December 4, 2006 10:48 AM PST

Digg founder dishes iPhone specs

Kevin Rose might be getting a phone call from Steve Jobs today.

On the latest espisode of his weekly Diggnation podcast with Alex Albrecht, Rose claimed--in between swigs of what appears to be a 24-ounce bottle of the Crave-approved Racer 5 IPA from Bear Republic--to have the dirt on Apple's long-rumored iPhone combination cell phone/iPod device. There's no shortage of blogs and Apple watchers predicting the imminent arrival of the iPhone, but MacRumors.com notes that Rose accurately predicted the news from last January's Macworld and also called the iPod Nano, so we're willing to listen. Especially when it's this entertaining.

First of all, Rose doesn't call it the iPhone, just the "Apple phone." Its most distinguishing feature? "It's going to be small as s**t," the Digg founder said.

Apple will use two batteries in the phone, one for the music player and one for the phone, Rose said. That way, you can run down the battery on the music player but still be able to make and receive calls on the phone. It will have a slide-out keyboard for text messages or e-mail, and "touch screen on the outside," he said. Apple has filed for several patents related to touch-screen functionality on the sides of an iPod-like device.

Two versions are planned, a 4GB phone for $249 and a 8GB phone for $449, Rose said. The phone is also being made for both GSM and CDMA networks, he said, also claiming there was support for a third network called "Sprint PCS." We'll overlook this one, since Sprint uses CDMA technology, and guess that Rose might have been talking about Nextel's network, now owned by Sprint.

It sounds like Rose is expecting to hear the news officially from Apple in January, when Apple will host MacWorld in San Francisco. He seemed a little nervous about talking out-of-school about Apple's phone, asking Albrecht at one point, "Is that illegal when you say s**t like that?" Albrecht reassured him that if he didn't sign anything, it's probably cool.

Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom.