Apple introduces iOS 4 – what to expect

If you’re an Apple fanboy, you might have already known that there was an Apple media event early this morning to announce the arrival of a slew of new iPods, a new Apple TV and, what we’re very interested about, an update of the iOS 4.

The iOS 4.1 which will be available for download next week, will add a few new features to the iPhone including major bug fixes for the iPhone 3G and other versions of the iPhone.

So what improvements can you expect with the iOS 4?

First up, iPhone 3G owners running iOS 4 will know that having the iOS 4 installed on your device has turned it into a bit of a slouch, with overall performance being laggy and unstable. With version 4.1 Steve says “a lot of bugs” on the iPhone 3G will be fixed. He didn’t elaborate much on what kind of bugs has been fixed but we expect to see major improvements in performance for the 3G in addition to bug fixes in the iPhone’s proximity sensors and Bluetooth performance.

Most of the other improvements coming for the new iOS 4 will be for the iPhone 4. If you’ve got one, you’ll soon be able to take pictures in HDR mode where the iPhone 4 will automatically combine three seperate exposures into one HDR image. This is not really a feature we think, it’s more of a neat party trick for the iPhone 4.

With iOS 4.1 iPhone 4 users will be able to upload HD videos directly from their phone via WiFi. Again, not really anything groundbreaking here, in fact we’re surprised that it wasn’t available from the start.

The biggest thing we’re looking forward to with the iOS 4.1 is the Game Center which was showcased during iPhone 4 reveal event but hasn’t been available since. The Game Center feature will allow iPhone users to play multi-player games over the network with other iPhone users. It will automatically match you with players of the same level as you, allow you to compare scores with everyone from around the world and make discovering new games easier.

All this is fine and dandy but its not anything new. If you’ve been playing games on your iPhone you will have already know about OpenFeint, a social mobile gaming for the iPhone that offers roughly the same features as Apple’s Game Center. We will be interested to see how Apple’s execution of this feature will be like.

Other than that iOS 4.1 will also bring iTunes TV where users can rent TV shows for 99¢ a pop, or about RM3.10 per episode. There’s also iTunes Ping, a new feature on iTunes which will allow you to share music discoveries and your music preferences with your friends. Alas, as iTunes is not available in Malaysia, we’re probably not going to be able to use any of these features. Unless of course, your iTunes account is register to an address in the US — then it’s a whole different story altogether.

Whilst iOS 4.1 concentrates on features for the iPhone, Steve Jobs also gave a sneak peak of iOS 4.2 that will be available for the iPad at the event. iOS 4.2 will bring to the iPad wireless printing and wireless media streaming and apps management in folders.

iOS 4.2 will be available for download in November and although most of the features are developed for the iPad, some of it will be available for the iPhone and iPod. And you’ll note that the iOS 4.2 will not be available on all models.

So that’s pretty much a summary of features you can look forward to from the new iOS. Nothing really groundbreaking just some cool feature to have. We’ll let you know when iOS 4.1 is available for download.