iPhone 4.0.1 software update has just been released by Apple. It comes along with some bug fixes as well as the highly discussed improved signal strength formula that is expected to magically solve iPhone 4's reception issues.

There are also some other bug fixes brought by the iOS 4.0.1. The iOS 4.0.1 is only compatible with iPhone 3G (though that doesn't work particularly well), iPhone 3GS and the recently launched iPhone 4.

 

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Instead we’ll stick to the new stuff. And Apple promised lots of that: multitasking, homescreen wallpapers, a revamped email app, and more. Here is our brief scoop on all the new stuff and all that's still missing.

What's new:

• Homescreen wallpapers
• Folder organization of the homescreen icons
• Multitasking and fast app switching
• Google/Wikipedia search in Spotlight
• Bluetooth keyboard pairing support
• SMS character counter
• SMS search
• Email threading
• Unified Email inbox
• Email archiving is now available when you setup Gmail
• Spell checker
• iPod music player can now create, edit and delete playlists
• 5x digital zoom in still camera
• Touch-focus in video capture (for video enabled iPhones)
• Keyboard layouts span over QWERTY, QWERTZ, and AZERTY
• Minor icon design facelifts
• Video call support (only in iPhone 4 and only over Wi-Fi)
• iBooks e-book and PDF reader

What's still missing:

• No Flash support in the web browser
• No true multitasking for all applications
• iOS4 for iPhone 3G has limited new feature set
• Poor performance on iPhone 3G
• No quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or 3G
• No social networking integration
• No info widgets on lock screen or homescreen
• SMS tones are still not customizable
• No mass mark emails as read
• No proper file browser or access to the file system
• No USB mass storage mode
• No vibration feedback when touching the screen
• No Bluetooth file transfers to other mobile phones
• Contacts lack a swipe-to-delete or mass delete feature
• No SMS/MMS delivery notifications
• No smart dialing (but Spotlight is a somewhat of a substitute)
• No DivX or XviD video support and no official third-party application to play that
• The whole iPhone is too dependent on iTunes - you cannot add the same type of content (video, photos, apps) to the phone from two computers, a regular file management interface would have been much better.

With the iPhone it's never about what the phone can or cannot do. The iOS 4 however seems finally determined to catch up with most of the today's smartphones. You’re not to expect miracles though – such as a file browser, USB mass storage mode, web Flash support, and other stuff that seems irrelevant to Apple.

SMS search and character counter, Email threading and archiving

Steve Jobs mentioned nothing at the unveiling (and with very good reasons), but this doesn’t mean the messaging app hasn’t got any new features.

The first one is the SMS character counter, which honestly just took too long. It's there finally, but to use it you need to activate it in the messaging settings first, because it's disabled by default. Strange, isn’t it?

SMS counter • Message options

The second upgrade brings SMS search. The search bar is placed above all your conversations and works like a charm. This was another missing feature that earned Apple much criticism.

iOS 4 packs some major modifications in the Email department – an aggregated inbox, thread support and email archive.

The aggregated inbox (called All Inboxes) brings all messages from all your email accounts in one place. Some may find this feature useless, or at least messy – there’re no account labels. It has its uses anyway and we are happy to see it in iOS 4.

The aggregated email view

Email threading is also enabled and works just like the conversations in the Messages app. All emails you exchange with a given contact are grouped in a single thread. A numeric indicator on the Email main screen shows the number of emails stored in every thread.

Gallery displays Albums, Events, Faces and Places

If you use iPhoto software on any of the Apple computers, you are now able to sync your Events, Places and Faces image holders. In iPhone's gallery you will notice four tabs available at the bottom – Albums, Events, Faces and Places.

As usual, Albums holds all of your synced, downloaded and captured images.

Photos in Events and Faces can be uploaded only if you’ve pre-created them on your computer with iPhoto photo organizer. Unfortunately, you can’t populate them with photos from your iPhone's camera.

All geotagged photos (saved from web or shot with the iPhone) appear in Places where they show up as pins on a map. Tapping a pin shows a small thumb with basic information.

iPhone gets touch focus in video recording, digital zoom also available

iOS 4 brings digital zoom up to 5x to all iPhones. Unfortunately, it only works in still camera mode. We find it rather useless honestly – at least in still imaging where the camera already maxes out the resolution of the sensor. Digital zooming usually makes much more sense in video recording.

 

 

Headline says it all folks. Obviously the company is going to be getting out in front of this antenna drama (finally).  It all happens TODAY at 10AM PT, Friday the 16th. We\'ll put a Report tomorrow of What this conference has of NEWS & Surprises too and see if Apple will comment on the iPhone Antenna issue and when the iOD 4.1 will be released to users of iPhone 4 and other versions too.

 

 

 

We all know how that storyended up playing out, but prior to HP's winning bid, RIM allegedly made a generous offer and could've ultimately come away with the prize had it not failed to re-up the bid (and may have even reduced it, looking at Palm's SEC filings) after HP made its move. 

Speaking of Apple, the company was said to be in it primarily for Palm's sizable patent portfolio -- but is claimed to have also been interested in keeping the platform alive, possibly in an effort to compete in the physical QWERTY market where the iPhone has not. Of course, if you look way back, it's important to remember that Mac OS X itself is based on outside work (if you consider NeXT "outside"), so we guess that keeping webOS alive in some capacity after an Apple acquisition wouldn't be totally unprecedented -- but it'd still be really, really weird at best.

 

Alright, we know that playing with the Firefox 4 beta has been a full-time job for you Mozilla fanboys and girls out there, but let's try something fresh on for size, shall we? Firefox Home has finally been whisked into the App Store on news that Apple gave it the green light, meaning you can now sync your bookmarks and open tabs between your desktop and your phone. Some of us can go a few minutes without browsing the web in the off chance we're away from our PCs... aw, who are we kidding? No we can't -- and neither can you, so you may as well grab it if you're using Firefox and an iPhone.

 

 

 

It requires a Windows PC. But PlayOn for iPhone actually works, slinging Netflix, Hulu, CBS and more to your waiting Apple device over WiFi and (occasionally) 3G. Using the same PlayOn desktop client that presently redirects video-on-demand to your game console or a mediastreamer attached to your TV, subscribers can download an app on July 15th that transcodes content for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad as well, and is today the only way to get Netflix on your phone. 

 

We spent some quality couch time with the program over the last couple of days, and with a powerful PC, fast internet and WiFi connection, we found video quite watchable on our iPhone 4, and there\'s no knocking PlayOn\'s breadth of content available, with loads of TV, a good deal of anime and your entire Netflix streaming queue available on the phone. The interface is barely there, though, just a series of poorly-spaced nesting menus, and it can take quite a few touchscreen presses and a bit of thought to find what you want to watch. There are a few bugs too, like one that kept shooting us back to the main menu randomly upon a button press, and another that locked us into a particular piece of content until both app and desktop server were restarted.

 

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As if we needed any more drama in this situation, Bloomberg has someone "familiar with the matter" that claims Apple's own antenna expert, Ruben Caballero, told Apple management that the iPhone 4 antenna design could cause reception problems, dropped calls, and a serious engineering challenge. Caballero is a senior engineer for Apple with a large quantity of antenna patents under his belt, and while we certainly don't know the whole story -- perhaps his claims were somehow quelled by Apple's own testing -- it certainly adds a twist to this story if Steve Jobs and co. had been alerted to this very real problem during the design phase. The Bloomberg article also claims, from a different source, no less, that a carrier partner also raised antenna concerns before the release. Apple and Caballero naturally did not comment on this report. We're not really sure about the real-world implications of all this behind-the-scenes drama, but we suppose we'll see what Apple has to say for itself tomorrow.

 

 

While not technically a CEO, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner is not immune to a certain amount of executive level foot-in-mouth. Speaking at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in DC and chatting up his company's upcoming slate of Windows Phones, he couldn't help a little iPhone bashing: "It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I'm okay with that." Should we point out to Kevin that attempting to criticize your competition by comparing it to your own flagship products is usually counterproductive, or leave him to figure it out on his own during some early morning magnificent moustache contemplation session? Apple may be got manything wrong on iPhone 4 Buy its still an iPhone!

 

So Whats you think ??

 

 

They prompted some public outcry from competitors and a preliminary antitrust investigation from the US government, but it looks like Apple isn\'t even enforcing those new rules on outside ad networks -- at least not yet. That\'s according to none other than AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui himself, who said at theMobileBeat conference this week that \"they haven\'t been enforcing\" the new regulations yet, and that he\'s \"very appreciative of that.\" If enforced, those regulations would prevent companies like AdMob from collecting some analytic data on ads placed in iOS applications -- data that Apple itself could collect with its iAd platform. Of course, it\'s not clear when or if Apple will start enforcing the rules, but Hamoui seems to be content with the current situation, and even went out of his way to praise Apple\'s own advertising efforts, saying that \"anybody getting advertisers interested in mobile is a good thing. It\'s not at all a zero-sum game.\"

It was about time. Apple got quite a hit by the wave of user discontent about the iPhone 4 antenna issues. It's been 3 weeks since the premiere of iPhone 4, but it is tomorrow that Apple will confess. Or not.

And this is all we know so far. Apple sent invitations to select press representatives for tomorrow's press conference. It will start 10:00 AM Pacific Time (6 PM European GMT) and will surly concern iPhone 4. Whether Apple will admit the issues, offer free bumper cases or start a recall campaign - nobody knows. But this sounds surely as the first step into the right direction.

Meanwhile iOS 4.1 beta is already available to developers and here is a glimpse of what we should expect.

The reception bars now make use of both a new formula and a new size. The first reports show that a full-bars situation is now a rare event. The bars are also a bit taller than before, which sounds like a clever mind trick.

 

 

The Game Center has been redesigned too. It's now painted in green with yellow buttons.

Finally, there are some rumors of watermarking of jailbroken devices. If your iPhone 4 has joined the pirateland, it will have some watermark showing onscreen all the time. Don't worry just yet though, there's still no public jailbreak solution and it's all just a rumor for now.