Hands-on with the Updated iPhone

Tue Jan 15, 2008 5:25PM EST

We
didn't get a 3G iPhone at Macworld, but at least we got a software
update that brings pseudo-GPS abilities, customizable home pages and
more to Apple's coveted handheld. Here’s a few quick first impressions.

GPS:
Actually, we're not talking actual GPS here; instead, this update to
the iPhone's Maps app triangulates your position according to your
distance from the nearest cell phone towers. You activate the feature
by tapping a little bulls-eye in the left-hand corner of the Maps
interface; 10 to 30 seconds later, a blue circle appears on the map
showing your approximate location—and "approximate" is the key word. In
my first few tries, the circle encompassed almost a third of
Manhattan—a pretty massive swath of land, and not terribly helpful for,
say, finding the nearest ATM. A couple of tries later, however, Maps
found my location within a block; not bad at all.

Customizing the home page: Used
to be you had to hack your iPhone to tweak the icons on the home page.
Now you just touch and hold an icon, and all the icons begin to wiggle;
next, just drag the icon wherever you want it to go, even on a
subsequent home page (you get a total of nine). Also nice: you can turn
Web pages in the mobile Safari into icons on the home page. (Apple
calls them Webclips, but they don't work like the real-time, updating
Webclips widgets in Mac OS X Leopard.) The wiggling, moveable icons
will come in especially handy once third-party iPhone apps become
widely available.

Chapters, subtitles, and languages:
I was only able to test chapter support for videos (I don't have any
iTunes movies with subtitles or alternate languages yet), and it worked
nicely; you just tap an icon to the right of the playback controls, and
the video image flips around, revealing chapter titles, thumbnails and
time elapsed.

Lyrics: Not
as impressive as the other new features, if you ask me. Basically, if
you have a song in your iPhone tagged with song lyrics (select a song
in iTunes, click Command-I, and click the Lyrics tab to add lyrics)
field, you just tap the cover art while the song is playing to see the
words. Unfortunately, the lyrics display on the iPhone seems to do away
with line breaks, which makes a mess of nicely formatted choruses and
the link. Pretty disappointing.

SMS messages for multiple recipients:
One of the most puzzling omissions on the iPhone has finally been
fixed; at last, you can send text messages to multiple recipients at
once. Of course, the only drawback is that if you get into a
back-and-forth with one recipient, everyone in the group will get your
replies, which could get a little confusing. Still, a welcome
improvement.

Note: Like each of the previous software
updates for the iPhone, this latest patch will wreak havoc with hacked
handsets; expect any unauthorized applications (including iPhone
unlocking apps) to be wiped clean by the update.

info : yahoo Tech Search

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