The iPhone is set to get a face lift. Yesterday apple showed off a new version of the iPhone operating system, iPhone 3.0 along with a new version of the phone’s software development kit.

Iphone 3.0 comes with  innovative features, Apple gave members of the iPhone Developer Program immediate access to the iPhone OS 3.0 software beta and an updated Software Development Kit (SDK) with over 1,000 completely new APIs.

Well-known technology insider Boy Genius said he has been told of two new features so far. Notably, iPhones would get Multimedia Messaging Service support, or MMS. The standard is used to send photos and videos in a form similar to text-only SMS and has long been popular for trading content between phones for several years. Apple is one of the few phone manufacturers to leave out MMS.

iPhones would also purportedly get data tethering or the ability to serve as the Internet connection for a computer, for both a direct USB connection as well as over Bluetooth. The update would put iPhones on a par with the data options for most smartphones.

For developers, the big items were in application purchasing for example for game upgrades, map content and subscriptions for paid application  only peer-to-peer connectivity via Bluetooth, giving apps access to hardware via the dock connector or Bluetooth, maps embeddable in application and push notifications. For users, there’s finally cut-copy-paste available in all application search across everything in the iPhone,landscape keyboard, MMS messaging and voice memos. Developer beta starts and 3.0 will be available in the summer  free for all 3G phones, $10 for iPod Touch.

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