It’s coming at last — the iPhone update that brings lots of upgrades for which users have been begging for months or years.

The update, 3.0, is expected to be out this summer. It’s free for iPhone owners, and about $9.95 for iPod Touch owners. The 3.0 upgrade will also work with 2G iPhone owners (the original iPhone); the big update for 2G iPhones is that Bluetooth functionality will be enabled.

On to the improvements. The biggest one — let the trumpets sound! — is copy and paste between applications. It’s something everyone has missed, and a feature that’s been found on other smartphones for some time. Apple officials said that security issues held up copy and paste until now. Copy and paste operations can be undone in a cool way — just shake the phone, and a menu pops up giving various undo options.

Another upgrade I’ve been waiting for is “landscape mode” for mail, text and notes. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s an important enhancement. Turning the iPhone sideways gives a lot more horizontal screen real estate, and is useful for primarily text-based apps.

There are a number of new built-in applications that will be added, too. They include:

• Phishing protection, to protect you from Websites that try to trick you into giving out private information
• Voice Mail, a digital voice recorder
• Auto-fill for forms. That will save you typing time, as it remembers previous entries and fills them in for you
• An improved Stocks application, that includes a landscape view and news stories

Apple hasn’t yet given more concrete details on a release date for the 3.0 upgrade.