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Video chat on the iPhone? The on-again, off-again rumor that Apple's latest incarnation of iPhones is going to support two-way video conferencing has been the talk of the Web town as of late.

PCMag's own Sascha Segan doesn't foresee this happening: "Apple is very picky about its multimedia experiences, and video chat with mobile devices over cellular networks doesn't work well," he writes. "At CTIA, the CEO of Skype said the problems are network-centric as much as device-centric. Apple would rather leave a feature out than deliver a subpar experience."

However, a new image straight from an Apple source who's field-testing the iPhone 4.0 firmware highlights a new "Video Calls Debugging" section in the phone's Settings. The site Boy Genius Report, which received the images to begin with, believes that this is a sure-fire sign that video chat will be a part of the next iPhone OS—and, consequently, the rumored new iPhone device itself.
If so, writes Electronista, than the iPhone will be one of the only two phones in the U.S. market that will actually support two-way video chat come summertime. The other device, Sprint's HTC Evo 4G (to be released on June 4), needs to use its 4G or Wi-Fi connection in order for the video conferencing to work.

It's unknown at this point whether the iPhone will fall under the same Wi-Fi restrictions for video or whether the device will actually be able to send and receive realtime transmissions via its 3G connection. As well, there's no indication as of yet that the rumored video chat features would only be for the equally rumored release of a next-generation iPhone in June. What about other iPhone devices running the 4.0 OS?

VIA PCMag