You gotta be kidding. Sony has been on a long decline, from what I hear and from my own consumer electronics experience. Regardless, they don't have the software cajones to clone an iPhone.
I read that the iPhone batteries are soldered in to achieve a certain form factor. Nothing "evil". The only entity I've seen complaining about that is some so-called "consumer group", not any of the iPhone owners. My guess is that they're fishing for Microsoft "sponsorship", similar to SCO getting $400,000,000 "licensing" money from Microsoft, whereas in reality Microsoft was financing SCO to harass Linux companies.
Least ways, that's what I read on Slashdot.
What are you doing up so late ?