Hands-on with the Updated iPhone

We didn't get a 3G iPhone at Macworld, but at least we got a software update that brings pseudo-GPS abilities, customizable home pages and more to Apple's coveted handheld. Here’s a few quick first impressions.GPS: Actually, we're not talking actual GPS here; instead, this update to the iPhone's Maps app triangulates your position according to your distance from the nearest cell phone towers. You activate the feature by tapping a little bulls-eye in the left-hand corner of the Maps interface; 10 to 30 seconds later, a blue circle appears on the map showing your approximate location—and "approximate" is the key word. In my first few tries, the circle encompassed almost a third of Manhattan—a pretty massive swath of land, and not terribly helpful for, say, finding the nearest ATM. A couple of tries later, however, Maps found my location within a block; not bad at all.

Customizing the home page: Used to be you had to hack your iPhone to tweak the icons on the home page. Now you just touch and hold an icon, and all the icons begin to wiggle; next, just drag the icon wherever you want it to go, even on a subsequent home page (you get a total of nine). Also nice: you can turn Web pages in the mobile Safari into icons on the home page. (Apple calls them Webclips, but they don't work like the real-time, updating Webclips widgets in Mac OS X Leopard.) The wiggling, moveable icons will come in especially handy once third-party iPhone apps become widely available.

Chapters, subtitles, and languages: I was only able to test chapter support for videos (I don't have any iTunes movies with subtitles or alternate languages yet), and it worked nicely; you just tap an icon to the right of the playback controls, and the video image flips around, revealing chapter titles, thumbnails and time elapsed.

Lyrics: Not as impressive as the other new features, if you ask me. Basically, if you have a song in your iPhone tagged with song lyrics (select a song in iTunes, click Command-I, and click the Lyrics tab to add lyrics) field, you just tap the cover art while the song is playing to see the words. Unfortunately, the lyrics display on the iPhone seems to do away with line breaks, which makes a mess of nicely formatted choruses and the link. Pretty disappointing.

SMS messages for multiple recipients: One of the most puzzling omissions on the iPhone has finally been fixed; at last, you can send text messages to multiple recipients at once. Of course, the only drawback is that if you get into a back-and-forth with one recipient, everyone in the group will get your replies, which could get a little confusing. Still, a welcome improvement.

Note: Like each of the previous software updates for the iPhone, this latest patch will wreak havoc with hacked handsets; expect any unauthorized applications (including iPhone unlocking apps) to be wiped clean by the update.