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If you’re one of those that couldn’t wait and hacked the iPhone OS 3.0/3.1 Beta to get tethering on your iPhone, the latest Beta Release has fixed that… Beta 2 will disable any hacks that previously enabled tethering on AT&T iPhone devices.  AT&T does warn that tethering without the appropriate plan violates your Term of Service and can lead to termination of your service & Apple warns that jailbreaking your iPhone voids the warranty.

This latest Beta release spurs up old rumors of tethering offerings from AT&T, mostly surrounding the cost.  The ones I’ve heard are completely false… internally it hasn’t even been released what AT&T will charge for tethering (although not surprising since all Apple information has been kept secure until launch); however, since the existing iPhone Data plans closely mirror that of PDA & BlackBerry for both personal and enterprise customers, I would predict that an iPhone Tethering plan will be $60 added to whichever voice plan the subscriber has.  This $60 plan would REPLACE any existing data plan, not added to the existing data plan.  I’ll keep a list below of the rumors I hear and whether or not their true.  Stay tuned for the real story!

Rumor: iPhone Tethering Plan to cost $55 in addition to existing iPhone Data Plan [[FALSE]]

Apple just released the iPhone OS 3.1 Beta 2 (Build 7C106c) to their iPhone Dev Center.  This release is two weeks after the first, which keeps in time with the schedule of the 3.0 Beta Releases.  Model Firmware has been updated to 05.10.01 (Beta 1’s Model Firmware was 05.08.01) and the Carrier now reads AT&T 4.5.

So far no major changes since the last release… Standby for Updates…

Apple released the Beta for iPhone OS 3.1 (Build 7C97d) today to developers.  The Carrier has been updated to AT&T 4.2, along with the Model Firmware which is now 05.08.01.  The other major change is that the MMS buttons are back in the Messaging App; which makes me think that AT&T will be ready with their updates to the network by the time 3.1 is publicly released.  Apple removed the MMS buttons in 3.0 Beta 5, so this may simply be a repeat of that same scenario.  As it stands now, attempts to send MMS result in the Message Failure “!” (seen below).

Some additional updates include Voice Control over Bluetooth and Video Editing where when you trim the video, you have the option to save and overwrite the original, or save a copy of the video.  Glad they clued into that one right away!

So far that’s about it… I’ll update if more surfaces.  Happy iPhoning!