iPhone 3.0 to Get MMS, Tethering, and Finally... Copy and Paste?

News that Apple will be hosting a media event next week about iPhone 3.0 has generated a lot of speculation about what might be coming in the new release.

BoyGeniusReport claims to have heard two possible features that would certainly make many iPhone users happy. They believe that iPhone 3.0 will introduce MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and Tethering.

MMS would finally offer iPhone users the ability to send photos by way of SMS, and tethering would allow you to share your iPhone's internet connection with your laptop computer. An alleged Steve Jobs email even confirmed that Apple had been working on a thethering solution, so it certainly seems feasible. BoyGeniusReport's record, however, has been spotty, so we can't be entirely confident of the report.

A more interesting report comes from John Gruber about his "guesses" for iPhone 3.0 from back at Macworld:

First, a new home screen app (a.k.a. SpringBoard), designed from the ground up for a system where users have a few dozen or more extra apps installed. Managing dozens of apps on the iPhone today is simply a pain in the ass. Second, maybe an answer to the question of where the background notification API is you know, the one we were told at WWDC to expect a few months ago, but which we havent heard a word about since. And maybe pretty please, Mr. Forstall, with sugar on top copy and paste.

While Gruber labels this as his "wish list", we have good reason to believe that these features will indeed be found in the iPhone 3.0 firmware. That could mean a better app-managing SpringBoard (with categories?), a solution to "push" notifications (background tasks?), and, yes... even copy and paste.

Finally, there has been evidence in the latest version of Snow Leopard's CoreLocation framework (which is shared by the iPhone) that Apple is building in support for magnetometers, which could suggest the use of a digital compass in future devices, much like the Android G1.