iPhone v1.1.1 Feature Breakdown
Apple recently held their "Mum is longer the word" event in London. Nothing too crazy, basically just announcing that O2 will be their UK carrier for the iPhone. Of interest to me was the fact that every unit on display was running the upcoming firmware version 1.1.1. Engadget took some photos of these units and from those, I thought I would breakdown the added functionality coming "at the end of the month".
-
Now Playing controls throughout (even when locked). I've complained about this before and thankfully, it's on the way.
- Double clicking home screen goes to "Favorites" or "iPod"
- iTunes Wifi Store. No surprise there. It's already running on the Touch.
- Additional iPod features: Closed captioning and support for video out.
- New Calculator icon on the home screen. Hmmm, okay.
- Multiple, international keyboards.
- Network setup
for disabling EDGE while roaming. Goodbye $3,000 international roaming bills. - Mysterious "Carrier" menu. My personal hope would be support for other carrier's SIMs internationally within the iPhone family. For example, I travel to England and can insert an O2 SIM.
Update: The Touch's manual
shows an option for "." Shortcut whereby double-tapping the space bar
enters a period followed a space. This one is right out of the Blackberry's playbook and presume it will also be in 1.1.1.
Update 2: I'm hearing from multiple sources that the "Carrier" menu is present internationally even on unlocked iPhones running the current firmware. Also hearing that it fills a European requirement that, in some countries, phones cannot be sold locked. Meaning I could import an iPhone and use it on T-Mobile right out the box? This would mean hackers could copy that modems firmware and have an update resistant unlock. If anyone can confirm this, shoot me a message in the comments.
Update 3: So we now know that T-Mobile and Orange are the carriers for Germany and France, respectively. How many more countires must Jesus Jobs travel to before we Yanks get our update?!
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Comments
AFAIK, no. 1 and no. 2 are really one and the same.
Double click on the Home button when set to iPod brings up the iPod control overlay (even when the iPhone is locked).
You're one of the many people that still believes that more megapixels equals more quality. this is not the case. It would be stupid for apple to try and cram a crappy 3+ megapixel camera into the iPhone while still maintaining the thinness of the device.
Not that the iPhones cam is that great either way, especially with no zoom flash or any options other than "take the picture". but just pointing out the flaw in your logic.
Main thing though is that it would mean most people would buy an iPhone instead of the iPod Touch being as though they are almost the same price, thus making the iPod Touch be almost redundant.
I'm glad they have put the option to turn off Edge use, I have a Vodafone contract currently, true I do have like a 120MB internet usage (it's their 'unlimited' plan, which is awful if you ask me) but i'd rather not have this so that option would be very good for when I get my iPhone so it doesn't cost me the earth on data charges. (getting an eBay one and use with anySIM :) just have to wait!
With this thing about UK phones being sold unlocked, it isn't quite true, companies have to unlock the phone from their network if requested to by the user which they can charge for, though not a huge sum of money, normally about £20. What i'm thinking though is that you will have to activate your phone first which means signing an 18 month contract with O2 anyway. So if you get in unlocked your still going to have to give O2 the £45 X 18 months on top of the unlock price so people don't just buy it and then request and unlock code. Sneaky but not against the law i'm sure.