MacRumors

MacRumors forum user bndoarn has organized a massive list of hidden 3.0 features. The list is over 96 individual features so far. Some are more significant than others, of course. Here are a few interesting highlights:

- There is no limit to the number of apps that can be installed (beside storage space). Once you reach the home screen limit, Apps installed after that are installed without an icon but can be accessed in Spotlight. You can also use this to hide any apple application (i.e. weather and stocks), if you get to 11 pages.
- In the Settings -> General -> Home Button you can now set the double click to the new search feature or the camera
- Notes now has data detectors. Links are clickable, phone numbers are callable, email address are emailable, and address are locatable (using Maps)
- When a phone call interrupts you, after the phone call you are taken back to the app you were in before you were interrupted
- You can now have 11 home screen pages instead of nine
- Now there is a different way to force quit apps. now you have to hold the sleep/wake button until the red slider appears, then you press and hold down the home button to quit the app

The first on the list is perhaps most notable, allowing you to use Spotlight as an application launcher to avoid swiping through pages and pages of apps and also installing more than the allotted number.

With the release of iPhone 3.0, one of the big features anticipated was "Push Notifications". This system allows applications to send you notices even when they are not the currently running application. A running list of app updates can be scanned at AppShopper, but here are a list of apps we've found that support Push Notifications now. We haven't tried them all so can't specifically endorse them, but many are free to try:

- AreMySitesUp (Free) - This version enables Push Notifications on site checks, so you can find out about your server status even faster!
- Tap Tap Revenge (Free) - Support for Push Notifications on iPhone OS 3! Tap Tap's icon on the Springboard will be badged with an unread count for new feed items. SMS-style alerts will arrive when you're challenged to a game by your friends.
- Star Defense ($5.99) - Send your friends direct challenges via push notifications.
- Pollen (Push) (Free) - Pollen is your simple guide to the pollen levels in your area of the United Kingdom with added Map View and Push Notifications
- Weather Alert ($0.99) - True Apple push notifications
- AP Mobile (Free) - Get breaking news alerts even when AP Mobile is not open.
- Leaf Trombone ($0.99) - notifications on all pending performances and judging.
- E*Trade Mobile Pro (Free) - Enable push notifications for stock alerts and account alerts from the Mobile Pro settings page
- Hey Where Are You (Free) - HeyWAY uses Apple's brand new Push Notification Service, your alerts are delivered even when the application is not running.
- Textfree Unlimited ($5.99) - On iPhone OS 3.0, you can get notified of texts even when youre not in the app.

We're still waiting on the first instant messaging app to support Push. None of the major ones have been updated, though future support for Push has been announced for several.

9to5Mac points out that AT&T also announced a welcome piece of news for existing and future iPhone owners. AT&T now supports Wi-Fi "auto-authentication" in the 3.0 firmware. While iPhone customers have had free access to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, accessing them required a somewhat cumbersome two-step authentication process using SMS. The new system will eliminate these steps altogether:

Auto-authentication allows iPhone users to seamlessly switch from AT&T's 3G network to an AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot without being prompted. AT&T customers with qualifying iPhone data plans have unlimited access to the nation's largest Wi-Fi network -- more than 20,000 U.S. AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots.

The new process eliminates the previous two-step authentication, making it easier and faster for iPhone customers to connect to AT&T Wi-Fi. Auto-connect is established once a customer connects their iPhone to an AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot the first time.

The new system is available starting today for all existing iPhone customers who have installed iPhone 3.0 and will also be available to iPhone 3G S owners.

The early reviews for the iPhone 3G S are in and the conclusions seem pretty common across the board. As advertised, the new iPhone 3G S offers a faster experience, better camera, and impressive video recording. All reviewers felt that the upgrade from 3G was more evolutionary than revolutionary and the core phone remains very much the same as the existing 3G.

Here are a summary of key impressions from the early reviews that have hit the web.

Walt Mossberg / AllThingsD
- Speed: "the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. "
- Battery: "the new model did much better [than the iPhone 3G], never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual"
- Camera: "didnt think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model"
- Conclusion: "Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model."

Sun Times / Andy Ihnatko
- Speed: "Everything feels faster. Safari on the iPhone 3G S seems as interactive as a desktop browser."
- Gaming: "Gaming has been kicked up a notch; intensive 3D games are elevated from 'Wow, thats a great frame rate for a phone!' to simply 'Wow.'"
- Battery: "The 3G S has enough juice for a full day of normal use, but if youre going to rely on it heavily throughout the day its still best to have an external battery."
- Video: "The video quality is impressively smooth and natural given the source, and the sound quality is practically astonishing"
- Voice: "Voice control is a tough feature to successfully pull off on any device. No, the iPhone doesnt pull it off."
- Flickr set of photos taken with the iPhone 3G S.

Engadget
- Game Performance: "If you're an avid gamer looking for the device with more power, the difference will be crystal clear: the 3G S obviously flexes in this department."
- Olephobic screen: - "The most surprising thing about the tech is that it actually does what the company says it will: namely, it resists new smudges and wipes almost entirely clean with a single swipe on a pant leg."
- Camera: "We do have some complaints about exposure, which seems to be permanently cranked to "blinding," and while the shutter speed is faster than on the 3G, it's still not quite snappy enough for our taste."
- Video: "Video recording on the iPhone 3G S is really quite impressive"
- Compass: "Once the compass picks up your bearing, it rotates the map to reflect. This may not sound like much, but if you've ever tried to walk a new city using just maps and geolocation, you'll understand quickly. "
- Conclusion: "For current users, we have this to say: the iPhone 3G S is a solid spec bump to a phone you already own... but it is, at its core, a phone you already own. "

Gizmodo
- Olephobic coating: "Surprisingly, the coating actually works in preventing a good deal of fingerprints and face grease, and it allows the phone to still be smooth and usable even if there are fingerprints on the surface."
- Speed: " Safari, Email, Camera all load noticeably faster than on the iPhone 3G (both running 3.0 software). Even booting the phone takes about half the time. "
- Video: "Even if it's not quite 30FPS at all times, the video is smooth as hell. Recording still isn't great in low light since it's a physical limitation of cameras in general, but at least it's fluid."
- 7.2Mbpz data speed: "on average the 3GS scored about 50% higher than the 3G, occasionally, in individual runs, it could have ranged anywhere from twice as fast to about the same speeds."
- Battery: "What's also surprising about the 3GS is that you wouldn't expect battery life to be improved, but it is."
- Conclusion: "The only issue with the iPhone 3GS, if you already have the 3G, is that it's not all that different of an experience." ... "as a whole, the iPhone 3GS is the best all-around smartphone available"

CNet
- Voice: "In our tests, the voice dialing performed well."
- Accessibility: "Visually impaired people can use Apple's Voice Over to navigate the handset's menus and type messages and e-mails. "
- Camera; "good, but far from great, with decent photo quality, but no editing features."
- Video: "you can trim only in a linear format--meaning you can't cut out something in the middle and stitch the remaining two ends of the video together."
- Speed: "For example, Bejewled 2, which can take up to 12 seconds to load on the iPhone 3G, started in just 5 seconds on the 3G S. Even better, Pocket God went from opening in almost 30 seconds to starting in just 11. The iPhone also started up much quicker than the iPhone 3G--we were up and running in 26 seconds instead of 50 seconds."
- Conclusion: "If you don't own an iPhone yet, and you've been waiting for the right model, now is the time to go for it. .... But, if you're a current iPhone 3G owner, the answer isn't so clear."

While today's big news has been the release of iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T today also announced that it is expanding the eligibility window for determining which customers are eligible for upgrade pricing on the iPhone 3G S. Customers who previously would not have become upgrade eligible until July, August or September of this year will instead qualify for AT&T's lowest upgrade pricing as of tomorrow, making them eligible to purchase the iPhone 3G S at the $199 (16 GB) or $299 (32 GB) price point at launch. Affected customers will save $200 on the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S as a result.

Importantly, we want our customers to better understand our wireless device upgrade program. Like most U.S. carriers, we offer a variety of phones that we sell below our actual cost when customers agree to sign service agreements. In general, the more a customer spends with us, the quicker they become eligible for a price break on a new device. For example, iPhone customers who spend more than $99 a month per line with us generally are eligible for an upgrade between 12 and 18 months into their contract.

We also currently offer early upgrade pricing only for iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G.

All of that said, we've been listening to our customers. And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time.

We're now pleased to offer our iPhone 3G customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009 our best upgrade pricing, beginning Thursday, June 18.

Newly-eligible customers who have already pre-ordered the iPhone 3G S at the higher prices will receive credits for the difference in price. Users can check their upgrade eligibility status by visiting AT&T's iPhone page, calling *NEW# (*639#) on their AT&T device, or visiting any AT&T store.

Reminder: The new pricing will not appear in the eligibility tools listed until Thursday, June 18th.

Apple today released the long-awaited iPhone OS 3.0 (Build 7A341) for both iPhone and iPod touch via iTunes. Users should sync their devices with iTunes and check for updates in order to access the new version. iPod Touch owners will need to purchase the new firmware for $9.95 while iPhone owners will get the firmware downloaded automatically.

While many of the features of the new operating system have been detailed over the past few months, a large list of features are detailed by Apple:

- Copy and Paste: Quickly and easily cut, copy, and paste text from application to application. Select entire blocks of web text with a tap. Copy and paste images from the web, too.
- Landscape Keyboard: Want more room to type? Rotate iPhone to landscape to use a larger keyboard in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari.
- Spotlight Search: Find what youre looking for across your iPhone, all from one place. Spotlight searches all of your contacts, email, calendars, and notes, as well as everything in your iPod.
- Safari: Enjoy faster performance, autofill user names and passwords, and more.
- Auto Wi-Fi login: Log in to a Wi-Fi hotspot and iPhone automatically logs you in when you connect again
- Find My iPhone: Find your iPhone if you lose it and protect your privacy with Remote Wipe.
- Shake to Shuffle: Give iPhone a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library.

Other sites have provided detailed walkthroughs of the many new features, including some handy tips:

- Mac|Life: 16 Tips to Become an INSTANT iPhone OS 3.0 Power-User

Select Text then delete it

What happens is you hold the delete button, and it starts removing offending characters -- and then it goes on to removing whole words. Next thing you know, you've deleted too many words, and you have to start over. To avoid this, use tap and hold to show the Select|Select All pop-up. Select what you need deleted, hit the delete button and -- poof! -- you've gotten rid of the offending text without trying to judge the speed of the delete button.

- Fortune: The 4 new iPhone features I use most

Safari Autofill

Any browser worth its salt ought to be smart enough to remember the name and password you use on the sites you go to most often. I dont know why this wasnt available on the iPhone from Day 1, but now that it is I find myself visiting sites I had avoided because I was either too lazy to enter the password or too absent-minded to remember it.

- iSmashPhone: How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0

Undo

No matter what application you are using, you can undo typing by shaking your iPhone. If you want your text back, simply shake again. If you had something else written before you started writing the sentence you chose to undo, it reverts back to that. If this was the first thing you wrote, it simply erases it.

- iLounge: Apple iPhone 3.0

Snappier General Performance, with Offsets

Though its hard to quantify, iPhone OS 3.0 feels a little more responsive than its predecessors when it comes to certain tasks: snapping pictures, opening Safari pages, and loading certain apps all seemed to be a little faster, though the specific improvements were sometimes difficult to quantify. Some of the web pages we loaded over Wi-Fi on a 2.2.1 iPhone loaded just as quickly as on a 3.0 iPhone 3G; others loaded faster on the new iPhone. iPhone OS 3.0 is a little quicker at taking still images than before, and appears to be a little better at producing sharpened, higher-contrast snaps of black text on white paper. Lens differences or software, were not 100% certain, but we think its the software.

The first YouTube videos claimed to have been recorded by the iPhone 3G S have started to appear. The quality of the recording is, of course, also affected by YouTube's compression but should give a feel for what the device is capable of in casual usage:

A second video has also appeared from the same uploader though this video appears to have been edited with music and multiple clips cut together. The aspect ratio is also different, raising some questions about the actual source of the video.

Meanwhile, iFun.de also posts some comparison shots between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S cameras. The images depict the iPhone box in close-up, accentuating the improvement with the new iPhone's auto-focus camera. The example seems to show a particularly poor quality example of an iPhone 3G photo, but still shows a notable improvement in the 3G S image quality.

Several readers are reporting that their potentially early iPhone 3G S shipments are being intentionally delayed by Apple. The actual delivery date may still be early (the 18th) but the information is continuing to change. While originally scheduled for delivery as early as Wednesday, June 17th, many individuals have noted the following message appear on their shipment tracking:

The receiver requested a hold for a future delivery date. UPS will attempt delivery on date requested

Apple has done similar things in the past to time shipments with official launch dates.

Daring Fireball highlights a new support document from Apple addressing the issue of "unsupported third-party digital media players" syncing with iTunes. The brief document warns users that Apple does not test its software with such devices and thus their ability to sync with iTunes may be broken by future software updates.

Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

The new Palm Pre has received a significant amount of attention for its ability to sync with iTunes despite the lack of support from Apple. The Pre has been discovered to accomplish this feat by emulating an iPod by transmitting Apple-specific vendor and product IDs to iTunes.

One MacRumors reader has discovered an iTunes page that appears to offer the iPhone OS 3.0 software update for iPod touch for download for $9.95. While iTunes permits the transaction to go through and prompts the user to connect their iPod touch to check for updates, iTunes subsequently reports that iPhone OS 2.2.1 is still the current version and does not download iPhone OS 3.0.

Interestingly, the Purchase History displays the purchase as "iPhone 2.0 Software Update" despite the purchase screen having clearly advertised iPhone OS 3.0.

iPhone OS 3.0 for iPhone and iPod touch is scheduled to launch tomorrow (June 17th) in most of the world. While Apple initially announced that iPhone OS 3.0 would be available on that date for "all customers", within the past few days Apple has updated its iPhone software update pages for Australia, New Zealand, and a number of East Asian countries to reflect that iPhone OS 3.0 will not launch in those countries until the 18th. Differences in time zones, however, mean that those countries may still receive the new operating system at the same time as the rest of the world.

Update: Apple has reverted its changes to the iTunes page, which once again refers to the iPhone OS 2.2 update.

Apple today announced the details of its Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Program, which allows U.S. customers who purchased or will purchase a qualifying Mac after June 8th, 2009 with OS X Leopard installed to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard upon its September release for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 plus tax. Similar programs are available in a number of other countries. While Apple announced general information related to the program in its initial press release covering Snow Leopard's launch, today's update provides full details for customers looking to upgrade.

Apple has provided lists of new and refurbished Mac that qualify under the program, which requires customers to submit their completed order forms within 90 days of purchase or by December 26th, 2009, whichever is earlier. Customers who have multiple qualifying Macs on a single invoice may purchase an upgrade kit for each system as a cost of $9.95 for each system or purchase a single upgrade kit for $9.95 and request additional "Right to Copy" licenses at no charge. Regardless of the method chosen, the total number of licensed upgrades may not exceed the number of qualifying systems on the invoice.

Apple is also offering a similar program for customers purchasing Xserves who wish to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard Server. The Snow Leopard Server program also costs $9.95 plus tax for each upgrade kit, and an upgrade kit is required for each qualifying machine for which an upgrade is requested.

A new augmented reality app called Layar is making the rounds on the web as an example of what can be done with Augmented Reality. Layer (via 9to5Mac) is described as the world's first mobile augmented reailty browser.

Layar shows you what is around you by displaying realtime digital information on top of reality through the camera of the mobile phone. Just flip through the directory of layers and find ATM's, bars, houses for sale, hotels and other cool stuff around you.

The app accomplishes this through the use of the Compass, camera and GPS embedded within the phone. The developer's video shows it running:

The app is first available for the Android devices but they are working hard on porting it to other platforms "with a prime focus on the iPhone 3G S.". The iPhone 3G S is the first Apple iPhone to contain a digital compass which is required for such applications.

CNet reports that ARM will be delivering multi-core ARM chips in 2010, making multi-core iPhones and other smart phones possible.

"You'll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010," James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.

The iPhone currently is believed to use the ARM Cortex A8 processor. While still a notable improvement over the previous generation ARM chips, it remains a single core device. The move to dual-core ARM chips is expected to happen "relatively quickly" and should be seen in about a year.

An ARM representative reassured CNet that the dual-core ARM A9 is actually more power efficient than the A8.

"What we've done on the A9 is actually make it more power efficient than the A8. The dual-core A9 will be coming out on 45-nanometer rather than the (current) 65-nanometer process," Bruce said. Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power-efficient the processor is.
Bruce continued. "With the dual-core running at maximum load there's probably going to be an increase of about 10 to 20 percent in power consumption but in general day to day use you're actually going to see better battery life."

Several readers have reported that their early iPhone 3G S orders will be arriving as early as June 17th (Wednesday), two days earlier than expected. The official launch day for the iPhone 3G S is Friday, June 19th.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian site (MyDock.com.br) has posted an unlocked iPhone 3G S. The video shows the new iPhone as well as the new Compass app in action:

Meanwhile, we have gotten a few hands on tdibits of the new iPhone 3G S. According to a first hand account of the iPhone 3G S:

- 2048 x 1536 is the resolution of the pictures from the camera
- The olephobic screen of the new iPhone is noticeable and does seem to make a difference with fingerprints.
- "Speed is impressive"
- Video recording quality is just ok, dependent of ambient light.