12 things we would like to see in iPhone OS 4.0

iPhone is seriously inferior to some smartphones in almost all areas except market share. As a person armed with both the iPhone and the Blackberry, I am very familiar with the limited abilities of both the first and second phones. Blackberry's weaknesses are well-known: it lacks a good app store and everything that stands behind it, lacks a good browser and, as some complain, multi-touch. Despite this, I still use Blackberry, and I wondered: what is missing iPhone OS 4.0 (which may be announced today, but not later than spring and certainly WWDC) in order to make the iPhone a single device for entertainment and business? I’ll warn your dumb question: we’ll think about Android another time.

The following is a list of the 12 most useful and, I will not be afraid of this word, the necessary functions that should appear in the next iPhone OS update. All features are already present in Windows Mobile, Android or Blackberry, or are very similar to existing ones.

Improved alerts: view, sound, customization

Of course, Apple has always been different in that it did not give users great opportunities for modifying and customizing their products, but I think that Apple should give more control over the notification functions in the iPhone.

1. Screen saver enhancements
We think it's almost crazy to not block your smartphone with a PIN. But when you do this on the iPhone, you limit yourself to notifications. We would like to see at least a counter of letters and SMS on the screen saver. We do not need to unlock the phone and enter the PIN code to see how many new messages have appeared there (or maybe not at all). Look at the visualization we drew; Of course, this is possible to do. And of course, Apple can, for example, make it translucent, or put indicators on the status bar at the top so as not to overlap your precious wallpaper.

2. Custom sound alerts
The infinitely wise Apple allows you to change your ringtone, choose the sound of SMS, and, if you want, use sound alerts for messages, voicemail or calendar reminders. But give us more standard sounds - and the ability to use your sounds for any type of reminder. It is annoying when nine people are sitting in a meeting, someone is playing a standard tune, and seven people press the Home button to check if it was their phone.

3. Scheduling notifications
About once a week, I hear that someone missed a call or didn’t see an SMS because they left their phone in silent mode at night (or before school), and then forgot to turn the sound back on.

4. Different vibrating rings
When the phone is in silent mode, all alerts (except the call) vibrate the same way - once. Let us assign custom vibration patterns for different alerts: for example, three short vibrations for SMS, two for writing.

5. SMS Reminders
Let me set the number of SMS reminders for an incoming SMS myself.

6. Special reminders
Give the opportunity to use special notifications, say, for letters of special importance or with a special subject, or from selected senders: for example, “The boss is writing to you”, or “Brett Favre has left the sport for the 14th time”.

Improved energy management

Apple claims to be proud of its green products, but when it comes to the iPhone, there’s nothing to do with it. A few improvements would make the iPhone more efficient and the battery more tenacious.

7. Power Planning A
cool feature that I have seen on many smartphones and which is best done on Blackberry is the ability to plan when the phone and / or its antenna should work. We all consume energy, right? So, on weekdays from midnight to six in the morning I do not need my phone. Let me automate this.

8. Advanced email scheduling, push
Push is one of the things that makes working with Blackberry so amazing. Apple, let us indicate at what time we want to use the Push mode, and at what time - Fetch. Secondly, give the opportunity to indicate when it is worth checking mail accounts in general. Some of my friends would like their phone not to check mail at night or on weekends.

Seriously about Mail and switching tasks

Mail on the iPhone is a very unsatisfactory thing compared to other smartphones. Of course, it is “good enough” for most people, but, again, focusing on something in between is the same as crab sticks, when you can enjoy tuna rolls.

9. Support for a single Inbox or improved navigation
If you have more than one mail account, you know how inconvenient to switch between them. Now it takes at least 4 clicks to switch from one inbox to another. Make a merge, or facilitate the transition between folders. Or maybe this and that?

10. Full synchronization and storage of mail
Unlike Blackberry and other smartphones, the iPhone does not synchronize folders until you go into them (though if you have Exchange, then you have the ability to receive all letters from all folders using Push). For example, if you find in the Sent Items folder a message that you sent earlier this day, then you have to wait until all sent messages are downloaded, in chronological order. This makes it terribly inconvenient to use any folder except the Inbox, but it also limits the efficiency of searching messages.

11. Possibility of additional actions directly from the search
It’s great that you can search in the mail on your iPhone, but it’s silly that you won’t do much with the search results. Messages found cannot be deleted or moved to a folder. And expand your search! Now you can search only in the folder in which you are located, which is inconvenient when you are not sure where you need to look.

12. Running applications in the background
When I'm on the road, I noticed that I constantly open and close mail, because I can not keep other applications in the background. Need to check the calendar? See something on the web? Open, close, open, close, open. Both Palm and Google have already got rid of this, and we know that this can be achieved on jailbroken iPhones. Standardize the data transfer protocol: Palm figured this out, and there is no reason Apple cannot do this (we just suspect that it does not want this). We need a standardized protocol for third-party applications to synchronize iPhone and computer. Many have already developed smart solutions, mainly using Bonjour auto-detection, but there are a lot of problems on the computer side.

Eventually…

For the implementation of most of the ideas proposed, it is not required that the mountain itself go to Magomed. I specifically stayed away from technologically sophisticated cranes, trying to concentrate on the “tits” that can be expected in the coming months. In good faith, most of these things should already work.