iphone-3g-homescreen1Want to upgrade your iPhone 1.0 or iPhone 2.0 version to iPhone 3.0? Want to know what improvements you can expect after you download the latest iPhone 3.0? We have tried to make a brief overview of the latest iPhone OS. Have a look to know beforehand what you’ll get in this latest version.

Introduction

According to Apple the new iPhone 3.0 software offers no less than 100 features. The latest iPhone 3G S will be able to use all of these features, however, iPhone 3G or iPhone 2G can not use the features such as video camera, Voice Control, Compass due to hardware limitations. Let’s take a look at those features one by one.
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Home Screen

The home screen is pretty much the same with a little changes like Stocks icon change, change of SMS label to messages and oh! there is a new Compass icon and app exclusively for the iPhone 3G S owners. The capacity od total homescreen pages are increased from 9 pages to 11 pages allowing a total of 180 apps from the previous 148 apps in total.
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Spotlight

Like the Mac, you can use Spotlight here to search the iPhone for Contact anem, app name, iPod media file names, email headers etc. It can be accessed from the main screen by swiping from left to right or by clicking the home button. As you type through the portrait keyboard results begin to populate the screen which narrows as you specify more search terms.
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Voice Control

This feature is only available for iPhone 3G S. Holding down the home button launches Voice Control which is like the VoiceOver feature of the iPod Shuffle but is more advanced as you can literally talk to your iPhone. The interface consist of a simple waveform with various commnads like call, play, shuffle, what is this - floating around the screen. It amazing to know that more than 25 languages will be supported by Voice Control, any way I am going to use only English - so, those languages doesn’t serve any of my purpose.

Force Quit

Pressing and holding the home button was the way you used to force quit an application which has been taken over by the voice control as stated above. So, in this system, you have to hold down the sleep button untill a ’slide to power off’ control appears on the screen. Then you have to hold the home button down to terminate the process and clear the memory to take you back to the home screen.

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Messages

The SMS is now called Messages which now has the facility to MMS your friends. You can now send and receive vCards, audio, location using your iPhone. If you are a lucky iPhone 3G S owner you ca also send videos. The messages app can be used to send pictures and for sending contacts you have to go to contacts to share them, to share location you have to go to Google Maps etc. To add a picture in a messages you can choose the picture or take a photo or simply use the copy paste services.

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Calender

The basic perspective of the calender app remains unchanged. However you can now add invitees and set availability for them. The availability can be Busy, Free, Tentative or out of office.

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Camera

The iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G users will get only a few noticeable changes such as the Camera Roll icon at the bottom right is replaced by a tiny thumbnail of the last photo taken. Th iPhone 3G S will get to use the most advanced features. There is a handy blue square which you can select to set the focus on the subject. You can set the focus even in macro mode. There is also the most awaited video feature of the iPhone. Videos can be taken in landscaspe or portrait mode as when taking pictures. After capturing the video there is an interface for basic editing of the videos.

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Maps

The iPhone 2G and 3G owners can embed the maps in their App Store apps, no other major changes for them. The iPhone 3G owners can now leverage the compass hardware. They can get their directional heading via the compass which shows as an expanding white light in front of you.

Features that haven’t Changed

Weather application is still like the iPhone 1.0. We expected some 3D style animations or at least landscape mode showing more data. The Calculator also doesn’t seem to get any face-lift.

Conclusion

With the release of new and newer versions of iPhone OS, Apple continues to impress every iPhone user and also those who are to-be consumers of Apple. The current iPhone users can get the version for free and the non-subscription accounted iPod touch users will have to pay a meager $9.95 for it. Apple is proving their worth in continually improving the iPhone platform by providing software updates for free. We are waiting for their next software update.

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