iPhone 2.2 Firmware – New Features

Apple has already started seeding 2.2 Beta firmware to certain developers. Apple have yet to give a release date for the firmware, however developers have been giving us the lowdown on a few new features hidden within the firmware. Here are some as follows:

Japanese Emoji Icons

These Emoji icons are very popular amongst the Japanese SMS’ers. Apple has now included these in the new Firmware and includes around 460 of these emoticons.

Ability to disable the Auto-Correction Feature

Users will now be able to turn the Keyboard’s Auto-Correction feature off. This has been requested by many iPhone users as being annoying and correcting words they’d like to use (as of yet you can’t add words to the Keyboards dictionary).

Google Street View

It has also said that Google Street View will be supported with the iPhone’s Google Maps. This was a feature demoed at the conference over the new Google Android phone and will be coming to the iPhone.

Google Android Software Launch

Google Android – An open source OS for mobile phones.

Google has launched it’s new open source operating system for mobile phones. It’s first phone to use this OS? T-Mobile HTC. (Named G1). This phone will be going on sale in October!

The OS is open for any developers to create applications for and the OS itself can be tailored for individual phones, networks and potentially user. Thirty four companies, including Google, have formed an alliance to promote Android and to develop features and handsets to take advantage of the platform. These companies include handset manufacturers such as LG HTC, Motorola and Samsung, chip firms such as Qualcomm and mobile networks like T-Mobile and China Mobile.

Google have made a Market for downloading applications, just like Apple’s App Store for the iPhone. However, unlike Apple, Google’s market will not require approval for applications.