iPhone OS 4.0 is on its way very shortly. Apple has officially announced that on Thursday April 8th 2010 they will be holding a press conference in Cupertino to highlight the new features and specifications of the new firmware. I may end up doing a video on this, but considering the conference is tomorrow, I would much rather make a detailed post about my predictions and thoughts on what we might be seeing in iPhone OS 4.0.
Some features I think we might be seeing rolled out on Thursday are a new home screen design, multitasking, voice to text services and a unified inbox like on the mail app in Mac OS X – there are other speculations like support for video conferencing and integrated ad support as well.
The New iPhone Home Screen has been speculated about for quite some time now. A lot of users void Apples TOS and preform a jailbreak on their device because they are sick of the default Apple home screen that hasn’t seen an update since iPhone OS 1.0. Now that the iPad has been released, you will notice Apple has now let people add a custom picture background to their device(s), so I for sure think that a new home screen update is on the horizon.
Multitasking is something that has been talked about for a while on the iPhone OS and all mobile firmwares. We first saw it work very nicely when the Palm Pre was released last June. However it will be a tricky task trying to get it on the iPhone. 90% of all computer crashes are a result of the user being oblivious to the fact that there are 10 programs or services running and their computer can’t handle it. Lets face it, the iPhone and the iPod touch are nice devices, but they can’t handle much without lagging or crashing. If this did happen, I would hope Apple integrates a expose like feature activated by certain hand gestures.
Voice to text is something that a lot of mobile phones support these days. When the iPhone 3GS came out we were introduced to voice commands on the phone. Given the recent laws that have been passed in Canada and in the United States about using your cellphone when driving, I can see Apple including a voice to text offer for email and SMS messaging. I also think they might include a text to voice feature that reads words on the screen.
Unified inbox is desperately needed on the iPhone. Anyone that currently has an iPod touch, iPad or iPhone and uses the mail app for multiple emails is familiar with the HUGE pain in the ass that occurs because there isn’t one inbox where all your emails go to, they are all separate. So for instance on my phone, I have 4 emails set up. 1 is a Gmail account and the others are @lukedimarco.com accounts. If I am in my Gmail inbox checking email and I get a message from my @Lukedimarco.com account, I have to sign out of the Gmail and click my way back through to the inbox I want. So much time would be saved if there was one unified inbox for everything to come through.
These are just some of the features I assume we will be seeing for sure tomorrow, and yes, they are just predictions. What are you hoping for in the new iPhone OS or in the new iPhone in June? Let me know in the comments below!
