A comprehensive recap: iPhone 4.0 – Still no word on next-gen iPhone

Building up to the unveiling of iPhone OS 4.0, we’ve compiled some of the most likely features to be included in the new OS. Along with that we’ve also included some predictions of the kind of features the new iPhone will include.

April 8 has come and gone and we still don’t know how the next-gen iPhone would look like and what features it would have. But we do know a lot of other things about the new iPhone OS. Here’s our comprehensive recap and thoughts of the iPhone OS 4.0 unveling.

Also after the jump, video bites of the keynote. Must see!

Jobs was true to his word. During a townhall meet at Cupertino with his staff, Jobs was reported saying that the new iPhone OS “will deliver updates to the iPhone that Android/Google won’t be able to keep up with”.

Although multitasking and unified inboxes are all features that today’s Android devices can offer, Google has no answer to Apple’s iAd and Game Center.

Multitasking

Great, the iPhone can now multitask, albeit rather limited in function, it should cover close to everything the general user is looking for in a multitasking capable OS. Our compilation mentioned that the new OS will have multitasking and we sighted security, performance and battery life as reasons why it wasn’t included in any of the previous OS. Although, we can’t be certain if this is indeed the reason, one thing’s for sure, it will not look like Expose on Mac as many has speculated.

Based on the keynote, Apple’s execution for switching through apps on the iPhone looks very intuitive, easy to use and fast. We can’t wait to try it out ourselves.

App Folders

With OS 4.0, you’ll be able to organize your apps in folders. This is a very useful feature for those who, like us, have pages and pages and pages of apps to cycle through to get to the app that we want to use.

With app folder, the new OS allows you to have access to over 2000 apps in your iPhone, previously without folders, the iPhone could only store 180 apps.

What’s awesome about the new app folders feature is that its execution is ridiculously simple and intuitive, no new tricks to learn. Just enhanced old tricks that we’re all very comfortable with. On top of that, the folders name themselves based on the apps you put into them. Of course you’ll be able to rename them if you want to.

Better email

This feature serves all your emails from different accounts in one unified inbox and it allows you to have more than one Exchange account. Juggling multiple email accounts, the unified inbox is a feature that we can really appreciate. And it doesn’t stop there, there’s fast inbox switching as well as an option to oganise your emails by thread, you can also open attachments using specific apps while email runs in the background. This really transforms how the iPhone functions as an email device. Very much looking forward to trying this.

iBook: Now in your iPhone

No big deal here. The new OS will allow iBooks purchased via iPad to be read on the iPhone. You can also sync pages and bookmarks so you can continue reading where you left off across devices. Apple is sweetening the iBook deal further with free Winnie the Pooh books. LoLs!

iPhone: A better business tool

The iPhone OS 4.0 will offer better support and security for enterprise users to make it a full-fledged business tool complete with support for multiple Exchange accounts, Exchange server 2010 and new VPN options. IT departments now have a more complete mobile device management with wireless app distribution as well.

Perhaps we’ll be seeing more Berry make the switch with this.

Game Center

Gaming is one of the most popular uses of the iPhone and iPod touch with over 50,000 games on offer in the App store. In comparsion, Nintendo DS has about 4000 titles and the PSP has close to 2500 titles – in Apple’s own word, “we blow them out of the water”.

Game Center on the OS 4.0 will make gamming a very social experience with an integrated feature for gamers to share achievements, post scores on leader boards and even have the game match them up with other gamers of the same skill levels. This is something currently none of the dedicated online game consoles offer.

iAd: Mobile advertising like never before

This is possibly the second biggest feature announced that day.

iAd is Apple’s very own advertising platform possibly developed by Quattro – a company it acquires a few months back. Initially, Jobs said that Apple wanted to acquire Admob, another prominent mobile advertising company, but that was “snatched up” by Google.

From the preview during the keynote, what we saw really blew us away. The iAd platform is more like an app that runs within an app. The advertising quality is really beyond what mobile advertising is today. iAds don’t just deliver eye candy, with iAds Jobs want mobile advertising to deliver emotions and interaction. From what we’ve seen, advertising served from the iAd platform is going to be very different indeed.

Over 100 new features in OS 4.0
Jobs mentioned that there will be over 100 new features in the upcoming OS. Some of the other features mentioned include 5X digital zoom and Bluetooth keyboard support. We hope in amongst the 100 new features we’ll see fixes for the many minor gripes we have with the iPhone.

For example wireless toggling should be made easier so that we don’t have to dig into multiple menu levels just to turn on Bluetooth. Sending mass SMS is also a major pain in the ass because there’s no way to select multiple contacts and then proceed to writing the SMS.

What didn’t happen
CNN predicted that the new OS will have Flash support. Judging by what Jobs thinks about Flash, we said most probably not, and as it turns out, we’re right. Jobs, pretty much eliminated any spec of possibility of this happening in the new OS or event the new iPhone during the OS 4.0 keynote.

We still can’t be sure to any degree if the new iPhone will have a gorgeous 940 X 640 display, we don’t know if the display will be AMOLED or not, we don’t know if it will be running iPAd’s A4 processor and as for the name, iPhone HD, that’s pretty much up in the air as well.

The iPhone OS 4.0 will be available for download in June for the iPhone and sometime around September for the iPad. So, as for the new iPhone, it’s looking like June will be another date to wait for to see if Apple finally reveals the specs of the new iPhone.

Checkout the official video of the keynote HERE

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