If you’ve been thinking about making the switch to a smartphone or considering an iPhone, now’s about as good a time as any. AT&T enabled MMS on the iPhone today, which brings it up to speed with candybar phones of nearly a decade ago. The wireless provider also just found some old iPhone 3G models lying around that it will sell for a paltry $50.

Now, if I were you, I would splurge for the 3GS. It’s faster, has a better camera, and records video, which makes it much more than a cell phone. If you don’t want to drop $199 on a phone right now, though, the $50 3G will do just fine. It’s not that much slower, and you could probably live without the extra camera features.

There’s still one big reason to stay away: AT&T. Their service sucks and 3G coverage away from major cities is spotty at best. Also, you might be able to get Apple’s baby on a different network before your contract is up.

The good news is you’ll be just fine in either case. If you buy, you’re getting a great phone fairly cheap. If you don’t, you’re avoiding all the headaches that come with being tethered to AT&T. That is all.

If you haven’t done so already, you should get out the iPhone cable and update your carrier settings. The long awaited MMS is finally here, delayed for what seemed an eternity by the ever-failing AT&T.

For the update to take effect you’ll need to reboot your phone. From there, though, you’ll have a nifty little picture icon next to the message line of every text. The service allows you to send pictures and video at no extra charge, assuming you’ve already got some sort of bundled plan.

AT&T has announced plans for the iPhone MMS rollout via its Facebook page. We’ve known for some time that the service would be coming on Friday, but the how and when wasn’t so clear.

From the company’s Facebook page:

MMS Update: We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25. Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes. We’ll provide the steps and all of the details you need right here at that time.

For my fellow east-coasters, that means we’ll be waiting until early afternoon before plugging and unplugging our phones for updates. Some people are speculating that AT&T is nervous about the update, and rightfully so. This is the kind of update that has been anticipated for so long that it is likely to kill AT&T’s networks in a lot of places. And if the service fails on day one, the public will be calling for the bodies of AT&T executives.

Apple’s iPhone OS 3.1 introduced some great new features, including that MMS thing we’ve all been waiting for, but the update also brought some hiccups, including even poorer battery life for an already thirsty device. Apple’s doing something different with this round of complaints, though. It’s getting involved.

This weekend the company started contacting forum users who had complained about battery life, asking follow-up questions like, “When you notice a power drop, does it seem to be a legitimate power drop, or rather an issue with the battery icon indicator?” The users were also prompted to install a battery life logging profile which then syncs back to Apple when you connect to iTunes. There are also instructions for turning off the logging feature once data has been collected.

Apple has gotten involved with some of the past iPhone concerns. Hopefully this time things will get fixed in a timely fashion.

Looks like somebody really thinks the iPhone should have a physical keyboard. So much so, in fact, that they made one. The company is Mobile Mechatronics and the product in question is the iTwinge, a physical keyboard that plugs in to the dock connector on your iPhone and lays over the screen where the keys would normally be.

Why Mobile Mechatronics felt the need to make this little device is beyond me. It’s ugly as sin, and the fact that it draws power from the phone makes me cringe. There’s also the fact that it covers almost half your screen, meaning you’ll need to remove the thing and stuff it in a pocket for regular phone use. To cap things off, MM wants you to spend $30 on the thing. All I can say is good luck. It’s probably not gonna happen.