New Features Coming in iPhone OS 4

A lot of my clients use the Apple  iPhone to collect e-mail from their Microsoft Exchange servers. This is pushed to the phone using ActiveSync, so instead of the phone having to check if new mail has arrived, Exchange server notifies the phone . I often find that new mail will arrive on my phone before it appears in Outlook.

However, this feature has a major limitation, it can only sync with one Exchange account. According to news site Ars Technica, this issue is about to be fixed with the next release of the iPhone OS – version 4, which will support multiple Exchange accounts, along with adding a unified Inbox so you can see all your mail from different accounts at once.

Other new features include multitasking support which, for example, will allow Skype to run in the background so you can receive calls while listening to music, encryption support and a “social gaming network”. Note however that all of the new features will only be available on the current iPhone 3GS, the older 3G model will only get a subset and that does not include multitasking.

The new OS is due for release this summer. More details on the Apple web site.