Gadget Lab Hardware News and Reviews

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First Look: Apple Stays Ahead of the Curve With iPhone 3.0 OS

• By Brian X. Chen
• June 17, 2009 |
• 8:30 pm |
• Categories: Phones

Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone 3.0 operating system has landed, squeezing in some major enhancements missing from preceding versions. Our first impressions? The free software update is significant enough to beautify even the two-year-old, original iPhone, making it feel brand new.

First things first: Right after we installed the new iPhone 3.0 software, it immediately felt snappier than its predecessor. Most important, the iPhone’s camera is quicker at snapping photos than before, making it better equipped for capturing the serendipitous. Even swiping back and forth on the home screen is slicker, as are launching apps and typing messages.

Keep in mind, however, that any operating system update feels immediately faster out of the box. The previous iPhone operating systems slowed down over time due to system caching and other stored files cramping their style. (My colleague Dan Moren of Macworld warned me that from his experience testing the iPhone 3.0 beta, the OS slowed down over time.)

Moving on to enhancements: The single most useful new feature is iPhone 3.0’s search capabilities. Apple added Spotlight, a systemwide search bar that you access by swiping to the left of your primary springboard screen, or by pressing the home button twice, slowly. A search bar appears at the top of a blank, black screen, and you can type a word to perform a search through your calendar, contacts, e-mail applications and the names of applications. (In the screenshot at right, I’ve typed “Yelp”; Spotlight’s results reveal the Yelp application as well as my friend David Lee, who is a Yelp employee.)

This feature will please iPhone-application addicts, because the more apps they download, the harder it gets to find them; this tool solves that problem. Apple also added a search bar for the Mail application, enabling you to easily search through all your e-mails, even ones that are still on the server and haven’t been downloaded by the iPhone yet.

The major feature that users have been clamoring for is Cut/Copy/Paste. Apple made this tool extremely easy to use: To bring up the functions, you simply double tap on a screen where you wish to copy some text. A bubble appears asking whether you wish to use Cut or Copy, and a box encapsulates the area you tapped. Then, you drag the corners of the box to select the area you wish to copy and tap Copy. To paste, you launch the app where you wish to paste the text, double-tap once again and hit Paste. This tool is long overdue, and we’re relieved it’s finally here.

Another enhancement we’ve been dying for is broader support for landscape mode. That is, the ability to flip the iPhone sideways and use an application sideways. Apple added landscape mode for the iPhone’s e-mail, SMS and Notes applications, and boy is it ever easier to type on a landscape keyboard. It’s about time!

A brand new app on iPhone 3.0 is the Voice Memos audio recorder. We’re not all that wowed, because various audio-recording applications have been available through the App Store for quite some time. But it’s decent at what it does: You hit the Record button, and when you’re finished you hit Pause and then a Log button to store the clip. Then a menu containing the clips appears, where you can play back or e-mail the audio files — in MPEG-4, aka .m4a, format.

We also enjoyed some of the subtle improvements. In the SMS app, for example, you now have the option to delete or forward selected text messages from contacts. (In the screenshot at right, for example, I am individually selecting messages for deletion where a woman is rejecting my subtle invitation to hang out at Outside Lands, as well as her follow-up invitation to a show at Cafe Du Nord.)

Another minor enhancement is the App Store’s Redeem option (below) for gift cards and promotional codes. This eliminates the need to use your computer to redeem these codes and download free goodies through iTunes app. That’s a smart addition: Whatever Apple can do to keep the iPhone experience on the iPhone is a welcome change.

The Mail application also introduces a minor change: When you’re sending an e-mail, you don’t have to wait for it to finish sending before attempting to send another e-mail. Instead, the Mail app puts each message in the outbox and completes each request in the order in which it was sent. I tested this by sending four consecutive photos, and I ran into one problem: When connected on EDGE, Mail consistently failed to send the messages. It wasn’t until I connected to Wi-Fi that I was able to successfully e-mail the four photos.

There are two other features that consumers have been demanding: Tethering support (i.e., the ability to turn the iPhone into a wireless modem) as well as multimedia messaging for sending photos and audio files via a text-messaging-like service. We could not test either of these, because AT&T does not yet support them. The company declined to comment on the reasons why tethering and MMS are not available yet for iPhone customers on AT&T’s network, but a spokesman said it was not a network-related issue. Apple said AT&T iPhone customers can expect MMS support in late summer.

We’ll continue to test iPhone 3.0 over the next few weeks. We’ll also be testing new applications taking advantage of the new features in the operating system. Keep up with

Source : http://www.wired.com