New iPhone firmware now official - iPhone v1.1.3 with enhanced Google Maps Locate Me, SMS, Web Clips, homescreen customization and more
Posted by Will on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 4:04 pm under Announcements, Apple, Applications, Cingular/AT&T, Services, iPhone
Steve’s announcement of global iPhone sales wasn’t the only thing that caught our ear this morning. Remember that iPhone v1.1.3 firmware that was leaked a little while back? Well, it looks like Apple has gone official with the new firmware, complete with an enhanced Google Maps (Locate Me), support for multiple-contact SMS text messages, web-clips (more on that in a second), and chapter navigation and language options while viewing videos.
Keep reading to find out more about the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware features, and there’s a video to boot!
Google Maps “Locate Me”
We’ve been eager to get that faux-GPS “Locate Me” feature integrated into the iPhone’s Google Maps application, and it’s finally here! With the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware, you’ll see a new set of navigation options.
The lower right corner now bears a little “eye-ball” button that “curls” the map to reveal navigation and view options. Notice the new “Hybrid” view option!
The lower left corner of the Google Maps screen shows the new “Locate Me” button. Google has integrated WiFi hotspot location and cell-tower triangulation into the v1.1.3 version of the iPhone’s Google Maps application, and a simple press of the “Locate Me” button calculates your approximate position in faux-GPS style and displays it on the map.
Web-clips
Now, web-clips is all about saving whatever webpage you’re viewing in Mobile Safari and placing a shortcut to that web-page on your iPhone homescreen. The icon will display a thumbnail-image of whatever portion of the web-page you are zoomed-in on. If you aren’t zoomed-in to a particular portion of the page, the web-clip icon will display an image of the entire webpage.
Mobile Safari now sports a little “+” button that lets you save your current web-page view as a web-clip icon.
This is what a web-clips icon looks like:
Homescreen customization
As expected from the v1.1.3 leak, iPhone homescreen icons can now be customized. Holding down on a homescreen icon will cause the icons to start “wobbling,” indicating that they are ready to be moved around and swapped as dock-icons. The image doesn’t really show how this “wobbly” effect works, so hit the vid at the end of this post to get a better idea for how homescreen-customization works.
Notice the native support for homescreen-pagination (the homescreen now supports multiple pages of icons, indicated by the little white dots at the bottom of the homescreen - access subsequent pages by “sliding” the homescreen to the side)!
Multiple-contact SMS text message support
There’s just something extremely annoying about having to type out individual SMS text messages for each contact. The new iPhone v1.1.3 firmware features multiple-contact support. The SMS text message application now features a small “+” button next to the “Contacts” field, allowing you to add multiple contacts to a particular SMS text message.
iTunes movie rentals and movie chapter navigation
Now, along with all the other aforementioned features, iTunes has been updated to support iTunes movie rentals. It works just like you’d expect, and rented movies sync in the same manner as photos or videos. Additionally, the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware also allows chapter-based navigation of movies.
As you can see, the movie-navigation bar now shows a chapter-navigation button. Hit the button and you will be shown a list of chapters from which to choose - handy indeed.
On to the video. Apple has posted a new demo video showcasing all of the iPhone’s new v1.1.3 firmware features. Hit it up in case you don’t feel like reading through all the hard work you see above.
January 15th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
[...] willpark wrote an interesting post today on New iPhone firmware now official - iPhone v1.1.3 with enhanced …Here’s a quick excerptSteve’s announcement of global iPhone sales wasn’t the only thing that caught our ear this morning. Remember that iPhone v1.1.3 firmware that was leaked a little while back? Well, it looks like Apple has gone official with the new … [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
[...] up to par with every other text messaging application on market. The iPhone v1.1.3 firmware added multiple-contact support for SMS text messaging - allowing you to send the same text message to multiple recipients, without having to tap out a [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
[...] but when you send upwards of 20 SMS text messages per day (which are a joy to send on the iPhone - even better now), you can find yourself having to free up some space and delete text-message conversations quite [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
[...] but when you send upwards of 20 SMS text messages per day (which are a joy to send on the iPhone - even better now), you can find yourself having to free up some space and delete text-message conversations quite [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
[...] but when you send upwards of 20 SMS text messages per day (which are a joy to send on the iPhone - even better now), you can find yourself having to free up some space and delete text-message conversations quite [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
[...] but when you send upwards of 20 SMS text messages per day (which are a joy to send on the iPhone - even better now), you can find yourself having to free up some space and delete text-message conversations quite [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
[...] this is one nifty way to use the iPhone v1.1.3’s WebClips feature. Flickr frequenter, DoctaBu, has figured out a way to fill his homescreen with thumbnail-photos of [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
[...] today’s your day! It seems that Apple’s new iPhone v1.1.3 firmware is able to breathe new life into your bricked, non-functional iPhone. The firmware update [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
[...] this is one nifty way to use the iPhone v1.1.3’s WebClips feature. Flickr frequenter, DoctaBu, has figured out a way to fill his homescreen with thumbnail-photos of [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
[...] photo, Applications, Apple, Announcements, iphone 17Jan Now this is one nifty way to use the iPhone v1.1.3’s WebClips feature. Flickr frequenter, DoctaBu, has figured out a way to fill his homescreen with thumbnail-photos of [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
[...] seem to give a lick what we think about iPhone features - and as such, has only manged to give us multiple contact support for our SMS text message interface. Video recording, iChat, and MMS are still aspirations that are firmly rooted in the world of [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
[...] there’s yet another lesser-known feature of the new iPhone v1.1.3 firmware that we overlooked previously. We have already switched our Gmail account to IMAP, and configured [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
[...] there’s yet another lesser-known feature of the new iPhone v1.1.3 firmware that we overlooked previously. We have already switched our Gmail account to IMAP, and configured [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] that’s the game, folks! Just days after the third-party application-killing iPhone v1.1.3 firmware was released, the iPhone developing/hacking community has already put together a legit jailbreak solution for [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] that’s the game, folks! Just days after the third-party application-killing iPhone v1.1.3 firmware was released, the iPhone developing/hacking community has already put together a legit jailbreak solution for [...]
January 19th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
[...] that’s the game, folks! Just days after the third-party application-killing iPhone v1.1.3 firmware was released, the iPhone developing/hacking community has already put together a legit jailbreak solution for [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 3:04 am
[...] that’s the game, folks! Just days after the third-party application-killing iPhone v1.1.3 firmware was released, the iPhone developing/hacking community has already put together a legit jailbreak solution for [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
[...] iPhone v1.1.3 firmware not meeting your expectations? Is multiple-contact SMS text message support, Google Maps with [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
[...] iPhone v1.1.3 firmware not meeting your expectations? Is multiple-contact SMS text message support, Google Maps with [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 7:29 pm
[...] the recent update to 1.1.3 didn’t do it for you, you can revert your iPhone to version 1.1.1–as long as [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
[...] your area. If you’ll recall, Skyhook is the company that provides the iPhone’s v1.1.3 Google Maps’ My Location feature with WiFi hotspot location data, so contributing to their database should make the iPhone’s [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
[...] your area. If you’ll recall, Skyhook is the company that provides the iPhone’s v1.1.3 Google Maps’ My Location feature with WiFi hotspot location data, so contributing to their database should make the iPhone’s [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
[...] seems that the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware has been primped and prepped to play nice with officially, Apple-sanctioned third-party [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
[...] seems that the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware has been primped and prepped to play nice with officially, Apple-sanctioned third-party [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
[...] the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware reportedly ready to rock-and-roll with official third-party applications, it seems that the iPhone [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
[...] the iPhone v1.1.3 firmware reportedly ready to rock-and-roll with official third-party applications, it seems that the iPhone [...]
February 20th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[...] WiFi database is a great way to increase the accuracy of your iPhone v1.1.3's faux-GSP positional features. With WiFi range maxing out at something like 100 feet, using WiFi access points to pin-point your [...]
February 20th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[...] WiFi database is a great way to increase the accuracy of your iPhone v1.1.3's faux-GSP positional features. With WiFi range maxing out at something like 100 feet, using WiFi access points to pin-point your [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
[...] a smarter smartphone. With location-based services integrated into the iPhone's Google Maps My Location feature, the iPhone can theoretically keep tabs on its location at all times. So, Erica Sadun over [...]
February 26th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
[...] a smarter smartphone. With location-based services integrated into the iPhone's Google Maps My Location feature, the iPhone can theoretically keep tabs on its location at all times. So, Erica Sadun over [...]
March 24th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
[...] the iPhone's (v1.1.3 and up) Google Maps My Location feature, iPhone users can hone in on their approximate location. It's not GPS accurate, but it can [...]
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:48 pm
[...] that all Palm Centro users can expect to get Google Maps and the My Location feature that was made popular on the iPhone enabled on their Centro starting June 24. Palm is rolling out Google Maps with My Location to give [...]