iPhone 4.0 beta 4: a few more impressions
iPhone 4.0 beta 4 was released to developers yesterday, and several sites have already jumped on the newest firmware and have published many of its little secrets. Razorianfly and MacStories are good places to check and are frequently updated.
I’ve also been playing with b4 and am quite happy with it. So far, it feels even faster than b3. In non-scientific tests, the camera seems to load up faster (~two seconds) and even the video frame rate seems smoother. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of all of the cool little changes in this fourth beta of iPhone 4.0.
Default app changes…
Mail: now shows number of messages instead of two chevrons. Looks a heck of a lot cleaner for it. Unfortunately, messages with attachments still get stuck in the outbox until you go there and manually send them off. Ugh.
Calendar: this may be old news, but I swear there wasn’t an option to add notes to an event before 4.0b4.
Camera: Now loads in two seconds, resulting in fewer missed moments while you’re waiting for the damn digital shutter to open. Exposure adjustment also feels a bit faster now. However, load time and tap-to-focus video are, by far, the best camera features of 4.0 thus far.
Photos: Could be rotated as of b3, but didn’t notice until b4. No big deal here.
System changes…
Multi tasking dock: This one feels much snappier. Comes up the moment after you double-tap the home button.
Replace: The “replace” option for correcting selected text no longer shows its suggestions in strange, bolded black/blue. They’re now in white.
Kickass new wallpapers: it’s been mentioned everywhere, but the new wallpapers for 4.0 are actually quite cool. Much better than the ones that came with iPhone 1/2/3.0.
Settings changes…
- New dialogue for keyboards
- Wifi added to network section (why isn’t 3G toggle below airplane yet?!)
App Store app notes…
- Evernote works again! Maybe it’s b4, maybe it’s the newest update…but it works!
- Canabalt still doesn’t; still crashes on startup
- Mailroom is working again; had trouble in previous betas
If you’ve got any more b4 impressions to share, please do so in the comments below!
We Rule works again. Kinda. Music is a bit buggy. Uploading photos with apps like twitter works now, though twitterrific's tweet input panel stays over the top of the image picker… Win some, lose some, I guess.
still no wallpaper on Springboard for 3g + since there's no multitasking on the 3g (which should be optional for the user to decide..) 3g owners are also missing out on the orientation lock which i would really like to have as well. all in all, yes this update is better so far (camera zoom works now as well on 3g)
Can anyone testing v4 tell me if they've bothered to fix the TV Show ordering?
Before one of the v3 updates (I forget which), the TV shows used to be sorted as Series > Episode No. > Air Date (if no Ep. No. exists) > Episode Name.
Now, TV Shows get sorted by Episode No. > Episode Name > Season Number.
As you can imagine, TV Shows with multiple Seasons (Red Dwarf is one example) look a mess, with all Episode 1's listed alphabetically, followed by all Episodes 2's etc.
I've written numerous letters/emails to Apple and sent many 'feedback' forms. But still nothing.
Thomas – Do you have any good news for me?