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Got an iPhone 4 yet? Hold it carefully by the glass, avoiding the new steel antenna band that runs around the edges. Note the number of signal-strength bars you have. Now, touch the steel band with your other hand, preferably the left and bottom sides together. You will almost certainly see your signal disappear, or drop by three or four bars.

The problem is being so widely reported that Gizmodo has managed to add 16 videos of the phenomenon, along with many, many user reports. The problem is also repeatable, making it look like a lot more than simple coincidence.

Wired.com readers are also reporting the problem: Out of more than 40 respondents, about 35 are reporting a similar pattern of problems: If you hold the iPhone 4 in your left hand, or touch the lower-left corner of the outside steel band, the signal indicator starts losing bars within a few seconds. Many respondents indicated that this led to dropped calls, and one, “Edward,” did download speed tests that showed a dramatic drop in throughput when holding the iPhone 4 in his hand, from 2Mbps to a measly 12Kbps.

Two respondents have said that they’ve observed the same diminishing-signal problem with previous models of the iPhone.

Two people have reported that keeping the iPhone 4 in its protective “bumper” case eliminates the problem, probably because it is an electrical insulator and prevents the antenna band from contacting the conductive surface of the skin.

If you have ever touched a bare-metal loop antenna for a TV, you’ll know that the water-filled human body has an effect on the reception, although in that case it usually improves the picture. In this case, it has the opposite effect. It’s possible that the antenna band is not a continuous loop, and that touching it in the lower-left corner short-circuits the loop somehow.

This, it turns out, is not entirely unexpected. Just two weeks ago, Jens Nielsen of Danish blog ComON quoted Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen of the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University:

[H]uman tissues will in any case have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost. This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals. [Translation by Google]

Simply holding the new iPhone in the hand is enough to kill the signal. Even Walt Mossberg, in his review of the iPhone 4, had an eerily similar-sounding experience:

[O]n at least six occasions during my tests, the new iPhone was either reporting “no service” or searching for a network while the old one, held in my other hand, was showing at least a couple of bars. Neither Apple nor AT&T could explain this. [Emphasis added.]

Is it possible that a problem like this would make it into the wild? You’d think that it would have been discovered in testing. On the other hand, maybe this is what caused Steve Jobs’ connection woes at the WWDC keynote where he demoed the new handset?

One possible answer is in the way the new antenna works. Instead of just picking the strongest signal, the iPhone 4 picks the highest quality signal, the frequency with the least amount of interference. In the current iPhone firmware, this is not yet reflected in the signal display, which still indicates actual strength. Apple has said that this is known bug that it plans to fix. If true, then you shouldn’t actually drop a call, even when your apparent signal-bars drop to zero.

Or perhaps it is all a sinister plot from Apple to sell more of those insulating rubber Bumper cases?

If you have an iPhone 4, please test this out for us, and post your experience in the comments. Specifically, check to see if a decrease in displayed bars corresponds with an actual drop in call quality.

Jeremy Stomberg had not planned to be among the thousands thronging local retail stores for the new iPhone 4, released Thursday. Then, the St. Paul man found he had run his older iPhone through the wash.

It was "bricked," he said.

So early Thursday morning, he became part of the iPhone 4 mob scene at Rosedale Center in a tableau repeated across the country as Apple fans lined up for the fourth-generation glass-and-stainless-steel smartphone.

The iPhone 4 wasn't the only smartphone getting attention Thursday.

Motorola and Verizon were hyping the Droid X, the latest handset running Google's Android operating system and sporting a vast touchscreen that physically dwarfs that of the iPhone. Motorola and Verizon had a hot seller in the original Droid and hope to reprise that feat when the Droid X is released in mid-July.

The iPhone, though, is already a hit.

Apple took 600,000 pre-orders for the handset on June 15 alone. Placing orders was a nightmare for many customers earlier this month as online systems run by iPhone carrier AT&T and others were overwhelmed and suffered highly publicized malfunctions.

The process of acquiring and activating an iPhone proved less painful Thursday, at least for those who lined up early enough. The first overnight campers appeared at Apple's Uptown store in Minneapolis by 3 p.m. Wednesday and by 8 p.m. or so at Rosedale Center (where security then ejected the squatters only to allow them back a bit later).
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By the time Stomberg arrived at Rosedale, hundreds of people were in line, and he gave up on the first attempt. Returning at about 1 p.m., he was relieved to find a shorter line, and he toughed it out until he had his 16-gigabyte black handset.

He might have been luckier than he knew. By late Thursday afternoon, Apple's five metro-area stores were starting to warn away would-be buyers as supplies dwindled.

Other local electronics stores, such as Best Buy and RadioShack, had even slimmer pickings. Some of these had warned in advance that iPhone buyers who hadn't pre-ordered might be out of luck on Thursday.

Indeed, Brian Hackerson, a 3M software manager, reported "a swing and a miss" at AT&T, Best Buy and Walmart stores when trying to snag an iPhone 4.

Likewise, blogger and Web entrepreneur Aaron Landry couldn't get an iPhone at a St. Paul RadioShack even though he said he'd earlier been promised one.

"They do not have any," he said Thursday in an oft-repeated shopper's lament.

Jason Barnett of St. Paul did score four iPhones at a local AT&T store, but that is because he ordered the units earlier this month. Three of the phones are destined for the UpTake, his video-journalism organization. He has big plans for the FaceTime video-conferencing feature, which he expects to use for interviews and live news coverage.

FaceTime appeared to work as advertised in an iPhone-to-iPhone conversation with a Pioneer Press reporter.

But Barnett, like certain other iPhone 4 buyers, seems to be experiencing other tech difficulties. Users across the country are reporting problems ranging from reception degradation to a telltale screen discoloration.

When Barnett holds his iPhone 4 with the side edges of the phone covered, he sees on-screen bars corresponding to AT&T cellular reception go down. When he uncovers the phone, the bars go up again.

Likewise, Minneapolis communications consultant Jon Austin sees significant reception decay when holding his iPhone 4 the same way. Quality of audio on his calls is affected.

Austin also is seeing the yellow-splotch phenomenon being reported by numerous tech blogs and normal users. On the lower-right corner of his screen, when viewed with something white displayed, the yellow discoloration is clearly visible, he said.

However, of the new iPhone, he says, "So far, I like it."

The iPhone 4 offers an improved screen and a stylish, thin design.


Remember the first time you laid eyes on a high-definition TV?

Encountering the iPhone 4 feels much the same way. It's a familiar device, but everything feels brighter and sleeker, more refined and robust.

Like a boxy standard-definition TV, the previous iPhone 3GS performs well, but you immediately feel like you've taken a major leap forward with the iPhone 4.

Apple's iPhone revolutionized the smartphone market in 2007, but the latest two updates, the 3G and 3GS, have felt more like incremental improvements that added GPS, more speed and better components.

The iPhone 4 ($199 for a 16-GB model and $299 for a 32-GB version) catapults the platform forward, giving you a much improved screen, a new stylish and thin design, a considerably faster processor and some great additions such as a forward-facing camera for video chatting.

Although there are some questions about the cellular reception, Apple's latest still propels the iPhone 4 ahead of a pack of competing devices powered by Google's Android operating system.

Let's start with the screen. Apple has quadrupled the number of pixels it packs into what's called the retina display, named because it's so clear it's almost impossible to detect the pixels with the naked eye.

This improvement spans much of the iPhone experience, making everything sharper, more vivid and more readable. It's like lifting a thin gauze that previously draped the screen.

The design also catches the eye and appeals to your sense of touch. The phone is 24 percent thinner than the 3GS and has a flat glass back that is reportedly 30 times stronger than plastic.

When held in your hand, the combination of the stainless steel band and black glass (in my unit) create what looks and feels like something akin to a luxury time piece. It's solid, with the same heft of the previous model but in a very tight and elegant package.

Instant photo snaps

But rest assured, the iPhone 4 is not all about looks. The phone sports a muscular A4 processor, the same one found in the iPad, though apparently run at a lower speed. The phone performs markedly faster, with applications and Web pages loading with impressive alacrity. In the camera app, for example, pictures snap instantaneously compared with the pokey camera on the 3GS.

Speaking of the camera, it received a welcome boost to 5 megapixels, enabling the iPhone 4 to record in 720p high-definition. Apple has also improved the light sensor to boost the quality of pictures. Combined, the improvements make for significantly clearer shots with colors that better recreate their original subjects.

The iPhone 4 also has a second camera - a lower resolution VGA unit that faces the user. Apple has packaged a video chat client into the phone app called FaceTime that allows iPhone 4 users to talk over Wi-Fi.

The service can suffer slowdowns and drop out when accessing a weak Wi-Fi signal. But when you're in good wireless range, the system works incredibly well and makes mobile video chatting simple. You can make a phone call to another iPhone 4 user and switch midcall to FaceTime with one button press. Video chats can be conducted in both portrait and landscape mode, and users can also toggle to the forward-facing camera to show what's in front of them.

Larger battery

Another major hardware improvement is the battery, which is significantly larger than its predecessor and boasts two more hours of talk time. In my tests, the battery held up well under intense use. That will be a big boon for power users.

On the software end, the iPhone's operating system has kept pace with the hardware improvements. Apple recently updated the iPhone software to iOS 4, which includes some key upgrades such as multitasking.

In some cases, multitasking is more like instant switching between apps that resume quickly where they left off. But in certain apps like the Internet radio service Pandora, users can continue to play music in the background while undertaking other tasks.

Other improvements include a new folder feature that lets you combine apps into one folder as well as an updated e-mail application, which includes a universal inbox, threaded conversations and faster switching between accounts.

Apple also continues to tout its App Store, which now boasts 225,000 apps, including a new iMovie app that allows users to edit video right on their iPhone 4.

Reception problem?

One area of concern was a possible bug that seems to degrade the wireless reception on the iPhone. When the iPhone is cradled in the palm of your hand, the cellular signal at times seems to experience interference, apparently because the antenna is built in the stainless steel outer band.

Occasionally, I saw my signal drop from five bars to one bar, though it was usually not this pronounced. I wasn't able to reproduce the issue consistently, and I've heard from iPhone users who are divided on whether they're seeing the same problem.

The call quality in general has improved with iPhone 4. I didn't get any drops during some limited calls, and people I called noted my voice sounded fuller and clearer with less ambient noise making it through. That's due to a second microphone installed to cancel out extra noise.

AT&T's network is a mixed blessing for the iPhone 4, offering the fastest download speeds, but also some unreliability at times. The iPhone 4 tries to improve the experience on the AT&T network, but with so many data-hungry iPhone users packed into this region, there will still probably be more gripes ahead.

Altogether, the iPhone 4 feels like a tour de force performance by a company hitting on all cylinders.

iPhone 4 Issue with Reception, Glass, Screen, Camera and Reverse Volume Buttons: iPhone 4 from Apple is absolutely amazing gadget and with its sleek, shiny and glossy look makes me greedy. But when i look at the facts that iPhone 4 is facing the looks do not matter as the iPhone 4 is completely messed with lots of issues. Initially the problem started raising with the reception where the users when held the iPhone 4 at different positions the network went missing.

Later when the iPhone 4 were delivered to the users, some of the users found a yellow spot on the screen which was really weird and spoiled the real beauty of iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 was also reported with the delicate glass which got messed when dropped by some users.

Glad that there is a fix for the iPhone 4 glass now but why will anyone shell out more money once the money is spent at the precious iPhone 4 ? The other problem faced by the iPhone 4 is that the volume buttons have been reversed as the ” – ” increased the volume and the ” + ” button decreased the volume.

All these problems and issues from iPhone 4 show that the iPhone 4 came out with less preparation. We like the iPhone 4 from Apple but facts shall not be ignored. Stay tuned for more updates on iPhone 4 problems and hardware issues.

Apple iPhone 4G ProblemsThe iPhone 4G problems arise before the launching to the market, it is the latest iPhone discovered by Apple and it is launched today. Unfortunately, it has some problems which need to be fixed.

The reports said that on En gadget, the problem is to do with part of the antenna around the black bar on the bottom left of the iPhone. If your hand bridges that gap between the2 antennas then the signal dies. According to CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs’ all we should do is “don’t hold it on that way” or actually you can buy a case that will stop the loss of signal.

The list of problems in Apple iPhone 4G:

* Reception Issues – When holding the iPhone 4 in a definite position, it seems akin to the signal goes down. Several claim it’s a hardware matter, whereas others think it’s a software problem.

Solution-Steve Jobs said that “don’t hold it on that way” or actually you can buy a case that will stop the loss of signal. The company is now counsel its future customers who would be choose for the phone, not to hold the phone from the lower left corner, particularly in a way that covers the strips on both sides of the iPhone that cover the metal band.

* Activation – various iPhone users report getting an error message on iTunes when trying to trigger iPhone 4. This can be fixed by moreover restarting iTunes or restarting computer.

* OS4 Privacy issues - several employee named ‘Alpha’ claims that Apple sends OTA updates to check if iPhone users are using a carrier except AT&T in the U.S., if that’s the case after that the phone is locked until the customer updates OTA and uses AT&T.

Location, location, location

You likely don’t need me to tell you that location-based services have exploded since the release of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3. Now that there are a million services (and apps to go with them) that might poll your location, Apple has responded by adding in a control panel where you can divvy up location permissions on an app-by-app basis on a single screen:

This can be found by going to Settings > General > Location Services, where you can either turn it all off or turn services off individually. On top of that, the screen also shows you which apps have polled your location in the last 24 hours, so you always know what’s been keeping tabs on you. Though all apps need your permission to grab your location, all of this info in one screen is really nice to have—it allows you to get a quick look at your settings, and it keeps you aware of which apps have been pulling that sensitive information. (In addition to this, Apple has added a little pointer to the top menubar to notify you when you’re using an app that is currently pulling your location info.)

Expanded enterprise support

I wasn’t able to test any of these features (as I don’t have accounts that I would test them with), but it’s certainly worth noting that iOS 4 comes with a greatly expanded list of enterprise features aimed at business users:

• You can now encrypt your e-mail or attachments with your iPhone PIN code. The API for this is also available to developers so that you will be able to encrypt data inside of third-party apps as well.
• Apple now offers a mobile device management solution so that someone deploying lots of iPhones within a company can manage them.
• Wireless app distribution: no longer do you have to deploy apps across your company’s iPhones with a physical connection. You can distribute apps to anywhere in the world from your own servers.
• As we mentioned in the Mail section, you can now have multiple Exchange accounts on a single phone.
• There’s now support for Exchange Server 2010.
• There’s now also support for SSL VPN.

Developers, developers, developers!

by Clint Ecker

Apple’s big steps on the user-facing side of iOS are matched by, if not eclipsed by, the magnitude of new and newly opened APIs for developers.

Support for multi-tasking is one of the biggest additions, and Apple makes it very easy to add differing levels of backgrounding to applications. What most people will notice is what Apple is calling Fast App Switching. Essentially, the entire app is frozen in place nearly perfectly. Music will resume playing at the exact point it was playing when you switched away; it is literally as if someone hit the pause button on the application. All applications will gain support for this feature simply by linking and compiling their application against the iOS 4 SDK. Applications can proceed from there to take advantage of new events sent to applications which are about to be backgrounded or made inactive. Similarly, developers can perform special functions when their apps are brought back to life.

Going beyond Fast App Switching, Apple has blessed three classes of applications with preferential treatment when it comes to multi-tasking. These are VoIP, audio, and location-based applications.

iOS 4 treats each of these classes of applications slightly differently. VoIP applications will be background-launched on system boot so they are always available, audio applications will stay backgrounded as long as they play music, and Apple has provided several new methodologies for getting at location data while location-based applications are in different states.

It seems that Apple will be trying out these three types of “true” backgrounding to see how they work in practice against a wide swath of applications. The company’s attention is focused on background processes that simply cannot be mimicked by using push alerts and so forth. Twitter, social networking, IM, and gaming clients can simulate very nearly any kind of real-time update by just using push notifications. Alarm-style applications now have scheduled local notifications. These are classes of applications that Apple very likely believes it has “solved” the backgrounding issue for.

Many users might insist that they need Application X to be constantly checking for new articles in the background, but do they really? When you resume the app, it’s going to check in and grab anything new. Some people will complain that they might be resuming the app in a subway tunnel, but is it really necessary for Apple to focus its efforts on such a niché?

Maybe it is, and Apple will be undoubtedly looking for the next class of application it might support in these ways. However, that next tier is possibly an extremely broad group of applications—those which would like to perform arbitrary network access while backgrounded. Furthermore, it seems likely that the people demanding these features are mostly power-users, a group that Apple is comfortable with not placating when the company’s energy is best diverted elsewhere.

People have begun to notice how Apple leverages its “incredible patience,” manifest in the time it took to survey the landscape and roll out an extremely limited form of multi-tasking. We believe Apple will continue this practice of patience to see if even more extended forms of backgrounding are necessary.

Game Center and GameKit

by Clint Ecker

Something had to be done about the lack of a centralized social gaming center on iOS. There have been whole companies whose sole purpose has been to build such systems—ngmoco’s Plus+, Chillingo’s Crystal, OpenFeint X, and more—but it seems like every app uses a different, incompatible system. Apple clearly believes this is something it needs to provide in a centralized way that any developer can integrate. Developers will interface with new GameKit classes that will allow for defining in-application achievements, access to custom leaderboards, matching groups of users together based on any number of criteria, and even in-application voice chat. That’s right, the technology now exists to have your sexuality called into question by a 13 year old kid while playing a head-to-head game of Angry Birds… over the Internet.

Game Center, the application, will be backed by Apple’s servers and will maintain the connections between Game Center accounts with Apple IDs. People will have Game Center handles and maintain Game Center friends lists. You can find a friend and see what game they’re currently playing, challenge them to one of your favorite games, and more.

Overall, there’s simply too much developery goodness to go into, and much of what I could write would result in a stern email from Apple PR, but a short list of exciting things we can all look forward to are:

• iAd integration
• Quicklook previews
• Calendar and Photo Gallery integration
• In-application SMS composition and delivery
• In-application support for Captive Wireless Networks—those which need authentication before you can begin using them, like at airports or coffee shops.
• MapKit improvements: draggable annotations and custom shape and path overlays. Accelerate libraries for doing linear algebra, DSP, matrice, and vector operations. More or less a port of vecLib from the desktop.
• CoreLocation update will allow for coarser grained monitoring of position, e.g. when you enter regions or make significant location changes.
• CoreMotion is now how developers will deal with the accelerometer and get 3D space data from the new Gyroscope in the iPhone 4.
• CoreTelephony will allow applications to respond to phone call events (knowing when you are dialing or began a call)
• NSRegularExpression provides developers with a built-in and supported class to extract data from strings.

Finally, in a move that will provide many applications with a nice performance boost, the LLVM compiler is now included as an optional compiler for use in iPhone development.

Conclusion

Despite its flaws, the iOS 4 update is certainly a solid one with enough new features to make it worth upgrading for pretty much everyone. Trying to live without even the most basic aspects of multitasking (notably state-saving) can be frustrating once you have used it for a while—during the time I wrote this, I continually switched back and forth between an iOS 4 phone and an iPhone OS 3.x phone, so I know from experience.

The most exciting part about iOS 4 is really what third-party developers will do with the 1,500 new APIs. After all, the iPhone experience has become one that is almost defined by its apps, and Apple has opened up a new world of possibilities with its latest API offerings. As we go into the second half of 2010, we’re sure to see plenty of new apps that do creative things with Game Center, multitasking capabilities, the camera, and more.

So, unless you have a specific reason to hold back—jailbreakers, we’re looking at you—or you’re a poor, abandoned original iPhone owner, we can’t see why you wouldn’t want to upgrade your iPhone or iPod touch. We may not have covered every single detail of the new OS in this writeup, but our experience says it’s well worth the upgrade.

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Apple says the update delivers more than 100 features aimed at end users, as well as 1500 APIs for mobile app makers. Leading the parade of changes in iOS 4 is multitasking support, which will allow users to quickly switch between apps and let apps have limited background functionliaty. Other changes include folders for organizing apps, new Mail features, enhancements to the Photos app, and the ability to change the background wallpaper on your home screen.
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iOS 4 is available for download by iPhone 3GS and 3G users, as well as by second- and third-generation iPod touch users. The new OS will also be included with the iPhone 4, which hits retail shelves on Thursday. Some features of the OS won’t be available on older devices—the iPhone 3G and second-generation touch don’t support multitasking, for example. The original iPhone, first released three years ago, won’t support iOS 4 at all. As for iPad users, they won’t be able to upgrade to the new OS until later this fall; Apple hasn’t set a firm date for iPad compatibility.

The iOS 4 update can be downloaded from iTunes. The size of the update will vary depending on what kind of device you use—one Macworld contributor reported that the update for his iPhone 3GS was 378MB, while another editor’s iPhone 3G update was 292MB. The update requires iTunes 9.2, which Apple released last week.

The upgrade process seemed to be going smoothly Monday morning, but iPhone users will be watching closely to see if that continues throughout the day, with last week’s iPhone 4 pre-order problems fresh on their minds. Last Tuesday, a flood of customers placing orders for the new iPhone caused AT&T’s online preorder system to collapse. While reporting that it had taken 600,000 orders for the iPhone 4, Apple also acknowledged that many customers were turned away or “abandoned the process in frustration;” the company has apologized to users affected by the problems.

Past major mobile OS releases have had their own share of difficulties. In 2008, Apple released the iPhone 2 update and iPhone 3G on the same day; the crush of customers simultaneously downloading the new OS and trying to activate phones led to delays and frustration. Last year, the company released the iPhone 3.0 update a few days before the iPhone 3GS’s release, eliminating many of the delays from the year before. Apple is obviously looking to repeat that relatively smooth launch in 2010, by rolling out iOS 4 two days before the latest iPhone arrives.

Apple first took the wraps off the operating system update—then called iPhone OS 4.0—at an April press briefing. That event first outlined the major changes to the mobile OS, including multitasking, folders, and updates to Mail, among other changes. Apple revisited the OS update during Steve Jobs’s keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month; it was there that the company revealed the name change to iOS along with a few more features, most of which are coupled with the upcoming iPhone 4 release.

By far the most eagerly anticipated change in the new OS is the newly added support for multitasking. Other mobile platforms—notably Google’s Android OS—feature multitasking, so its absence from iOS-powered devices has stood out. Apple maintains that multitasking can drain battery life and that it held off implementing the feature in a more battery-friendly way.

The company’s approach to multitasking, introduced with iOS 4, involves a mixture of app-switching features and background processes managed by the operating system. A double-press of the phone’s Home button brings up a Dock with recently used apps; users can switch between them without having to return to the Home screen. The app users leave behind is kept in what Apple calls “a quiescent state in the background”—essentially frozen until users return to where they left off. With iOS 4, Apple also is giving developers several tools that allow them to alter their apps to perform some tasks in the background.

Another addition in iOS 4 is folders, which Apple has added to help users manage the growing number of apps on their mobile devices. Users can create a folder to group together similar app—games, for example, or news and media applications. The addition folders means that iPhone and iPod touch users can have as many as 2000 apps on their phone, as opposed to 180 apps under the previous operating system.

The Mail application gets an overhaul in iOS 4, with a unified inbox leading the changes. That feature will let users see all incoming messages from multiple account. Threaded messages are also supported in iOS 4 for better tracking of replies and follow-ups. Tapping files attached to e-mails in the new OS allows them to be opened in separate applications, including third-party offerings.

Some features in iOS 4 are tailored to the next iPhone, most notably support for FaceTime video chats. Phone calls made between iPhone 4 users will feature a button that lets them talk to face with face over Wi-Fi with the assistance of that phone’s front-facing camera. The new OS will also support Apple’s iMovie for iPhone app, a $5 video-editing app that will only run on the iPhone 4.

Other iOS 4 features of note include support for an iPhone version of the iBooks e-reader app; a built-in spell-checker for Mail, Notes, and other apps; custom playlist creation; Bluetooth keyboard support; and the ability to change the default search engine in the Safari Web browser from Google to Microsoft’s Bing. (Users can already choose between Google and Yahoo.) The Camera app in the iPhone adds support for 5x digital zoom and, for video-capable phones, tap-to-focus video, while the Photos app gains support for the face-recognition and geolocation features familiar to iPhoto users on the desktop.

As with previous updates, iOS 4 will be a free download for owners of those iPhones that support it. However, in a first, it will also be free for iPod touch owners, thanks to changes in accounting rules.

Wireless syncing of Notes

Remember back when we couldn’t sync Notes from our iPhones to our computers at all? Now, not only do notes sync into Mail on the Mac (which I still consider to be a strange place), but they can also sync wirelessly. The Notes app on iOS 4 now associates itself with different e-mail accounts, and it can sync to your desktop over-the-air via IMAP:

Avoid crossing that monthly data cap

Many AT&T users have either downgraded their data plans or signed up with new ones that either have a 2GB or 200MB monthly cap, and some carriers in other countries have similar data consumption limitations. Because you may not want to unnecessarily use up some of that valuable data, iOS 4 now has a setting (accessed via Settings > General > Network) so you can turn off cellular data altogether if you so choose:

iBooks on iPhone/iPod touch

Following the successful launch of Apple’s own e-bookstore and app on the iPad, iBooks, Apple is now bringing e-books to the small screen. iPhone and iPod touch users will now be able to use essentially the same app—designed for the smaller screen of course—to read books purchased from the store, as well as PDFs. If you also have an iPad, you can sync your books between devices, as well as your bookmarks, notes, and last read pages.

I’m not personally fan of reading books on my iPhone, but people (including many of you, dear Ars readers) seem to like it well enough—why else would the Kindle iPhone app be so popular? It’s certainly convenient if you want to catch up on a book while commuting or waiting in line at the post office, and then have your place synced back over to your reading device of choice later when you go home.

Search suggestions

Like Safari on the desktop, Mobile Safari now offers search suggestions when you begin typing something into the search box. It doesn’t matter which search engine you’re using; depending on what the query is, you’ll get a list of options that seem most similar to what you’re trying to find in order to speed up the process.

I find this to be a welcome addition to Mobile Safari and am glad that Apple decided to implement this on the iPhone and iPod touch after having seen it in action on the iPad. Things work a little differently on the iPhone of course—the suggestions pop down in their own menu on the iPad, while they populate the main browser window space on the iPhone. Different sized screens, different implementations.

Bing comes to iPhone

Speaking of search feature updates, Apple has added Bing to the list of search engines that you can use with Mobile Safari. You can access this setting by going into Settings > Safari > Search Engine to choose between Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Then, when you perform a search within Safari, your search suggestions will come from that particular search engine, as well as (obviously) the results.

People who like Bing—I hear there are a few of them—will certainly like this update. Contrary to some of the recent rumors, however, Apple has not yet made Bing the default search engine on iOS.

Customize your Spotlight searches

Nothing is more annoying than searching your phone for an app and coming up with a ton of e-mails, or searching for a contact and coming up with a bunch of songs in iTunes. Do you ever use Spotlight to search for songs in iTunes? Neither do I. As it turns out, Apple had this feature in iPhone OS 3.x, but it was buried in another part of the settings (Settings > General > Home > Search results).

Under iOS 4, you can go to Settings > General > Spotlight Search to check or uncheck all manner of content, from Contacts to Applications to Audiobooks to Notes, and everything in between. You can also re-order the content so that certain results will appear first: just tap and drag the list-like icon on the right-hand side to move the item around. Do you always want your Mail searches to come in first? Put that at the top. (Insert Steve Jobs saying “boom” here.)

On top of this customizable Spotlight setting, Spotlight can now also search the Web or Wikipedia for keywords that you enter there. While Android users have enjoyed this functionality since at least Android 2.1, this is my first experience with it and I think it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever—no longer do you have to launch Safari or a Wikipedia app to look something up unless you want to.

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Bluetooth keyboard support

The iPhone has always had pretty sad Bluetooth support compared to pretty much everything else, but Apple has added wireless keyboard support to its short list of supported Bluetooth services. Just like on the iPad, you can now pair a keyboard—Apple or otherwise—with your iPhone if you absolutely need to produce mass amounts of text on your phone. Again, only iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and third-gen iPod touches get Bluetooth keyboard support.

You can pair your keyboard by going into the Settings app and then General > Bluetooth. You must first turn Bluetooth on, and then make sure your keyboard is discoverable. Once you pair the two, you can use the keyboard to enter text into any app that takes text entry, and you can perform a limited number of commands right from the keyboard (similar to the iPad):

Here’s the text that I wrote in the Notes app with a Bluetooth keyboard paired with the iPhone, for those of you who would rather not read Marker Felt in a screenshot:

This is a new note that I’m writing with the Bluetooth keyboard. The standard keyboard commands work, such as command + A for select all, command C/X/P for copy/cut/paste, and so on. On the Apple wireless keyboard, the built-in sound buttons can control the iPhone’s audio (play/pause, skip ahead or back, volume), and the keyboard’s brightness controls can adjust the iPhone’s brightness. What doesn’t work: command + tab, more complex commands.

As we wrote in our iPad review, keep in mind that this is not good for any kind of input that requires a pointer—you can’t use a Bluetooth mouse with the iPhone, so you have to reach out and touch the device with your finger if you want to do something on the screen that you can’t do with the keyboard. This feels somewhat unintuitive while you’re using a standard computer keyboard (which seems to put our brains into “normal computer” mode), which is part of the reason why we don’t think anyone will be using a regular keyboard with an iPhone very often. It’s generally impractical, and how likely are you to have a keyboard in your bag while you’re not at home? I can’t see myself using this feature after writing this review, but it’s is nice to have it there for emergency use.

Unfortunately, a swath of other Bluetooth services are still unavailable to iOS users, such as pairing with my favorite Mac app for interfacing with a Bluetooth-enabled phone, BluePhoneElite. At this point, I have given up hope that Apple would ever allow something like that, and you probably should too.

Odds and ends

There are tons of smaller changes in iOS 4 that are worth observing:

Character counts, subjects in Messages

There’s now a character count for the Messages app so you can see how long your SMS/MMSs are. You can activate it by going into your Settings > Messages and sliding the character count slider to “on.” After that, when you’re typing a message to someone, the count will show up on the right-hand side above the “Send” button:

If you choose to turn it on, there are separate fields for “Subject” and for the rest of your message. The character count doesn’t show up when you type into the subject—only the message part. The phone doesn’t allow you to send a message with only a subject, though you can send a message without one. The difference appears to be that a message with a subject comes through as an MMS, while one without is an SMS. (We can see this being useful if you’re sending a photo or video in the body, but otherwise, not so much.)

New/updated spell check

The spell checking feature in iOS 4 has been refined—no longer does the device simply change your word to the word it thinks it should be unless you tell it otherwise. Now, it underlines your questionable words in red and, when you tap on them, it offers up possible suggestions:

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