Apple seems to have unbanned a previously banned 3G TV iPhone application over the weekend. As of Saturday, EyeTV’s less-than-one-month-old EyeTV 1.0 application had disappeared from Apple’s App Store, after Apple asked Elgato to take out some test code allowing users to stream live TV over a 3G cellular network.

Elgato removed the code as requested, submitting a new 1.01 without the code and expecting the app to be returned to the App Store following Apple’s approval of the revised TV application. But lo and behold, on Sunday morning, Elgato sent an e-mail to Macworld saying that EyeTV 1.0 was now available once more in the U.S., U.K., and German App Stores, among others.

Although Apple’s return of EyeTV 1.0 might have been simply an oversight, maybe it represents yet another step by Apple toward greater leniency with developers in the face of rising competition from other mobile development environments, most notably Google’s Android. After all, it was only last week that Apple instituted a new in-app feature that lets users of free iPhone apps upgrade to commercial ones from directly inside the application, sparing the need to visit the App Store whatsoever.