It seems that Apple is taking further care in hiding new iPhone features in their beta releases. The most recent firmware beta seeded to developers listed "compatibility testing" in its release notes as the only change.
We've since heard of a couple of new features buried within the iPhone 2.2 beta. Apple has apparently made underlying changes to the iPhone's frameworks that are not yet exposed to the end user. These findings include:
- Support for Japanese emoji icons (screenshot) -- a popular feature for Japanese phones. The lack of emoji support has been blamed as part of the reason for slow iPhone adoption in Japan.
- Support for Google Street View for the Google Maps application. Street View allows users to view panoramic street level photographs in select cities within the Google Maps application. The feature was recently demoed on Google's Android phone.
Finally, Apple has also addressed one common request within the iPhone's Keyboard settings, allowing users to disable the iPhone's auto-correction.
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Apple has not yet announced when the iPhone 2.2 firmware will be available.
