The new iPhone OS v4.0 is set for release in the summer and offers over 100 new features for iPhone owners. Important additions include homescreen wallpapers, spell checker, tap to focus on video, playlist creation, geo-tagging of photos, Bluetooth keyboard compatibility and gift apps, a great new way to give gifts to friends and family. Apple has cleverly developed the operating system to handle the latest apps in an intelligent manner to provide a performance far above the rest. The new developments fall into 7 categories and the highlights of each are discussed below.

Multitasking: By far the most important development that has been available on other operating systems but Apple have added their own unique perspective and engineered a service that doesn’t drain battery life or slow down the system. Users can for example listen to the Pandora Internet radio whilst playing games or using Tom Tom for turn-by-turn navigation. Voice over IP services can be used whilst multitasking and Skype whom connect 1 in 9 of all International calls in the World can now be left silently running in the background to ensure calls are never missed. Apps that take time to complete tasks like uploading photos to Flickr can also be left running in the background freeing the user to continue using other services.

Folders: Applications can now be moved into folders via drag and drop to simplify the 11 page menu screens. Additionally restrictions to only 180 apps have been hugely increased with the aid of folders to a massive 2160 apps.

Mail: A unified inbox now handles all email accounts in one location. Streamlining the service further, ongoing messaging can be organised into threads and if desired fast inbox switching can be used to return to a specific email account.

iBooks: With tens of thousands of books available from the iBookstore, many of which are free, making this a great addition. Books can be searched for by author, title or genre and displayed on a virtual bookshelf. Sample pages can also be viewed for many of the books available for purchase.

Enterprise: With a growing number of companies using iPhones, security has been enhanced. Lots of useful features have been developed including wireless application distribution.

Game Centre: Access is provided to over 50,000 games and entertainment titles that now have enhanced features. Social gaming networks allow the user to challenge friends and view leaderboards. The matchmaking service will also connect similar users together for multiplayer games.

iAd: Mobile advertising is not to be shied away from here as the App Store (now boasting over 185,000 apps) can bring more free apps by utilising ad revenues. The true power of interactive ads was nicely displayed at the iPhone OS 4 launch using Toy Story 3 as a demonstration model. Banners at the base of the apps store can be clicked, and instead of being guided away from the app the interactive ad services run from within it where access to free games, game downloads, video clips, wallpapers, character info and cinema locations are provided.

The new iPhone OS will be available on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS (new services are model dependant) from summer and on the iPad from autumn.

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