SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

Five out of ten items of our wishlist for iPhone firmware 3.0 have been announced to be included on iPhone 3.0, on the special media event held on Apple´s Cupertino headquarters. Well, sort of. And there are a bunch of unexpected surprises, too. Anyway, to test all the features you are going to find out after the jump, we all will have to wait till summer…

Let´s make it clear: some of iPhone 3.0 new features will come included into the new firmware, while others are SDK improvements that will allow developers to include new features on their apps. Some of the firm-included features are not as good as the community awaited, and others were not even mentioned, perhaps that´s why Apple made the event full of 3rd party demos… it´s clear they trust on the developer community to cover the hole they can´t (or don´t want to).

But I´m critizicing to soon, go ahead, read the facts, and decide wheter the new firmware it´s just an stylish way of accepting their errors (while earning more money with the new appStore changes), a deception for not including all the features that other mobile devide brands support since years (while earning more money), or a great leap forward for the mobility world (while Apple earns more money).

iPhone Hall of Shame

iPhone represented a big step forward for mobile devices in many senses, and that´s one of the reasons of its success. However, there are a few simple things that iPhone is not able to do, even old mobile standards that all devices can do. The list below is a list of the features that iPhone still NOT support after “major” 3.0 update:

• Video Capturing. And what it´s worse, they gave no word on this… as I said, seems apple trust on the developers and their apps to cover their holes.
• Standard Bluetooth. Don´t be confused! Apple has announced P2P connectivity via bluetooth (read more on “Hall of Surprises” list) which means they don´t use standard bluetooth and iPhone won´t be able to communicate with other bluetooth mobile devices. They say developers woul be able to do teir custom P2P protocols, so there will probably exist the possibility for an app to use standard bluetooth, but the P2P included with 3.0 firmware it´s not standard.
• Background processing. It´s “not good for the customer”, on Apple words. They say that their tests shows it drains battery for up to 80%. So Apple decides for you.
• iTunes wireless syncing. Was not even mentioned on the event.
• Flash. I was expecting flash support to be the big hit for iPhone 3.0 firmware release, but I´m a fool. As the Wired guys perfectly explained a while ago, “Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it“.

iPhone Hall of Lateness

At least, they have partially redeemed enabling the next long awaited features:

• Tethering ? That´s one of my favourites, as I consider it as a MUST for any 3G device. However, it´s not completely clear if 3.0 will provide complete tethering support on all countries. Why? Many carries have special iPhone data plan contracts, and the legal stuff of that type of contracts usually specifies that the source of any 3G connections will be the iPhone device. For instance, in Spain where iPhone is exclusively sold by MoviStar, they charge an extra fee each time you use 3G from anywhere but an iPhone if your SIM is associated to an iPhone data plan. That´s what Apple guys said on the Q&A round: “There’s two pieces needed to support that: client side and working with carriers. We’re absolutely supporting tethering in the client side in iPhone 3.0, but we’re working with carriers around the world to see when they can add tethering support on their networks. But we are building that support into iPhone 3.0“.
• MMS. Wooow! What an incredible feature !!! This is the best innovation I´ve ever seen !! … Now back to seriousness: iPhone has now MMS support. Shall we say thanks? Note: 1st gen iPhone con´t support MMS even with the firm update, because of hardware issues, they said.
• Cut & Paste. At least copy, paste and cut is supported, they apologized stating that there were too many security issues for implementing such a feature, and they wanted to do it fine. The UI seems great, there´s also an undo option, and you can delete by shaking the iPhone.
• Turn by Turn GPS. Finally !! And as seen on some photos of the event, “B.Y.O.M.” (Build Your Own Maps). Which is logical because of Google Maps licensing. So again, Apple leaves the hard work to developers.
• Stereo Bluetooth. A nice feature, unfortunately 1st gen iPhone won´t be able to support this, as happened with MMS.
• Push. They canceled push support on firm version 2, now they have re-engineered all the system and they are ready for 3.0. There are notifications as badge alerts (shown on the app icon), text alerts and audio alerts. Apple states that it affects battery life just on a 23% (not much compared whith the tests they said they did to background processing which drains 80%). That´s how it works: the Push Notification Service (PNS) will have a permanent connection with the iPhone, then a 3rd party server will send notifs to the Apple´s PNS and it will forward them through the permanent connection. So they say the good part is that they do the “hard work” of adapting to the carrier networks of each country… There are other solutions out there and they handle push withouth problems (e.g. our zuppex product provides push notifications over any provider on any device, and we also are multi-carrier… ).

iPhone Hall of “Surprises”

There were space also for unexpected features added to 3.0, to highlight the improved App Store.

• App Store improvements. They expanded the bussiness model, so subscriptions are now possible (e.g. magazines), also there are “in-app” payments, which will allow to download extra-content. For instance, you could get by a low amount the first levels of a game and then if you like it you will type your iTunes password inside the app and pay for the next levels. In the Cupertino event, two interesting demos of games used this: Sims 3, where you could buy in-game objects for real money, and LiveFire, a first person shooter where you could buy new weapons, as the rocket launcher. In other words, as I said above, Apple earnings grow with this model.
• P2P conectivity via Bluetooth. This will allow users to share files, apps, and what´s more, this will introduce iPhone games to the multiplayer world. It´s a pity that they don´t follow the standards and also we will have to test its performance, as it would be quickier with Wi-fi.
• Voice Memos. An integrated app for voice-recording which supports external compatible microphones. nothing special.
• Lanscape on All included apps. Including Mail.
• Shake to shuffle. A bad copy of Sony-Ericsson´s shake controls for music.
• Notes sync. So you can synchronize your notes with iTunes.
• Search (Spotlight). That´s a new function which can search over all your iPhone, including Mail, iPod library, your apps…

iPhone SDK 3.0

Thanks to the new SDK, developers will be able to create richer apps.

• Control over accesories. The new SDK provides support for controlling the accesories, for instance, if a hi-fi iPod dock has an equalizer, you could control it in your app.
• Embedded Google Maps. To get them into your apps.
• Access to proximity sensor. Still have to see who uses this on an innovative way.
• 1000 new APIs (e.g. VOIP APIs). That´s too much.
• Streaming audio and video over HTTP. This is good for live audio apps, as HTTP isn´t usually blocked by firewalls.

And that´s all. The new SDK and firmware are available for beta testing to people affiliated to the iPhone Dev Program, but the final release won´t be available for downloading till summer. Btw, iPod touch users will have to pay $9.95 again to upgrade.

So now it´s your time to judge. What do you think about the new firmware 3.0 ? Does it deserve such a version jump (from 2.2 to 3.0) ? Is it enough to beat Android and WebOs outstanding features?