Since the release of iPhone OS 4 Beta 4, all the developers around the world is looking for the changes it brought to iPhone from previous beta release. The major exciting news was AT&T’s new Internet Tethering setup wizard in settings.

Now, we’ve few more updates on the new features: Difference in default home screen, new wallpapers, Group Messaging, Photo app orientation, change in Phone call & Maps.

The default home screen of the iPhone use to have all Apps spread on first home screen and one app, that is Contacts use to be at second home screen. But in this latest beta 4 release, we found that all Utilities like Clock, Calculator, Compass & Voice Memos are put up in the folder called Utilities, which make the home screen looks different.

Some new default wallpapers has been added, which gives pleasant look to the home screen background. This new home screen background feature introduced in OS 4 makes you feel weird, because it’s completely hidden actually under the apps. It seems these wallpapers has been designed keeping this new look in mind.

Now, you can toggle off Group Messaging in Settings. This was earlier not there and by default you can send group messages on iPhone.

Photo App orientation, an ability to view images in landscape mode. I think this is exciting tweak. We usually shoot picture in landscape on iPhone and to view this shot picture we need to rotate back to portrait mode. This gonna help us a lot! Especially, for those who are found of shooting pictures on iPhone and view full camera roll at once.

There are some major performance improvements done to Phone and Maps app. There is no sluggishness in receiving phone call  while you’re working on your iPhone. Maps seems more snappier than ever.

Till now, these are the changes found in iPhone OS 4 Beta 4. Let us know if you found some new tweaks and features in this release, via comments.

If you’re an iPhone developer with access to a paid developer account with Apple, you can upgrade your iPhone to the latest beta 4 release from Apple’s official developer site.

This latest beta release seems to have got the long overdue feature, that is Internet Tethering. This feature was actually introduced in iPhone OS 3 last year but was never served by AT&T to their customers. According to experts, it’s because AT&T’s network is not capable of handling huge data traffic. Recently, AT&T announced that they’ve updated their network to reach out to many users. And so, the iPhone OS 4 beta 4 release has a sign of it.

Now, iPhone OS 4 Beta 4 allows users to setup a new tethering account either by calling or visiting their site. This clearly shows that, AT&T has taken an action to serve their customers.

As this is just a beta release, the look and feel of the new tethering set up wizard might vary with final release.

iPhone OS 4 Beta 3 seems to be quite more stable than that of Beta 2 of iPhone OS 4. It has brought some great tweaks which all the iPhone developers were looking forward to.

The most important feature which was lacking during the previous beta release of iPhone OS 4 was to quit more than one running App at a time. In order to quit the App we need to tap and hold the running App in App switcher, apps wiggle and has red minus symbol to quit the app. Until now, the app which you were tapping and holding to quit, only that app was showing red minus symbol. In this release, that has been resolved and now whatever app you press and hold to wiggle, all has red minus symbol to quit the app in App Switcher.

Now, the most important feature which every iPhone user were waiting for, since the release of 1st generation iPhone in 2007 – the ability to lock the screen orientation. When the iPhone was first unveiled in 2007, the accelerometer was very unique feature of it. Turn to landscape for landscape orientation and back to portrait for portrait orientation of screen; in Safari, Photos, etc. It was the beginning of iPhone. Now, it has completely changed the way you do your day-to-day work. People were finding problem with it. We can’t read New York Times easily when we are in our bed, it change its orientation too frequent. Now, in Beta 3 release of iPhone OS 4, lock orientation has been added which I believe is the major tweak that iPhone developers would love. Earlier iPhone application developers had to add their own screen lock orientation feature in their App.

There is one more feature spotted. The iPod controls widget in App Switcher. When we double tap the Home Screen key the App Switcher shows up. Now, if we just slide to extreme left we will find the iPod controls & a screen orientation lock key.

Overall, this Beta release of iPhone OS 4 is more stable than any other previous Beta releases of iPhone OS 4. We’re still fetching some more update info on it. If you’ve spotted some more updates on this just fill us up through the comment form.

As Steve Jobs showed off iPhone OS 4 on April 8th, 2010, one of the most talked about feature since then has been the iAd – Apple’s own advertising platform for iPhone, iPod and iPad devices. While we have covered some other iPhone OS 4.0 features earlier, this is time we give you an insight into what iAd could mean for an iPhone developer and user.

According to Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc., “People aren’t searching on the mobile device, like they do it on desktop”. He feels that if an user needs to know about a good restaurant, he would most likely load up the Yelp ! app rather than searching for it. On the same note, he mentioned that the current ad bars that are served to iPhone users in many free apps are really deterrent to a good user experience because they take the user off from the app that they were using, onto the app store, or open Safari browser or to some other app. As a solution to all these Apple has introduced iAd, their new Ad platform that is integrated into iPhone OS 4.

Apple has a different approach for their new Ad platform. They want it to be ‘interactive’ and ‘emotional’. Current ad platforms which we see on the web in our everyday life are just ‘emotional’ but not ‘interactive’. Apple wants it to be ‘interactive’. For example by clicking on an ad you can visit a shop virtually and purchase goods or watch the video of a product and play little promotional games and make purchases using your linked credit card with an iTunes account.

If all that is being discussed right now comes out well, it is sure to give AdMob and other mobile ad platforms a run for their money as most iPhone developers would likely prefer to use the iAd system.

iAd specifically looks very promising for iPhone developers as it opens up dual opportunity. Firstly developers can integrate iAd within their free apps to generate some additional income. Second, iPhone developers can create a service offering based on this by developing ads for other businesses who would like to use iAd.

Apple has released iPhone OS 4 in beta preview for iPhone Developers with paid account. But here is a little problem if you’re an iPhone 3G user. iPhone OS 4 works well on iPhone 3G and supports all the new features except for ‘Multitasking. It’s been said, “iPhone 3G has incompatible hardware to support Multitasking feature”.

If you’re an iPhone 3G user you will probably have to wait for some more time to experience multitasking. There’s a new iPhone coming up this summer. It would also mean iPhone developers who are creating apps based on this multitasking feature would serve only users with iPhone 3GS.

Your iPhone 3G will be getting the rest of the cool features offered by iPhone OS 4, like Wallpaper, Folders etc. Keep checking back this place to know more about what iPhone 3G & 3GS are getting in particular.

However, iPhone 3GS has full support for all the features that have been shown off at the preview event. You can refer to our earlier post to read more about all the features of iPhone OS 4 that Apple showed off in the preview event.

Yesterday Apple showed off its iPhone OS 4.0 at the Apple Campus in Cupertino which introduced tons of new features along with 1500 new APIs for the iPhone developers. Also, to our delight, we observed that they have covered all the 5 features we predicted for iPhone OS 4.0 in our earlier post.

This is probably one of biggest ever update iPhone has seen and the features introduced are sure to make the iPhone developers and users equally happy.

Finally, iPhone OS 4.0 brought the most needed ‘Multitasking’ (ability to run more than one App simultaneously) and some more unexpected new features to iPhone.

The new iPhone OS 4 has now introduced a bunch of features including

• iAd
• Enterprise Security
• Game Center
• iBooks
• In-App SMS
• Folders
• Spell Checking

We will be discussing about most of these features in details in further posts.

“Multitasking” was definitely the most awaited feature and the various multitasking APIs introduced by Apple would probably be the most important update for iPhone developers.

Developers always wanted these and now we are sure there are more ideas brewing to leverage these additional features in iPhone. Let us know how you feel these features are going to change iPhone development in the coming days.

Back in 2009 when iPhone OS 3.0 was released the most anticipated feature was multitasking. After a year, now that Apple has decided to preview iPhone OS 4 this Thursday, multitasking still remains as the feature with the highest demand. Of course there are other expectations from users and Apple also promises to throw in a bunch of other changes most of which are tweaks like User Expo, which is the Home Screen for iPhone.

Let’s try to predict some of the features for iPhone OS 4 and we can come back to check once we have the final words from Apple.

Multitasking: Of course, this is the most expected feature this time. Well, it was rumored last year that iPhone may get Multitasking with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 but when they previewed it, they showed off Push Notification and positioned it as an alternative to Multitasking. Though, this Push Notification services were first demonstrated with the release of iPhone OS 2.0 however got delayed by a year and finally released in iPhone OS 3.0. Today, when all the iPhone competitors have multitasking as their major feature it becomes all the more essential for iPhone to have multitasking. Let’s hope Apple finally gives us multitasking with OS 4.0 and just not come up with another weak alternative.

Better Notifications: iPhone OS 3.0 pushes you the notification right away, whether its an IM you received or to join a multi-player game online. But this notification system is really at its initial stage of development. These notifications come to the user’s iPhone even when the App is not running in background (as iPhone doesn’t allow yet). So, the parts of the notification system includes badges count, sound & window popup alert. If you’re working on any App on your iPhone and you received an Alert Window notification, you can respond to right there. If at all you quit that notification window you need to go to that app and run it & if you forget to do so then you miss it completely. Given the situation it would be extremely helpful for users if Apple improves this notification system, so that the users can view all the unanswered notifications on a separate screen or something similar. Well, let’s see what iPhone OS 4 has to give us on this.

Better Mail App: The current Mail App need each accounts to be configured separately. All accounts have their inbox separate from other accounts. So, the whole navigation flow to check your inbox is to tap, tap & tap to go from one inbox to other. It’s been expected that there will be a common inbox for all the mails account.

Better Syncing: Apple may introduce a whole new way for syncing Mails, Contacts, Calendar and Multimedia content. Today, iPhone does sync perfectly but there are some itches when it comes to third party syncing options. Like, Google Sync.

Some tweaks with Home Screen: If at all Apple gets multitasking to iPhone via iPhone OS 4.0, and then we should see some little tweaks with the Home Screen. There can be a better way to switch between Apps. It’s also expected that iPhone may have more number of Home Screens (if at all they plan to keep same Home Screen pattern), which currently can only hold around 180 apps on 11 screens.

Apart from this, there can be many minor tweaks for iPhone in 4.0 releases. Let’s wait for 8th April and see what iPhone OS 4.0 has to offer.

For all those who were eagerly waiting for some official news from Apple about iPhone OS 4.0, here it is finally.

Apple is holding an event on April 8th to preview iPhone OS 4. Yes, that’s true and official. Apple has announced to show off  “A sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS” at its headquarters in Cupertino.

Did anyone thought about this event to be held immediately after the iPad launch? Well, I was expecting at least a month delay, but it just happened!

There’s a lot of rumor in the air about iPhone OS 4 and what it would features we would get to experience. The biggest of them perhaps is about enabling users to run more than one application, which is possible only with very few applications at this point and yes, this is probably one feature that iPhone developers and users equally crave for.

iPhone OS 4 is expected to debut sometime in summer along with the new hardware. If at all you guys got to know anything prior to the preview event about the OS features share with us in comments.

WoW! iPhone OS 3.2 Gold Master Seed is now available for paying members of iPhone Developer’s Program (which now services iPad development too). This is pretty big news for the developers who are gearing up for iPad development. This OS version is the first operating system for iPad.

The email from Apple states this:

• All iPad apps submitted must be built using this release.
• All members of the iPhone Developer Program can submit their iPad apps to iTunes Connect for review and approval. If you did not submit your app during the initial review period, but upload it by March 31, it will reviewed but may not make the grand opening of the iPad App Store.
• Make sure you read the iPhone SDK GM Seed Release Notes before installing and developing with this release.

Here is a direct snap of the Apple mailer..

Multitasking has been one of the most requested features for the iPhone and it looks like it’s finally coming to the device. Apple is working to reveal the next Firmware Upgrade iPhone OS 4.0 which would include this feature, reports AppleInsider from trusted sources. The inability to multi-task has always topped the list of complaints on iPhone and now Apple is finally going to tackle the issue of running third party apps in background. This means iPhone user’s will now be able to do the “full on multi-tasking” .

Today’s iPhone’s 3.x.x software is a fully preemptive multitasking operating system but it artificially restricts apps (other than specific ones bundled with the system by Apple) from running in the background. Apple has always cribbed on poor battery life as the reason to not enable this feature. With the iPhone barely running for 6 hours under heavy use, according to Apple, running apps in the background would bring the battery life down even more.

Since Apple first introduced the ability to run third party applications on the Apple iPhone 2.0 controversies have been brewing with the multi-tasking issue, often reported as a technical flaw. The phone can run SMS, email, iPod, voice recorder and certain other bundled applications in background while another application is being used, but in case of a third party app, it is designed such that the app is shut down when the user tries to go to the home screen or accept an incoming call .

Jailbreaking your iphone was a common way to launch and run multiple apps at the same time, however by jail breaking the iPhone Security Model is compromised. This also opens doors to malware and piracy, which were handled previously by the default security system. With this multi tasking feature being a part of iPhone OS 4.0, it would no longer be required to jailbreak your iPhone for multi tasking.