So what’s new in iPhone 3.0
So chances are in the next few days you’ll be getting you mits on the iPhone 3.0 software. If you’re like me last week’s announcement of iPhone 3GS was pretty uninspiring and you’re going to stick with the current 3G model (unless of course you’ve got an iPhone 1.0 that’s due for upgrade) personally I’m not due an upgrade until April 2010 which will put me in a nice place for an iPhone 4.0 upgrade next year nor am I upset that o2 aren’t offering mid contract upgrades like they did for the release of iPhone 3G. For the majority of none hard core iPhone users they probably won’t notice any difference with iPhone 3.0 – it’s certainly more evolutionary rather than revolutionary (a term I’ve borrowed as I’ve heard it banded about recently).
So what’s new in the iPhone 3.0 software that as a phone user you’re actually going to find useful? Here’s some of the stuff I’ve found so far in no particular order:
Cut & Paste
Not a feature I’ve missed but now that I’ve got it I love it. The implementation is super simple, double tap in text, drag the selection dots around the text you want to clip and then tap either copy or cut. To paste, again double tap and select paste. What could be simpler? It’s implemented system wide so none Apple apps can benefit straight away. In Safari you’re also able to select blocks of text by holding your finger on the screen and moving it down the screen so a selection box appears (probably around the container elements) allowing you to copy the text.
MMS
MMS has been added at long last implemented tightly into the existing Message application – provided of course your carrier supports it (eh AT&T?). Once you have iPhone 3.0 software your o2 account will be updated – I received a number of messages saying I had to send a text to activate but didn’t bother and a few days after getting 3.0 I received an ‘All done. Picture messaging is ready to use’ MMS from o2.
SMS Forwarding
I knew this one was in the software but it was pretty well hidden and not something I really cared about. From the Messaging application enter a conversation thread tap the ‘Edit’ button and you’ll get the ability to select individual messages and choose forward – this just creates a new message with the selected messages as the body. Of course, with the new cut & paste feature you can achieve the same functionality by double tapping the text of a message and choosing copy, creating a new message, double tapping and clicking paste.
Shared Contacts
Contacts can be shared via email/mms, simply locate a contact and tap ‘Share Contact’ and select whether to share the contact by either email or MMS – still no bluetooth option here.
Calendar
A few cosmetic tweaks here and improved Exchange functionality with the ability to create meetings via Active Sync, invitees can be added to events and availability status set. Seems like the Day view has changed to to make it easier to move between days.
Autofill
Via Settings > Safari, Safari can autofill form fields using your selected contact as well as names and passwords – I presume they mean usernames here, anyhow it’s one less thing to be typing.
Spotlight
aka Search. Accessed by a left to right swipe of the home page or a single press of the bottom button, Spotlight provides search across contacts, audio, podcasts and probably a few more things. In the iPod menu dragging down the screen reveals a search box tucked away at the top to provide search within the application.
Tethering
The tethering menu is accessed from Settings > General > Network and requires additional subscriptions in order to activate. In the UK o2 (details here) want an extra £14.68 a month out of you for 3Gb and £29.36 for 10Gb of data. They advertise this as also giving you access to 5,000 ‘The Cloud’ wifi hot spots but I’m pretty sure iPhone users already get that.
iTunes
A new ‘Video’ tab has been added to allow the purchase of Films (and rent), TV Programmes and Music Videos has been added – bound to be handy just before you board a flight. Via the ‘More’ tab, options have been added to purchase Audiobooks and content (free?) from iTunes U.
App Store
Nothing major here, a few cosmetic differences to how you browse screenshots for an application and now the ability to redeem iTunes gift cards and certificates so now there’s more than 5 tabs so a ‘more’ has been added to replace the usual ‘Updates’ tab.
iPod
Let’s not forget that the iPhone is still an iPod too. Something I’ve always wanted to see is speed control in podcasts just like in audiobooks and with 3.0 you can now listen to them at half and double speed as well as a 30 second review button which means I can listen to twice as many podcasts in the same amount of time!!! Another frustration with previous software versions was the ability to forward/rewind through audio via the scrubbing bar at the top, if you had ‘large’ fingers then it was a bit of a fiddle forwarding through those ads (ahem, Leo Laporte!). iPhone 3.0 now allows much more granular control over the playing position. By selecting the current position on the scrubbing bar and pulling your finger further down the screen you can ’scrub’ though the audio at high, half, quarter and fine speed by then moving your finger left or right – neat feature Apple!
Akin to the iPod nano, the iPhone now gets a ‘Shake to Shuffle’ option enabled by default, controlled via Settings > iPod.
Other random findings
Landscape keyboard now in Mail, Messages, Notes & Safari
Settings > Messages now let’s you control message preview and the repeat alert when text messages arrive so no embarassing messages flashing up on your screen.
Settings > Home gives you more options double tapping the home button and which content to include in Spotlight searches.
Settings > Mail ability to prevent loading of remote images
Settings > Safari Plugins switch (present in v2.0 software too) hmmm what plugins?
Voice Memos app – audio recording on the on the go and sync’ed via iTunes.
Notes can be sync’ed back to iTunes on desktop (iTunes 8.2)
YouTube application now allows you to sign in to your YouTube account to access your videos, subscriptions and playlists.
Phone recent screen shows icons to identify which number type you called a contact on, ie mobile, home, office etc
Stereo Bluetooth
Niggles
We’re still forced to endure the Yahoo Stocks (but it was ‘enhanced’ in 3.0- turn phone landscape) and Weather applications – why can’t we remove (or at least hide) them Apple?
So there you go, there’s everything I could spot different in iPhone 3.0 on the surface at least. If you find anything else then drop me a line.
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I was pretty frustrated when they announced the tethering feature but said that AT&T wasn’t going to support it. I’m not surprised that UK providers are trying to charge extra for that as most cell providers already have laptop wifi plans. Just sucks that it’s a standard device feature that’s going to eventually increase my already-too-high mobile bill.
Very true – these so called ‘mobile broadband’ dongles are everywhere so it’s another opportunity to extract money from consumers although I’m pretty sure not so long ago I was able to pair a Windows Mobile/Nokia handset and share the GPRS connection and all worked fine.
I’m not gutted about tethering myself – everything I need to do when I’m out and and about I can do on the iPhone itself.
The camera seems to have an image next to the shutter button displaying the last taken photo, rather than an icon for the camera roll. Either way, it takes you to the camera roll and displays that last photo full screen, rather than raking yo to the thumbnails of the camera roll. I’m sure there used to be a link direct from camera roll to the camera – it’s gone.