2008), and will focus on social networking. I don’t think those devices will feature a Zune client, Zune-like interface, or much music or video focus at all.

But we’ll see in about three weeks, when the Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona.

Nokia X6 now in 16GB

(Credit:
Nokia)

Only a few months after the launch of the Nokia X6 comes its more compact sibling in the form of a 16GB model. The original X6 had 32GB of storage and has Comes with Music built-in, while the smaller model does not. Still, it retains that nice 3.2-inch wide-screen touch display from its bigger brother, plus it has the series 60 Symbian operating system, a 5.0-megapixel camera, dual-LED flash, it’s quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G, a Web browser with Flash Lite, GPS, and more.

It also comes in four finishes: white with yellow, white with pink, all white, and all black. The new X6 is compatible with the new Ovi Maps, which offers free turn-by-turn navigation.

According to Nokia, the new X6 will be available sometime early this year.