iPhone Firmware 2.1: undocumented features and changes

Apple’s made some pretty sweet changes in the iPhone‘s Firmware 2.1, but it seems they’ve changed even more than they let on. Several undocumented changes have been burrowed out by justinomg and other users. Check them out in the full article.

Apple’s made some pretty sweet changes in the iPhone‘s Firmware 2.1, but it seems they’ve changed even more than they let on. Several undocumented changes have been burrowed out by justinomg and other users.

Some of these changes are minor, but many of them are pretty useful, or just plain cool, especially if you know what to do with them, like how they separated the iPhone volume with the phone ringing volume. Here you go:

• Although it isn’t exactly a “new feature”, some bluetooth headsets which didn’t originally work with visual voicemail and other features on previous firmware versions have been reported to be working on 2.1 by different users. Confirmed headsets:
• Plantronics 520BT Headset (Credit to trunksu).
• Plantronics 925BT Headset (Credit to diesel).
• Plantronics Voyager 510BT Headset (Credit to QuarterSwede).
• Bluespoon AX2BT Headset (Credit to galenmd).
• Any Chrysler, Dodge, or Jeep vehicle with U-Connect (Credit to mklos).
• You can now pause apps by clicking the icon while it downloads/installs.
• Tripple clicking the microphone button (attached to included headphones) now goes to the previous song played/in a playlist. (Credit to Sealit).
• New podcasts & videos had “filled” blue bubbles next to them to indicate that they were new, but with 2.1, if you have “half-played” a podcast or video, it will include a half filled blue bubble. (Credit to Dangeresque).
• Sound from videos now “fade out” if you press the home button. Before, they would cut out abruptly. (Credit to Dangeresque).
• Options to load & display earlier text message in a convosation. (Credit to cx300).
• The iPod now shows the album artist and album name underneath the song title.
• New 3G, Edge & GRPS icons
• EXIF data infomation now remains on photos/pictures when emailed from your iPhone. Sites such as Flickr are now able to show geotag and other infomation. (Credit to MadGoat).
• Updated apps now keep there original position in the Home Screen.
• The 12/24 hour clock which has been available in previous versions is now usable to UK iPhone users.
• iTunes now displays how much infomation is taken by up applications installed on your iPhone.
• The Camera application can now be restricted from Settings. (Credit to Kardashian).
• Auto rebooting once the Apple Boot logo dims fixes the “ALoD” issue. (Credit to Switz123).
• iPod volume setting is now independant to the phone ringer volume setting. (Credit to Rat-Boy).
• When location services is switched off in the Settings menu, the Maps application reminds you to must manually turn it back on from the Settings menu when using GPS. Originally, you would have the option to turn it on when the notification appeared. (Credit to sgiles1).
• More infomation is provided for audiobooks, such as displaying time left in active audiobook. (Credit to reposed).
• When recieving a text message, it used to display “Sender – Text Message” when the message preview was off, e.g “Pete – Text Message”. After updating to 2.1, it now just displays “New Text Message”. (Credit to nutts & phannon666).
• You can now display the AM/PM on the lock screen, if you’re using the 12-hour clock.
• Note: This function, for some reason, does not appear on everyones phones. Some ‘upgraded’ phones show the AM/PM indicator when set to 12-hour, but some don’t. However, most ‘clean installs’ of 2.1 will show the AM/PM indicator. (Credit to Kardashian).
• If a clean restore doesn’t fix your problem, try setting the time to the 24-hour clock and reboot the phone. Switch the time back to the 12-hour clock (the AM/PM mode should appear in the top menu bar at this point). Reboot the phone again. If the indicator doesn’t appear, repeat the above steps a couple of times until it does. (Credit to leedsguy).
• Third-party application settings are loaded after loading the main Settings. (Credit to Nall).
• With the UK English keyboard setting, when entering URLs, holding down the ‘.com’ button would bring up shortcuts to other TLDs, but for some reason it would drop ‘.net’ to make room for ‘.co.uk’. 2.1 adds ‘.net’ for the UK English keyboard. (Credit to NekoFever).
• Apple have fixed the grammar in the App Store when all apps up to date. Prior to 2.1, the update page would display the text “All Apps Are Up-To-Date.” (hypenated with a period). The update page now displays the text “All Apps Are Up to Date”. (Credit to NekoFever).
• Double tapping (the standard gesture for zooming) didn’t work in prior firmware versions in the Mail application. The only way to zoom into content (e.g. a HTML attachment/web page) was to use the ‘pinch’ method. 2.1 now adds the functionality of double tapping to zoom in the Mail application. (Credit to sibruk).
• Mobile Safari now (partially) supports Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). (Credit to Paint.It.Black).
• There has been a minor update to the Exchange setup; in version 2.0 you had to enter userid as the “domainuserid”, in 2.1 Apple have created a separate field for domain. However, autodiscover is still not working entirely, and you still need to enter the server name in step 2 of the setup process.
• The DTMF tone bug has now been fixed. This bug would prevent iPhone 3G users from accessing their voicemail system because the ‘*’ tone was not being generated properly. (Credit to ktemkin).

• iPhone Firmware 2.1 now out on iTunes 8

Via MacRumors