Well the iPhone has been out for nearly a year now, or a few months over here in England but ti's still garnering more than it's fair share of praise and criticism. This past week has seen a lot of newsworthy stuff about Apple's wonder device.

First of all the iPhone is not even out all over the world yet, not even in Canada despite being neighbours with America the country where the iPhone originated from. This week we learned the iPhone will be being released in Ireland on O2 much like in the rest of the UK. Whilst sales of the iPHone in the UK were less than expected it was still a success despite the whole rigmarole with the Carphone Warehouse.

Whilst on the subject, the latest firmware release has a few hidden hints within the code, the hints point to the release of the iPhone in Ireland, which has been confirmed this week by O2) but also that Austria will be getting the iPhone on T-Mobile, which seems to fit well since T-Mobile has exclusive rights to the mobile in Germany too.

Whilst Austria looks set to get the iPhone soon it may not be the case in similarly named Australia. Australia has similar laws to France that prohibit goods being sold to require another purchase. In this case buying an iPhone needs you to be tied to a contract with their partner, in this country for instance it would be O2.

Australia's rules could prove problematic for Apple who had a number of stumbling blocks in France and Germay, as a result in France the iPhones are being sold SIM-Free like most mobile phones and in Germany Vodafone managed to get T-Mobile's exclusive contract overturned, albeit for a few days and then the ruling was overturned.

For me personally the main problem I had with the iPhone was that alot of the basic functions of most mobiles was missing, whilst some issues have been addressed such as MMS there is still one sticking point with the majority of consumers: 3G, or the lack of it. Whilst many thought that on it's one year anniversary Apple would announce a 3G model this was not so unfortunately, Steve Jobs stuck by his statement/excuse last year of that 3G would seriously affect battery life of the phone, hence it's exclusion.

This is set to change with chip manufacturer Infinion saying they will be making 3G iPhone chips this year. This may attract more prospective customers who have held off on buying an iPhone since it only had the slow EDGE internet on it, despite Wifi being included with contracts including access to O2's hotspots throughout the country.

The good news doesn't stop there, Apple plans to address the other main concern consumers have: Lack of 3rd party applications. This is one of the issues the hackers have overcome and used to showcase the true potential of the device.

There is a scheduled press event in the first week of March, delayed from the last week of February to hopefully announce the Software Development Kit (SDK) which would allow developers to make programs for the iPhone too. So hopefully this will happen and people who bought the iPhone can get a more legitimate way of running their own programs on their phone.