The Final wait is over and iOS4 has arrived.Let’s take a close look at what the iOS4 has got to offer for the Owners of iPhone 3GS and 3G.
New Features in iOS4 :
Mail
The new Mail application, offers you to have all your mails from different accounts in a unified Inbox. .The new mail application supports threaded messages ,all the mails sent by one sender with the same subject will be grouped in one thread and clicking on it will open the list of mails within.The best feature I personally liked.It makes your In box so crisp.
Another new addition to Mail Application is it’s ability to open attachments with third party apps. If one don’t have an app which can open a attachment, It will take you to the App Store to download it.So that one can even open and save PDF files in iBooks now.
Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
Wallpaper
The new iOS 4 let’s the user to select an image for lock screen,the home screen separately.
I Really din’t understand why took it so many years for Apple to offer this feature which i feel isn’t out of box addition. 3G doesn’t support this feature which i feel pathetic.
Photo Credit : arstechnica Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
iBooks
The Latest offering in iOS4 is the iBooks,though it was first introduced for iPad,now it’s offered for iPhone and iPod customers.
iBooks is nothing but the collection of eBooks to the smaller screen devices which will let you read those same books now on a much more portable device. It does have it’s flip slide ,the small screen is not so comfortable to read when compared to iPad, causing more strain on your eyes.iBooks is not a by default App in the new iOS4.After upgrading to iOS4 you have to download it via iTunes.Winnie-the-Pooh, which is free and gets automatically downloaded but not built-in to the app.You can buy a book on any of your iOS 4 devices and then download it again on any of your other iOS devices for free.
Again, it was pretty smooth on the iPhone 3GS but on the iPhone 3G it was sluggish. Books take good time to appear on the shelf.
You can’t compare it with stanza/kindle.But, still their is lot of scope for improvement with future upgrades.
Pic:iBooks looks like this when you open it for the first time. Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
Multitasking:
The much talked about feature which Apple has hyped is the “Multitasking” and finally implemented multitasking in its iOS4. In the old OS, the apps don’t continue to run when they go in background and merely suspend it’s activity. So with Fast App Switching, the applications will save their state at the point where we suspend it and resume it from the point where it was previously closed. If it’s a game, it will even give you a little countdown before it starts again. The Apps which are compatible with Fast App switching can only be useful for Multitasking so you need to check for upgrades for the respective Apps.How an app resumes is completely dependent on how the developer implements the feature in his apps. Unfortunately again, the multitasking is not available on iPhone 3G and iPod touch second generation.
Folders:
This is another notable feature offered in iOS4.This new feature lets you group the apps into a folder rather than searching for them swiping the home screen to find them.You can have folder called “Movies” and pull all your apps related to Movies into the Movies folder making it easier for you to find and use them. All you need to do to create a folder is press and hold an icon until it wiggles and then drag it over another icon which you wish to include in your folder and a new folder with those two will automatically be created. The best part is that the folders are also automatically named based on the category on the App Store from which they come from. So if you slide a Movies icon on another, the folder will automatically be called ‘Movies’.A folder can contain 12 Apps and you can create as many folders as you want. You can even have folders in your dock area.
By the introduction of folders, the number of apps one can have has gone up significantly. Earlier, one could have 16 apps on one screen and one had 11 screens in total, plus the four icons in the dock which gave space for 180 Apps, including the built-in ones. Now, one can have up to 2,160 Apps on the iPhone at a time.Folder within a folder not possible.
Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
Phone:
In the earlier OS it was “End Call” but in the iOS4 it is “End”.Have to see whether it’s a mistake or they have modified it.
Photo Credit – Phani Ramadugula
The New Contact info format has been changed.
Other Features :
Spell Check – This is one more good feature in iOS4.The Spell Check now automatically highlights an incorrect word and upon tapping it will give you suggestions for correcting .Apart from Select/Select All it also has a add-on Replace.
Camera – You can now tap to focus while recording a video as well. There is also 5x digital zoom available.
Character Count in Messages – Now you can see the number of character counts left when typing in a message.Earllier this feature is not available
Safari -Previously,In Safari the search engines offered are google and yahoo.Now they have added bing , still google is the default.Auto fill for names & passwords and fraud warning when visiting fraudulent websites.
Verdict.
Heard from many users that Post-Upgrade to iOS4 the 3G users are complaining of very poor performance ,it’s response time also degraded.But the 3GS users seem be having a ball with the new iOS4.This is probably because the iPhone 3G has just 128 MB eDRAM and a 620 MHz processor underclocked to 412 MHz, whereas the iPhone 3GS 256 MB eDRAM and a 833 MHz processor underclocked to 600 MHz.
Few complained that while typing, the first letter pops up, but then stays stuck as they continue to type. It catches up eventually, but without the visual cues that they’re hitting the right keys, it makes typos an inevitability.Furthermore, opening very basic apps has gotten much slower, and apps crashing to the home screen is much more frequent.
I Personally do not find any reason why a 3G owner should go for an iOS 4 upgrade. As they aren’t getting multitasking, wallpapers, Bluetooth keyboard support. Expect for just getting app folders and threaded emails. Other than that, there’s nothing new for 3G owners.But,what i din’t understand is when no major features are offered for 3G in iOS4, why was it made available to 3G’s.Probably to lure the 3G customers for an iPhone 4 Upgrade.Probably,I think this is Apple’s marketing strategy as a good number of 3G customers would go for an iPhone 4 upgrade.
I would like to thank Phani Ramadugula for contributing the snapshots and inputs for this artcile. Phani Ramadugula is an IT consultant working in US, Internet Savvy and an iPhone Admirer.
