As I am signed up for the apple iPhone developer thingy, I got the chance to test drive the new yet to come OS 3.0. here is what I think about it:
The good:
The best thing about the new OS 3.0 is, it does some of the things that 2.2 does after jail breaking. to be honest, the copy/paste is done beautifully. It is giving me A2DP and the ipod application has some nice controls for audio books (which is my main concern in regards to ipod app). I could not make the tethering work (maybe because my phone is an unlocked Telstra phone, connected to 3, but I doubt it) regardless of what I did. I spent a whole 4 hours on it, and decided to trust other people: it works (apparently).
I really like the phone-wide search and how it’s implemented, also I really liked the simple fact that installing a new app doesn’t result in putting the app in the first page (even if there is empty slots in there). new installed apps go to second page forward, which I really appreciate.
I also liked the fact that it now syncs my notes with my outlook.
There are other things that I’m interested to see how they will change the future of appstore, like the “turn by turn direction” being “allowed” which I hope will result in having tomtom on iPhone soon.
VOIP is supposed to be allowed.
MMS is going to work (I don’t care)
The bad:
A2DP is totally flaky (let’s hope it’s because it’s a beta version), sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. during the 3 days I had OS 3.0 on my phone, I couldn’t find out what sequence of events makes it not work, but one thing was certain, my car stereo (Sony something something with Bluetooth) was never automatically detected as a music player, just as a phone handset. I had to remind the phone every morning to recognise that the car stereo system could play music. I had the very same problem with my windows mobile 6 HTC Universal as well (and never with my cheap Nokia 6120). Also there was no way to tell iPhone “in the presence of such and such Bluetooth device, play music on IT instead of speaker”. I had to tell the ipod app to redirect music to my Bluetooth device.
Regarding to search, having only 3 days worth of emails from my exchange server, I don’t think the phone-wide search is going to change my life.
The ugly:
There is A2DP, hooray, but where is my bloody AVRCP? (for those who don’t remember what AVRCP stands for: “Audio/Video Remote Control Profile”). I have to take my phone out of my pocket, slide the slider, press pause, before I can talk to someone in the street. with the wired headset, at least, I had the button to press.
There is syncing the notes, but not over the air! so, I have my emails, contacts and calendar syncing over the air, but my notes should wait for syncing with my PC!
Where is my task list sync? I had to pay a total of $27 for two sets of software (one of them didn’t work at all, despite the shiny screenshots they used to see the software to me on appstore), to have my tasks from my exchange server on my iPhone (none of them work on 3.0 by the way).
VOIP is not a first class citizen, meaning, you are on a voip call, let’s say in my case, using pennytel, and there is an incoming call on my “real” phone. guess what will happen? you are right: my VOIP call will terminate (because it’s not a real phone call) and my phone will ring.
So, in bitter reality, my OS 3.0 will make my beloved iPhone operate almost as good as my “free on a $20 plan” Nokia 6120, plus the bloody sexy form factor and bloody addictive and useful touch screen. Honestly, I’m still carrying my 6120 around and if Nokia would come with a multi touch, glass surface touch screen, I would switch to S60 anytime.