SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

Apple posted the new 2.2 beta firmware to developers some days ago, and even if they just said “compability testing” on the changelog, more and more hidden features are being discovered each day.

We show you the new look for Mobile Safari, now read the rest of this entry to discover three more new features….

EMOJI

We have talked before about the iPhone low sales on Japan, and to understand this fact, you have to take into account that Japan mobile devices are very rich on functionalities and everybody uses Internet on their phones at high speed rates. Now, think on their language… it´s not easy to use IM, mail, or SMS with a language based on thousands of symbols. That´s where Emoji comes into play. Emoji are kind of emoticons, essential on mobile communication for japanese teenagers (and no so “teen”), and iPhone lacks of any kind of emoticons or Emojis.

Firmware 2.2 have been discovered to contain 461 hidden Emojis under an undocumented API (UIKit.framework).

GOOGLE STREET VIEW

T-Mobile announced G1 supports native Google Street View… Then it come to Blackberrys and a few Java-enabled phones… Now, our begging have been listened, and Google Street view arrives to iPhone !! On the beta firmware, it´s integrated with the Google Mapps native application.

AUTO-CORRECTION

Seems that Apple is accepting that users like to have the more freedom as possible, and they have included a switch on Settings to turn off Auto-Correction. In my opinion, we have been waiting too long for a simple feature like that. Auto-Correction has proven to upset iPhone users, and many people Jailbreaked their iPhones in order to get that feature through third-party applications.

CONCLUSIONS

This is a beta firmware, so any of these features have been officially announced right now. These features are being tested which means Apple is studying to include them on the next release.

My first feelings are that these features are great… however, how much time will we have to wait for the top-requested features like Copy & Paste or Background applications ? These are available on Jailbroken phones trough community-made applications, but are not officially supported, and some could stop working on the next firmware release, as it happened with OpenClip, the best Copy & Paste open-source Framework for iPhone.

Apple can´t ignore community feedback anymore.

Via MacRumors