The next update of the iPhone’s firmware—3.1 beta—was pushed to developers last week. Along with the usual bug fixes, some new features have cropped up. There’s nothing amazing here, just a few small additions to once again improve the iPhone’s software.
Voice Control
Yes, I know this is part of iPhone OS 3.0, and I’m sure many of you are already using it. You can press down the home button, speak a command, and there we go. But with 3.1, you’ll have the same control over your phone via your bluetooth headset. If giving instructions through your iPhone’s microphone was cool, wait until you can do it wirelessly—the world’s your oyster.
Home Screen
If you hold down an icon for long enough, they’ll all begin to move on your home screen, allowing you to move them around and organize them how you’d like. With the 3.1 update, this is confirmed with a vibration. You know, just because they can.
MMS
MMS was a known feature of iPhone OS 3.0 from the beginning, until the last beta update. For some reason, Apple removed it from the fifth beta and the public release for AT&T users, but I’m happy to tell you that the MMS functionality makes a return to Messages in iPhone OS 3.1. Still, AT&T aren’t playing ball yet, so you won’t be able to send MMS messages for the time being unless you decide to hack your iPhone. If AT&T still don’t have the service up and running by the time iPhone OS 3.1 is released to the public, it may be removed once again, but here’s hoping it’s here to stay.
Video Editing
If you’re the lucky owner of an iPhone 3GS, you’ll have had chance to play around with editing video. You may have been surprised to find out that once you trim a video, it’s saved over the original file, so there’s no option to return or undo. You’ve probably guessed by now that in iPhone OS 3.1, this won’t be the case. In 3.1, you’ll have the option to “Save a Copy” which will create a separate video file of the trimmed version.
Copy & Paste: Phone Numbers
It was a long time coming for copy and paste on the iPhone (a feature that should’ve been in place from day one). iPhone OS 3.1 sees copy and paste come to the phone’s keypad. By holding down your finger in the input area, it’s color will change from dark to light blue, and the copy and paste menu options will appear.
There are a few welcome features there, and along with a collection of bug fixes, this firmware update should prove to be quite a valuable one.
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It seems there are a lot of people having signal issues with the 3GS, just like they did with the 3G- like dropped calls and lacking decent 3G coverage when other phones receive it fine. I wonder if 3.1 will sort those issues out.
I like being in the know… Thanks!
will the iphone ever have tv
Get a Sling-box and add the Sling Player from the App store. http://www.slingmedia.com Works great!
I am a Corporate user who has been exposed to using other mobile phones that support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync such as the Nokia E71, HP iPAQ 901 and Palm Treo Pro; all of which synchronizes my Coprporate Email, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. I now have an iPhone 3GS, which also supports Exchange ActiveSync, but does not support synchronizing my "Tasks". Would the iPhone Firmware 3.1 address the shortcoming of Syncing "Tasks" and possibly "Notes" with Microsoft Exchange 2007 ?