Have been checking for iPhone updates on and off all morning. Just heard 3.0 is going to be available about 18:00 this evening (UK time). I'm really interested to try out the improved Safari!

Are you going to get a free download via the iPhone or do you need to connect it to a computer to update?

AFAIK the only way to do it is via iTunes. The phone goes into restore mode (or whatever it's called) and then the computer overwrites the relevant bits of the firmware. So I don't think the phone could do it by itself.

Well only two hours or so to go before you get the download allegedly.

Don't forget to post feedback. Especially interested in how different you think it feels with the updated OS.

Copy, cut paste should really be a killer feature. (Never thought I'd ever say that )

Judging by what happened with the last update, I think it will probably take at least an hour and a half to download. I'll post a full report once I've tried all the new features. I'm planning to host a graphically intensive page on my local web server, clear the cache on my iPhone, and time how long it takes to load the page. Then I'll do the same after the update to see how much improved Safari really is. TBH I don't care about copy and paste. I'm really fed up with people slagging off the iPhone for not having copy and paste. My last two phones, a Treo 600 and then a SE W810i, didn't have copy and paste, and I didn't expect them to. I can count on one hand how many times I've thought that copy and paste would be a useful feature on a phone. Yes it's a nice addition, but certainly not a particularly good reason to criticise the iPhone IMO.

Grrrrr!

Available now! My other half is downloading and updating his iPhone first since he has a Mobile Me account, so we can try out the new location features etc.

Updating now

Done.

- Safari is a 2-3 seconds faster loading a page hosted locally on my MacBook over WiFi. Here's hoping the speed increase improves performance over 3G/EDGE/GPRS.

- MMS isn't working yet - it fails to send. I'm assuming either O2 haven't got it up and running yet or there are just too many people trying to use it.

- Voice Notes seems cool. You can even trim the sound file on the phone, and then share it over MMS etc.

- "Find My iPhone" is great. You log on to the MobileMe web site, choose the Find My iPhone option, and it shows a Google map of the location of your phone. You can then send a message to it (e.g. "please return me to.....") and the phone makes an obnoxious noise for two minutes and displays the message.

- Spotlight on the front page is cool. You can Spotlight contacts, calendar events, emails, even songs/albums/artists in your iPod

- Safari now has an autofill option when filling in forms

- Cut/copy/paste is actually brilliant for amiga.org. On the mobile theme, the only reply button which works is Quote, which is annoying if you don't want to quote as you then have to tediously delete the quote. Now, you can tap the text field, hold down for a second or two, tap "select all" then cut. Pasting is really easy too. If you hold down on one word, you can then drag the start and end points for the cut/copy. This works really well!

- Landscape view/keyboard everywhere is brilliant - can finally do SMS in landscape

- A2DP seems to suffer the same problems as other devices, namely breaking up/slowing down when the device is doing other things. Also there doesn't seem to be any fast-forward/rewind support over bluetooth - you have to do it on the phone.

- Shake to undo changes or shuffle songs in iPod is a neat idea, but has the potential to make you look like a nutter on the train

- They have *finally* made multiple calendars match the colours on iCal (this really used to bug my OCD tendencies...)

- Overall the phone seems much quicker


That's it for now. Will probably post more as I discover new features/problems!

just got it myself. very cool.