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.