Sean Walther's Blog

iPhone 3G – OS 3.0 Notes

iPhone 3.0 Home screen - Notice new icons, and additional "page" indicator by the dots

I have an iPhone 3G, and have upgraded it (early) to the 3.0 version of the operating system.

I will not disclose how I upgraded, you can find that out for yourself elsewhere.  It isn’t a big secret.  If you want to know, you may find the hints I saw on my twitter page, www.twitter.com/seangw

We all know the big things Apple has announced, but when we install, what changes will us 3G users still notice?

• There is the new search screen
• You can hit the Home button when on your “Home” screen, and you will go to the search screen
• Email / contacts all have search above the initial top of the page (just scroll up an extra bit)
• Installation of the “Voice Memos” app moves all of my icons around (I had added a few icons to my home page, Apple forces it on the home page)
• New icons for Messages, Stocks, Phone and iPod.  Maybe the Glass button effect is wearing thin, and Apple is introducing a textured glass button?
• All the new horizontal screen displays for apps that we type into (it seems like most, if not all, have this layout now)
• Notes now sync to outlook (and vice versa)
• Safari seems to launch a little quicker
• Overall performance was a bit slower after the update, maybe I just need to restart it
• The upgrade was much easier than the 2.0 OS, I didn’t have to back up everything and restore
• Call history now displays which “number” the person dialed from (“Mobile” or “office”)
• Call Detail tells you not only when the calls were made, but also how long each call was (something that always annoyed me)
• Copy and Paste is there, but we all know we made much more of a fuss about it, than we are likely to realize now that we have it.
• Selecting cursor location in text actually seems to be trickier than before the copy paste upgrade
• Switching Screens SEEMS to be faster.  This could be those psychological upgrade effects.

It’s amazing how little has been upgraded if you aren’t getting the new 3GS.  Features that we are missing on our iPhone 3G are (but not limited to, if you know more, post a comment and I will update the article):

• Voice Dialing
• Video Capture
• Faster Hardware (obviously)
• Auto focus camera
• Compass
• Driving Navigation Software (?, not sure if it doesn’t have a compass)

While Tethering and MMS seem possible on the 3G, there is no word if Apple and ATT will enable it.  Technically it is feasible as a number of users have already enabled MMS (as well as tethering) on their iPhone 3G with a minor tweak to the carrier files (again, I’ll leave it to you to find this one – not hard).

I’m going to be waiting for my “upgrade eligibility” which goes into effect in mid July.  For now I remain a somewhat unimpress, and minorly frustrated longtime iPhone user (seems like all iPhone 3G users are being told to wait a month before getting theirs for the full discount, this sounds like a business decision to get people in that don’t already have the $30 / month plan — while initial inventory is still there).

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