Or, will you upgrade at all?

To be honest I was checking all day (ok, maybe not all day but fairly early on) and got my upgrade right around lunch time on the Eastcoast and so far I’m happy with my choice to upgrade.

There are a lot of new features that were included in this release but there were a couple in particular I was looking forward to.

Multitasking – this is by far one of the most sought after features for the iPhone. At one point I jail broke my phone (back at 3.1.2) just to get this feature even though it had a tendency to suck the life right out of my battery. The hooks are there for app developers to take advantage of it and while may haven’t yet one of my personal favorites, Evernote, already has. The ability to let photos and notes upload in the background is HUGE in my book.

Folders – another feature that I missed when I locked my phone back down. You simply drag one icon onto another and the iPhone creates the folder for you – simple. You are limited to just 12 apps per folder and it doesn’t appear that you can nest a folder within a folder but the feature works as advertised and I already have a number of folders set up.

Camera enhancements – there were a couple of enhancements to the native camera app, most notably a 5x digital zoom. This is another one of those features that I missed and even had an app installed so that I could zoom in. While I don’t remember seeing it mentioned elsewhere the camera function also seems to be a lot faster now – snap a picture and the shutter close delay is significantly shorter than before. I know for a lot of folks that’s not much but I for one use the camera an awful lot for data capture and every speed improvement is welcome.

I know there are a lot of features to this new OS update that I’m leaving out but those are the ones I was looking forward to (ok, being able to set your wallpaper is nice too). For those that are interested here’s the walk though video the folks over at Mashable shot.

So, did you upgrade? Not going to upgrade? Why not share in the comments.

Update: For those looking for yet more tips and tricks using the new iOS4 check out this post over at Lifehacker.com

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If you’ve been following me on Twitter, read my Role-playing Blog or caught my post Mobile Edition Now Available, you already know but for everyone else, I’m now an iPhone owner.

It all started about three weeks ago with a simple statement.

“Honey, my cellphone screen is blank.”

Those six words were the final push I needed to finally bite the bullet and buy a new cellphone. For the last couple of years I’ve been using a Sony Ericsson Z310a for personal use (my employer issued phone is a Motorola Q) and I needed something that would better handle my Google/cloud based life (yup, drank that punch too) so it was time to take the plunge and get a smartphone for my life outside of work.

No Android Love

We’ve been on AT&T for a while and since my wife was happy with the service and coverage she really wanted to continue with them – ok, now to choose my phone. Wait a minute, there’s no Android based phone on AT&T yet and since we couldn’t hold out for another couple of months (my wife was going into SMS withdrawal) I decided to “settle” for an iPhone (I know folks that have Blackberries and they aren’t happy with the Google integration). As it turns out my wife decided to go the same route instead of going with the LG she originally was looking at and so about an hour later we were the proud owners of a pair of iPhone 3GS phones – black for me and a pink gel skinned one for her (okay it’s white but no one is ever going to see that).

First impressions

We were both like kids with a new toy at Christmas trying out the built in features, apps and making calls to see how things worked and both of us were pleased with what we found. As someone who has never owned something with the Apple logo on it I’m starting to see why folks are happy with their products – the user interface and experience is top notch. While I am a heavy technology user my wife is not and she was able to get her iPhone setup to handle what she wanted on her own and with some help she’s now beginning to utilize more of the features and apps.

Life Integration

• Phone – check
• Texting – check
• Email – check
• RSS Reader – check
• Calendar (all of them) – check
• Web Browsing – check

Most of my life was already in the Google-scape so it was just a matter of setting up the synchronization for all of it and I use iTunes to pull my work calendar over so I only have to look in one place to find out how over booked I am. For my wife she now has a GMail account while while she uses her phone calendar currently it won’t be long before I think her calendar will be in the cloud to make it easier for me to keep up with what she has going on (work, kids, etc.).

Yes, life is good but the honeymoon is now over and I’ve started to look beyond the basics and have begun to look to how I can use my iPhone for more that the basics. Stay tuned as I’m planning on sharing the apps, tricks and growing pains of fully integrating this piece of technology into my life.

Do you own an iPhone? What do you like or dislike about it – sound off in the comments.

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