Steve Jobs gave the NYT a bunch of details on the upcoming iPhone App Store. It's opening Thursday with "more than 500 software applications", 25% of which will be free, and 90% of which will be $9.99 or less. If we're talking software developers, they get 70% of the revenues while Apple pockets 30%.

Jobs compared the split favourably to game development companies, saying that Apple was going to "provide distribution and marketing."

Somehow we don't think arrangement of apps on a virtual iTunes shelf with a few web banners on Fark and Digg can compare with, say, the Grand Theft Auto IV ad blitz. [NYT]

APC Magazine has its hands on "leaked" Telstra plans that - if true - are another disappointment.

The cheapest plan, $35/month, includes just 5MB of data and $25 of calls. It's not until $119/month that the data allowances hit more than 200MB. On that plan you get 1GB of data, but still just $25 of calls. The telco also slogs you $279 upfront for the 8GB handset and $399 for the 16GB unit.

There's no fine print, and I suppose the pricing could become competitive if calls are 1c/minute. Telstra's telling journos full pricing won't be available until tomorrow.

Here's hoping the information's false - though that hasn't worked for us recently.

With Vodafone offering 5GB of mobile broadband for $39/month, we were hoping for a vaguely competitive iPhone offering.

When they posted pretty poor plans for a short while yesterday, we hoped it was a mistake.

We're sorely disappointed. The plans have been resurrected today and consumers aren't the winner: Optus is.

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The only real problem with today's portable electronics is battery life. The gear gets more powerful but sadly battery technology really hasn't kept up, that's why we write about things like solar power. But there are also nifty things called dynamos, devices you pump or crank to juice up your batteries. O2, a large mobile carrier in the UK, will be installing bicycle-powered dynamos around a festival it's sponsoring this coming weekend to charge up music fans' mobiles. Sure, they could have run power cables and created power stations, but where's the fun in that? And as anyone who's been to a large outdoor festival in the last few years knows, you're going to want to power up at least once a day or else you're cut off. And if you've got our luck, it'd be right before Winehouse takes the stage, so you'd have no bawdy SMS session to distract you. [Pocket Picks]

The MP100 may not be as capable as other palm-sized projectors, but what it lacks in terms of spec it makes up for in design. Actually, scratch that. I have absolutely no idea how a projector with a 5-watt LED, 10-15 lumen output, and 200:1 contrast ratio could be even the slightest bit useful. Plus, it can only throw a maximum 37-inch 640x480 image. Personally, I am content to wait for mini projectors (or Pico projector) technology which should hit sometime this year (or so they say).[Digitimes via Ubergizmo via DVICE]

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Adobe's Open Screen Project, which combines such companies like Nokia, Moto, Cisco, Sony Ericsson, Verizon, Qualcomm and Marvell, aims to make Flash more like Java. Namely, they want to make sure the platform Flash runs on is consistent, meaning developers can code once instead of many times. The project will try to encompass phones, desktops, mobile internet devices (internet pads), and set top boxes.

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Does the world need yet another company making Windows Mobile phones? Maybe, maybe not, but Velocity Mobile is doing it anyway with their Velocity 103 (left) and 111 (right) smartphones. Both are running Windows Mobile 6.1 and will launch in Q2 and Q3 respectively. What's this have to do with Mr. T? You can't spell Velocity without T, fool. Plus Mr. T likes smartphones.

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With the news about Elliot Spitzer's demise plastered everywhere you look, the folks at Complex brought up an interesting point—when you are a public figure, pre-paid mobile phones are the way to go when calling hookers. Even drug dealers know that it is the way to go when you don't want to leave evidence behind—so how could he (and his escort service) have missed that one? Better yet, why not stick with text messages? If you want to avoid his fate, you are going to need a good pre-paid mobile phone. [Complex]

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The lion engraving on the back of this Chinese all-in-one cellphone/PDA is presumably what gives it its strange name. The strangeness doesn't end there though: it takes dual SIM cards ... and has a standby time of 365 days? Yes, this is what the manufacturer says. One year chaps.

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If telco 3 is to be believed, we've turned into a nation mad on mobile TV. It sent out a release this week claiming that over the summer its customers tuned in over 1.2 million times to watch Cricket TV, its direct-to-mobiles cricket programming.

On the surface of it, it looks like pretty good news for television broadcasting to mobiles, except for the weasel-wording that makes us wonder how many people really did watch it. 

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