Published in Mobiles

iPhone OS 3.0 gets announced

by on18 March 2009

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Out for developers now, end users in June

It's finally happened, Apple is going to add copy, past and even cut to the iPhone OS, although it seems like those that aren't Apple developers will have to wait all the way until June to get a taste of the new, improved OS.

In all fairness, this was only a minor part of all the updates Apple announced during its iPhone OS 3.0 preview event and although most of the event was about the new SDK which will add over 1,000 new API's. Those that owns an iPhone seems to have a lot to look forward to in June, although many of the new "features" won't come for free, as they're aimed at third party developers who will most likely charge for their products.

Some of the highlights based on the new SDK include in-application purchases and upgrades, Peer to Peer connectivity between iPhone's over Bluetooth or WiFi using Apple's Bonjour technology, on-screen interfaces for hardware solutions connected via the dock port or Bluetooth, push based notification and one feature many has waited for, turn based GPS navigation.

Other new features include Bluetooth A2DP with stereo support, MMS (was it really that hard to make this work?), voice memos, new calendar functions, an improved Stocks application and the new Spotlight search utility which is accessible from within most applications. Better support for the landscape keyboard has also been added and you should now be able to use this for both SMS and MMS among other things.

It's worth noting that the old 2G iPhone will not be getting A2DP support and presumably this applies to the iPod Touch as well, due to a different Bluetooth chip used compared to the 3G iPhone. The 2G iPhone won't be getting MMS either, although the reason for this is not known at this moment.

The new OS will be free for iPhone users, but owners of the iPod Touch will once again have to pay US$9.95 for the upgrade. It's good to see that Apple has finally brought the iPhone in to line with most other Smartphone's on the market in terms of software features, although the OS will also bring some new features that Apple's competitors doesn't have on offer, yet.

You can find more details here as well as a live blog from the event over at Engadget
Last modified on 18 March 2009
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