Curiosity may have killed the cat, one developer’s tinkering with the iPhone’s latest beta firmware release has led to the ultimate proof of the iPhone’s 3G compatibility. With this, the 3G iPhone is as good as confirmed.

Apparently, a group called Chronic Productions, who are currently working on an iPhone project, unearthed this gem while messing around with the iPhone latest beta firmware release. It’s a screenshot of an additional option screen added to the iPhone’s network settings, showing a button that lets users enable/disable 3G connectivity. And this is as real as it gets.

According to the source of this screenshot, this was found in the 2.0 beta5 Preferences binary.

Well, when you have nothing to do all day, this is what happens. Note that this is not fake, it is in the beta 5 .ipsw, but will normally not show up on an EDGE iPhone. Turning 3G on will just crash the phone if you use an EDGE phone. If you do not believe me, then decrypt the beta5 rootfs dmg, and see for yourself in /Applications/Preferences.app/Network.plist

He further suggests that “someone good with [ARM] try to enable it and report their findings of what happens.”

I don’t have any l33t hacking skillz myself, so I guess I’m with you as we watch this develop in the front lines.

Photo via Chronic Productions via Macrumors