New 1.1.3 iPhone firmware repeats old tricks, learns new ones

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 30 December 2007 09:30

Your IT - Mobility

Photos and video of the iPhone’s new 1.1.3 firmware have leaked, with the news that it breaks the AnySIM unlock and prevents jailbroken third-party app installation but introduces some nifty new features, on the cusp of Macworld ’08 and the upcoming SDK.
Although not yet officially released by Apple for download by anyone, the latest crop of info about the new 1.1.3 firmware update appears to be the real deal, according to Gizmodo and to Nate True, creator of iBrickr and the cr.eations.net blog.

At the blog entry linked above, Nate has posted a video of iPhone icon re-arrangement using ‘drag and drop’, one of the features not yet implemented by any official iPhone software from Apple or its partners.

The video shows the icons ‘wiggling’, which signify that the icons can be individually dragged to a different position on the page, or onto a new page altogether, allowing you to create pages of different icons to quickly gain access to, whether they be upcoming official third party apps or web shortcuts to favourite sites and online apps.

According to MacRumors, who link to GearLive’s photos of the new firmware, the new features list as known so far includes:

- The ability to edit the home screen through drag and drop as described above and as can be seen in Nate True’s video, as well as add new Safari bookmarks to the home page.
- The ability to use the new ‘Locate Me’ feature in Google Maps which uses mobile phone towers to approximate your location on a map.
- The ‘hybrid view’ of satellite imagery and street names comes to Google Maps.
- Being able to send the same SMS message to multiple people at the same time becomes a reality.

It’s highly likely there are more new features as yet unannounced, but whether these include functions such as copy and paste, a system wide search, the ability to sync notes or other desired features is as yet unknown, as is the official date of 1.1.3’s release.

There’s also the unsurprising news that 1.1.3 breaks the AnySIM unlock and jailbreaking to install third party apps, a battle that hackers will have to fight once again to restore access to use in any country and access to a pool of third party apps that seems to have new updates to existing software and entirely new releases practically by the day.

Given that we’re just over two weeks away from Macworld, the new firmware could well be released during Steve Jobs’ keynote, alongside whatever other surprises Jobs has in store, be it more info on the SDK, a 3G iPhone, an iTablet Mac of some kind, an iTunes movie rental store or something else.

But we can be pretty certain that whatever Steve Jobs announces at Macworld, it will be in his usual spectacular style. What will the ‘one more thing’ be this time?