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Oct 22

iPhone Firmware 1.1.3 Features

Posted in: Apple, Features, Gadgets, iPhone, Screenshots, Today's Chili, videos

This article was written on December 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

There has been a lot of buzz around the next iPhone firmware upgrade that is expected to be released as early as this week. At first there was some speculation that this is just a hoax, but if that was the case there has been way too much work put into it. A video has been provided, which we’ve embedded below, that demonstrates the various new features.

First lets take a look at the two big areas that are the most revamped:

–Customizable Homepage–

Apple is showing us the first signs of how things will work when users are allowed to install native applications on the iPhone in the future. With the new firmware users will be able to rearrange any of the icons (including the ones along the bottom dock), and they will also be able to add their favorite bookmarks to the homepage. The video below demonstrates how this works, but here are a few screenshots:

iPhone 113 Homepage

–Google Maps–

Since the iPhone doesn’t have a built-in GPS Apple is giving the Google Maps app the next best thing. It will have Google’s new My Location feature integrated, which uses the proximity to nearby cellphone towers to calculate an estimate of the user’s position.

Aside from that the Google Maps app will also include a hybrid map view (satellite + street labels) which it has definitely been lacking. Naturally all of these new features to Google Maps means more buttons, but Apple has decided to keep the interface clean by putting some of the buttons on a “new page”:

iPhone 113 Google Maps