LATEST TECH E-MAGAZINE: The New iPhone OS 4.0 Sneak peek event on April 8th, 2010

It's finally here and boy, it feels great! The iPhone OS 4.0 has been announced with an exhaustive list of new features. Here's the dope.

The new OS will be available starting this June for the common people but the developer preview is already available. From the information that is out, we can safely expect plenty of apps updated and ready for launch.

Major features include:

1. Multitasking

The big brains at Apple have finally realized the necessity for multitasking on the iPhone and have granted our wishes in this fourth version of the iPhone OS. All you have to now do is press the Home button twice and up pops a list of apps that are running in the background. You can then easily switch between them.

If it is a music player like Pandora, it'll continue to play music when you quit it. You'll even get playback control buttons on the lock screen for it. If it is a game, it'll pause till you get back to it. If it is something like Skype, then you can continue to receive calls even when the app is running in the background. Apps that require your position like Tom Tom will continue to get it and you'll see a notification icon on the top bar which lets you know that an app is taking your position.

A new local notification feature lets the apps give you push notifications without having to go through Apple's servers when they are running in the background.The task completion API will let apps that take some time to finish a task, like uploading a file, run in the background and continue with its task while you work in another app.

2. Folders

Now, you can sort your apps into folders. Yeah, I know it's not ground breaking stuff but a huge leap in terms of usability. No more clutter on the home screen; or maybe, just a clutter of folders. This means you can now have over 2,000 apps on one iPhone from the previous limitation of 180 apps at a time. These folders can auto-name themselves depending upon the apps they have within or you can rename them on your own. You can also drag them on to the dock for quick access.

You can also have custom wallpapers on the home screen. We've waited so long for it that it doesn't even appeal any more. But, it's here.

3. Enhanced Mail

iPhone OS 4.0 has a unified inbox for all your mails to be in one place. They have also added support for multiple Exchange accounts. Also, fast inbox switching lets you focus on one account at a time and finally, there is support for threaded conversations. You can also open attachments now in an app from the App Store.

4. iBooks

Yeah, you didn't think Apple would limit a new way of making money to just one device, did you?

Yes, the iBooks platform is now on the smaller iPad, I mean on the iPhone as well. The iBooks app has a similar look to the iPad version and you can access the same iBooks store from it. Also, Apple lets you buy your books once for any device and use it on any other device. So if you bought a book for your iPad then you can read it on the iPhone as well. We are not sure how much fun it would be to read books on that small screen though.

And yes, they are giving you free 'Winnie the Pooh' with it.

5. Enterprise Features

These include better data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution, support for multiple exchange accounts, exchange server 2010, new VPN options and the works.

6. Game Centre

Expect a social gaming network for the iPhone. Apple's going to roll out a centralized gaming service - a multiplayer network like PSN or Xbox Live by the end on the year. No comments on this one.

7. iAd Advertising

It looks like Apple's finally making use of Quattro, a mobile ad company it bought a few months ago. They have rolled out their own advertising platform; a turnkey ad plugin for app developers called iAd. The theory here is that instead of relying on links to external websites, which pull users out of apps whenever they tap on an ad, developers can use Apple's new tools to keep people in the app while still showing them advertising-like popover browser windows. You can watch videos, play games, and even buy apps from within these ads. This is in the iPhone OS 4 developer tools, but it's not explicitly a part of OS 4, so you won't see apps with iAds until later this year.

Apart from these major features (or 'tentpoles', as Apple likes to call them), there are some other smaller but significant features as well. These include: Support for Bluetooth keyboards, tap to focus for video recording, 5x digital zoom in camera, file and delete mail search results, spell check, sync IMAP notes, search SMS/MMS messages,web search suggestions,birthday calendar, ability to gift apps, and a lot more.

Drawbacks:

Now comes the party pooper. Only the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch (3rd Gen) devices will get all the new features. The iPhone 3G will NOT get multitasking. So for those who just bought the iPhone 3G, our heartfelt condolences. We will pray that Apple has a change of heart.