Always faddish in their production of knock-offs and crap gadgets, the black market electronic shops of the Far East have lately been disgorging a surplus of cases that sandwich in a SIM slot and a cellular radio, thus allowing you to make phone calls on your jailbroken iPod Touch. They’re clever hacks, to be sure, but it appears that Cupertino itself has already thought of just that approach to transforming an iPod Touch into an iPhone… and if Apple can think of it, you can bet that they’ve patented it.

In fact, earlier this year, Apple filed a patent application for an “accessory transceiver” that would bring mobile calling and data to the iPod Touch. You know, just like the Peel 520. Or the tPhone. Or any of the other iTouch-to-iPhone cases we’ve written about since August.

A little over two months ago, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev toured Silicon Valley, making a stop at Apple headquarters in Cupertino where Steve Jobs gave the Mac-happy leader an iPhone 4.

Some CoM readers wrote in to ask us what we thought the visit would mean for Russia and the future of tech there.

We might have an answer: on Monday, Sergei Chemezov, the head of a state- run holding company Russian Technologies State Corp. showed off a prototype of the country’s first domestically-manufactured 4G smartphone.

Chemezov and Medvedev met to discuss tech advances taking place the country, including broadband internet and digital TV and creating a Linux-based national software program.

The 4G phone is expected to launch next year under the Yota brand, which already makes a portable wi-fi “egg” that looks vaguely Apple-inspired in its design.

But from the transcript from the Kremlin translated by the Wall Street Journal, it sounds like they may need to take that iCopycat design back to the drawing board, or borrow the president’s iPhone for tips:

Medvedev (holding handset): Not even sure where to press …
Chemezov: It’s still a prototype.
Medvedev: But this is entirely our [Russian-made] product, which will be produced in our factories?
Chemezov: For the time being, unfortunately, we only make it in Taiwan. But soon we’ll completely switch over to production in Russia.

We’ll be curious to see how the final design of the phone, which reportedly has two screens, may be Apple inspired.

Along with the Sun in the morning, you can count on a Verizon Wireless iPhone story appearing almost daily on the pages of Apple watchers. Not to disappoint, two Wall Street analysts have released a report suggesting Apple needs to join forces with the wireless carrier to fend off the growth of Android.

In five quarters (or roughly just over one year), Android’s growth could outnumber the installed base of iPhones, according to Bernstein Research analysts Toni Sacconaghi and Pierre Ferragu. Indeed, the analysts say the Android platform has gone from 60,000 phones sold each day seven months ago to 200,000 phones per day. That sort of growth makes the analysts believe Android could singly push smartphone sales. By 2011, Apple and Android will control 52 percent of smartphone sales, the two analyst contend.

All good things must come to an end, and now that Apple has largely put the fires out on the public relations nightmare of Antennagate, they’ll be ending their free iPhone 4 case program come September 30th… unless you complain loud enough.

Says Apple:

We now know that the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue is even smaller than we originally thought. A small percentage of iPhone 4 users need a case, and we want to continue providing them a Bumper case for free. For everyone else, we are discontinuing the free case program on all iPhone 4s sold after September 30, 2010. We are also returning to our normal returns policy for all iPhone 4s sold after September 30. Users experiencing antenna issues should call AppleCare to request a free Bumper case.

Of course, given how backed up Apple is sending out free cases, even if you order one now, you’re not likely to have a bumper around your iPhone before next year. Perhaps that’s the bigger takeaway from Apple’s decision to end the program: if you’re really having problems with your iPhone 4’s reception, you couldn’t afford to wait for Apple to finally get around to sending you one anyway.

Apple may not be as happy with Intel’s decision to buy iPhone chipmaker Infineon as we were early told. The rumor mills are churning out this intriguing speculation: Apple may turn to Qualcomm to build its iPhone 5, a “world phone” able to support more network technology.

Choice of baseband chips, the component used to “talk” to mobile networks, is often a hint to what carriers a handset-maker plans to support. By picking Qualcomm over Infineon, Apple may signal its intention to open its popular cell phone to players besides AT&T.

Apple hardware hacker Charles Mangin has a respectable history smashing modern functionality into nostaglically held but utterly obsolete hardware. For example, Maguin’s amazing success inserting a Mac Mni into an old Disk ][ drive, or his even more breathtaking success cramming an old G4 cube into an even older Macintosh Plus.

Mangin’s latest project might be his greatest triumph yet though: an iPhone ensconced in the hollowed out shell of its evolutionary predecessor, the venerable Apple Newton. Charles has yet to complete the project, but given his past successes, we’re confident he’ll succeed… but will he update the Newton’s stylus with a touch-capacitive tip for extra points?

Apple iPhone Configuration Utility hits version 3.1. The new version was released today and includes enhanced support for iOS 4 and bug fixes. I highly recommend this often under utilized tool as something to have in your arsenal of tools for advanced iOS troubleshooting on all devices running iOS.

Apple’s utility wasn’t designed as an end-user troubleshooting tool — it’s intended to help enterprise users create configuration profiles for device deployment – but it does provide some functions that can be useful for anyone performing advanced troubleshooting on their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Any user can use the tool to:  install and uninstall troublesome apps, access the console log on iOS based devices, and perform many other iPhone configuration tasks.

You can even use it to prove whether or not your iPhone 4 proximity sensor is working or not.

The iPhone Configuration Utility 3.1 is currently available via Software Update or as a direct download for Mac OS X or Windows. Information about using this application to integrate iOS devices with your enterprise systems is available at https://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/.

All the fuss over this summer’s “antennagate” surrounding the iPhone 4 release cost Apple 20 percent of sales, according to a survey released Wednesday. However, possibly more worrisome for the Cupertino, Calif. company is three times as many people complained of the lack of a Verizon iPhone than of signal trouble.

“The antenna issue is removing upside potential for iPhone units, but Verizon is actually the most significant factor limiting demand,” writes Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

Steve Jobs confirmed in his press conference today that iOS 4.1 contains several bug fixes, including a fix addressing the poor performance of iOS4 on the iPhone 3G.  Alas we have to wait another week for the update to be released.  It will be hitting my iPhone as soon as iTunes says it is available.

I think it was notable that Jobs addressed this point very early in his presentation; the bugs mentioned are all major issues and need to be resolved.  The new Gaming Center and real-time graphics rendering of the A4 chip are impressive, but we 3G laggards are just looking to be able to send email and make calls again!

No comments about whether iOS 4.2 will support the 3G and older iPod touch models, the presentation merely included an asterisk that noted *not all models.   I think a cutoff at iOS 4.1 is appropriate for these devices if the performance problems are finally fixed.

According to Apple, there’s no problem with the iPhone 4’s antenna… or, at the very least, no problem it doesn’t share with all of its competitors. But are they being disingenuous? According to a new rumor, Apple is very much hard at work on an updated iPhone 4 that alleviates the signal attenuation problems once and for all.

The rumor comes via the admittedly questionable source of a spokesperson for Mexican wireless carrier Telcel, who says that Apple will release an updated iPhone 4 by the end of October… a date which will closely follow the end of Apple’s own iPhone 4 Bumper program, which is Cupertino’s current PR band-aid slapped over the problem.

It’s an interesting rumor, but I think it’s a bit spurious. Apple’s said over and over again there’s no problem: they can’t reverse course on that without reopening the debate, and possibly making themselves even more liable in class-action lawsuits. If Apple significantly redesigns the iPhone 4’s antenna, there’ll be a name for it: the iPhone 4.