It looks like iPhone's OS will finally exit beta phase: Steve Jobs promised that next month, the company will fix a widely suffered bug in which a user's iPhone applications won't properly launch. The bug apparently causes the Apple toy to load an application temporarily before it shuts down entirely and returns to the home screen. Default applications are not affected.

In fact, the last 2.0.2 software is alleged by many to be the buggiest iPhone software... ever. Also, it appears that it did not fully fix the iPhone 3G dropped calls problem. Some consider that the problems are caused by a chip produced by German company Infineon Technologies AG, which was especially designed for the new 3G iPhone and is used as the baseband processor, handling the connections between the mobile phone and the cellular networks. There is no official confirmation on any of these possible causes, as Apple always tries to hide its mistakes, as customary for the Cupertino company.

However, Infineon makes 3G chips for many phone makers and it is very unlikely that the bug can be traced back to them. Infineon people chose not to comment on the situation but said there have been no complaints about the company’s chips which are being used in several Samsung phones, for example. There are also reports that calls keep getting dropped because of faulty SIM cards.

Recently, leading Turkish mobile phone operator Turkcell has announced on Monday that it had signed an agreement with Apple to distribute the iPhone 3G in Turkey.

On Monday the Federal Communications Commission approved what appears to be the world's first Android-powered smartphone to be released to the public. The phone, made by Taiwan-based HTC, will be launched by T-Mobile around November 10, according to their FCC filing.

It remains to be seen how the Google-backed phones will compete with Apple's iPhone, but I expect it to be much like the Apple-PC competition, and Apple will suffer greatly due to its closed ecosystem and limited technical expertise.