As I read the press release from AT&T announcing its new $99/mo. all-you-can-talk voice plan, I noticed the language implies that new iPhone customers can sign up for the new unlimited plan without the standard two-year iPhone contract.

The great cell-phone price war of 2008 has begun. Almost 2 weeks ago, Sprint introduced a $119 unlimited voice plan in four markets (including San Francisco). Today, both Verizon and AT&T have rolled out $99 all-you-can-talk voice plans nationally, with Verizon introducing a less-than-spectacular new EVDO data plan.

China Mobile, the No. 1 cell company in China, claims there are 400,000 unlocked iPhones running on its network. That's more than 10 percent of the 3.7 million Steve Jobs announced Apple had shipped through mid-January. A very impressive stat to be sure, but why did China Mobile release it now? Apple and China Mobile have been in negotiations for a while about bringing the iPhone to China. The talks had reached an impasse over how much of a kickback Apple would receive on subscriber fees.

Google found that iPhone users run 5,000 percent more Google searches on their phones than other smartphone users. "We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again," said Vic Gundotra, head of Google's mobile operations. At last, the brains of Mountain View have located the elusive Googlephone.

Microsoft will promote Andrew Lees to senior vice president and task him with gaining a stronger foothold for Microsoft in the consumer market for mobile devices. That means taking on Apple's iPhone. According to the WSJ, Lees replaces Pieter Knook, who shuffles into retirement on today's news. Perhaps this is because Knook last year allowed Steve Ballmer to say "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

Justin Long, the sci-fi actor who also plays "Mac" in Apple's TV commercials, dropped his precious iPhone into a swimming pool according to celebrity blog Out All Night. "I do [have an iPhone], but it fell in a swimming pool, so it's a little broken right now," says Long. That's too bad, Justin. Maybe you and Digg founder Kevin Rose can commiserate — after all, his iPhone got a little broken too. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Apple just made a million teenagers ask their parents for $500. "If you love Facebook so much," this new Apple iPhone ad begins, "that you check it every time you're at the computer, just think how great it would be every time you're, well, nowhere near your computer." Which is funny. I guess. But we prefer the classic ending, "then why don't you marry it?"

Apple has fattened the iPhone and iPod Touch's memory — and the company's profit margins. The 16GB iPhone retails for $499 — a $100 price jump, which might kick the iPhone above a 40 percent gross margin. Not bad for an industry that normally gives away phones as a loss leader. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Apparently every cab in New York will eventually be home to a celebrity iPhone; just a week after the NY Daily News reported on the guy who copied Annie Leibovitz's assistant's contact list after he found it in a cab, a Facebook user says he found the iPhone of Richard Cohen, the NYC real estate developer who recently divorced newscaster Paula Zahn, in a cab. The celeb contact list is below, so you can argue whether the list (which includes Kissinger, Kerry, and Deniro) trumps Leibovitz's.

Apple has sold 3.75 million iPhones but AT&T has only reported 2 million activations. Analysts think that the bulk of the difference is from organized groups purchasing iPhones, unlocking them and selling them overseas. This could indicate pent-up demand for the phone — especially in Asia — and that Apple isn't too concerned about it. "If Apple still found all this to be a significant problem, it could certainly require customers to sign up for a service plan before they left the store." [Bits]

Palm has hired Mike Bell, a 16-year Apple veteran, as its SVP of product development. But you'll never hear that from Palm. The hiring of an industry veteran for a top executive spot is something normally trumpeted as loudly as possible. But Palm is desperately trying to keep quiet the fact that it won over Bell shortly before Christmas. Why the silencing effort? Jon Rubinstein, Palm's chairman, was part of Steve Jobs's turnaround team before he left Apple in 2006. Since he joined Palm last year, the smartphone maker has been hiring a number of Apple engineers. There have been "screaming matches and threats of lawsuits," says a plugged-in source.

Learning that in the fourth quarter of 2007, AT&T activated only 900,000 of the 4 million iPhones sold to date, one financial analyst has proclaimed that demand for the iPhone is in decline. Wrong.

Rough day! Heath's dead, we all feel bad for caring/not caring/profiting wildly, the stock market's still crazy, and Bill Clinton is shouting a lot. But hey, a guy turned his iPhone into a guitar!

Apple beat the street with its 2008 first-quarter earnings, but the company is pitching a low forecast for the coming months. It's expecting earnings of 94 cents a share on $6.8 billion in revenues for the second quarter. We're liveblogging the conference call as Apple explains that one to investors.

Last week, after the Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld, my iPhone stopped downloading Web pages and sending text messages. I thought it was just a temporary glitch, but after two days, I realized there was a serious problem. I tracked down a thread on AT&T's help forums, and learned that the problem was my prepaid plan:

Nice job to the gentleman who returned photographer Annie Leibovitz's assistant's iPhone, found in the back of a cab. But, as the Daily News reports, it was very naughty of him to sync up her contacts beforehand, linking the photographer's contacts like Maureen Dowd and the Bush twins with his dirty gay hookup list! What does that iPhone contact list look like now, after the merger? (Much like Ben Widdicombe's own, probably!)

The iPhone's text-message storage capacity has been increased from 1,000 to 75,000. If you get anywhere near that limit, either you're texting way too much or you're subscribed to egoblogger Robert Scoble's Twitter feed. Actually, this is good news. I recently hit this limit on my iPhone — I had some messages from September stored on there. Here's my question: why is there a limit at all?

Our gadget-obsessed colleagues at Gizmodo say that slaves to The Man will soon be able to add the iPhone to their corporate accounts.

Apple and China's largest mobile provider China Mobile have called off discussions for now. No. 2 carrier China Unicom, with one-third the customers of China Mobile, will be next in line for Apple talks. As a smaller company, the thinking goes, China Unicom will have more to gain from the iPhone and thus be more willing to bend to Apple's financial and technical requirements. China Mobile recently agreed to become the Chinese distributor for RIM's BlackBerry. [The Motley Fool]

Why is Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, "looking forward to a big week"? It could be that Twitter investor Fred Wilson is in town. Always exciting to have a board member around. But more likely, Dorsey is anticipating tomorrow's keynote, where Apple is expected to announce a built-in Twitter app for the iPhone.