iPhone OS 3.0 – The list. March 17, 2009

For those who haven’t been living under a HTC Brick the last couple of weeks, you’ve gotta have noticed that the iPhone OS 3.0 presentation was today. Here’s the list of what Apple chose to include this time around, and let me say it straight; I’m not dissapointed.

• MMS. Finally, Swirly get’s knocked off it’s feet. MMS will be integrated from 3.0, and it will, opposed to swirly, be free.
• Local Maps. Apps will now be able to store maps locally instead of downloading instances of the locations you’re viewing all the time, so now, the GPS will actually be useful.
• Landscape keyboard. It’s about time. The landscape keyboard will be available in all the framework apps.
• Cut/Copy/Paste. Yeah, it took you long enough! It’s said to work on all apps, hands down.
• Push notifications. This means, to you non-techies out there, that all apps will be able to push updates to you like the mobileme mail already does. For example, instant messages and notifications in the facebook app will be pushed to your home screen so you won’t have to open the app. Great.
• iPhone Dock and accessories. I won’t go into much detail here, but the bottom line is you can connect the iPhone to a LOT of stuff, with apps communicating to whatever you’re connecting it to. Awesome.
• Spotlight. Wow. To the far left of your home screen(Springboard), a new page will be added; Spotlight. It searches the entire unit for whatever you’re typing.
• Search. Spotlight is now present within apps, so you can search the mail, text messages, iPod(!) and whatnot. Sah-weet.
• CalDAV. No idea what this is, but I hear it’s great for enterprise calendars. That’s obviously a good thing.
• Voice memos. Well, it’s also about time you can record your own genious inputs without having to download an app for $0.99.
• Stocks. Although I’ve never used the stock app, it’s now getting updates that will give way more info, and keep you better up to date.
• In-app purchases. This one’s interesting. Think of it like Live! or Playstation Network. You buy a game, and now you can buy expansions for it, or even subscribe(think WoW). That’s great news for non-jailbreakers, at least.
• Peer-to-Peer. Now you can swap info via bluetooth(like vCards), and play together via the bt-network. That’s pretty cool

So, that’s about it. Still no video-recording, but there’s always jailbreaking for that. No biggie.

The SDK ships today for developers, and the iPhone OS 3.0 will be available this summer for free for iPhone users(even the first generation, bar some features), and will only be $9,95 for you iPod Touch users out there.

iPhone 3G review – 6 months later. February 9, 2009

I purchased the iPhone 3G half a year ago. I tried to obtain it on the release date, but Norwegian providers were sold out within 5 minutes, and I had to wait a couple of weeks to actually get it in my hands. I read the reviews all over the place for both the 1st generation and the 3G version. I was actually *this* close to buying the first version, but since apple announced the 3G, I pushed my purchase back a few weeks to make sure I had the newest version, un-hacked and non-imported.

Anyways, I’m sure you’ve all read the reviews, and I won’t go into detail as to what the phone does and doesn’t do, since you all surely know that by now. However, as with most phones, there’s bound to be issues after 6 months of use, so how is Apple’s iPhone 3G holding up? That’s what I’m about to tell you.

The first week, I was, as with all fan boys, excited. There’s the app store with (now) 100.000 apps, one for anything, and most of the paid apps, there’s free alternatives.

However, the first thing I really missed with the iPhone, was the still lacking video recording feature. There’s already several apps for this, if you jailbreak it, and because of that, I fail to see why apple haven’t already made one. There’s also the lack of MMS support, and since MMS has nothing to do with hardware, it’s really weird how Apple chose to not include that as well. As with video, you can jailbreak your iPhone to get MMS, and from what I hear, it’s working rather great too. I’ve only sent 2-3 MMS’ in my life, so I don’t miss it, but it’s one of the main reasons why some of my friends won’t get the phone. However, they got it soon enough after I told them it was possible to get it with a few simple steps.

Without visiting the app store, there’s only so much the phone can do, but with a quick look or search in the store, you’re bound to do almost anything you like. Of course, there’s the lack of multitasking, and thus, copy/paste, but I’ve yet to actually need that.

 

So, let’s get to it. 6 months later, the iPhone is still my phone of choice. I’ve always preferred the have the mp3 player and phone in the same device, as I rarely even heard my phone ring through the ear buds, but since the iPhone has a built in iPod the problem is solved. And 6 months later, the iPod is working just how you want it to. With the later updates, it even supports Podcast downloads through iTunes, and all features are still working without a hassle. When it comes to ringing, it still works. In fact, the only actual “issues” I’ve had with the phone in half a year, is that it tends to be a bit slow some times. This is especially noticed when heading into the settings, as they load insanely slow. They always have though, so it’s not exactly news.

In any case, after 6 months of usage, the phone is showing no problems at all. Where a Nokia N-series would be slow from the start, and even worse after 6 months(I speak from experience here), and a Sony Ericsson P-series would be even worse than the Nokia, the iPhone is just the same as when I first turned it on. Granted, there’s some updates from Apple that change and add stuff, but the phone still holds up just as it did the first day. Should I choose to Jailbreak it, I will also have direct access to both mms and video, as well as installous/appulo.us that enables all app store apps for free download, but I choose to keep my phone legal, as I don’t need mms or video, and I’m pretty sure there’s got to be at least one legal app that enables video. Either way, most apps aren’t exactly pricey anyways.

 

And that’s about it. 6 months later, and the iPhone 3G isn’t showing any flaws at all. Hell, even the screen is still in good condition. It’s only got one visible scratch, and even that isn’t really noticeable.

Would I still recommend it? Hell yes. Unless you don’t like the interface and functionality to begin with, I see no reason what so ever to not. I know there’s some HTC phones out there that get better reviews, but personally, I don’t like windows mobile and styluses, so I would never recommend them.

 

Stay tuned. The blog will be moved to a new domain and host within a couple of days, so if you’re actually reading this thing, be sure to note it.