Whether you upgrade your iPhone on June 21st or buy a new one on June 24th, you will soon be learning the ins-and-outs of the features of a great new operating system. We at AppAdvice.com want to make sure you're prepared to make the transition smoothly.

Getting Prepared

Before you upgrading your OS or replacing your iPhone, you need to do a bit of housekeeping first. First, you will need to upgrade your version of iTunes to 9.2, which became available on June 16th. This version is needed for managing some of the new features like folders. Once you have iTunes 9.2 loaded, you should sync and make sure a full backup completes successfully. Without a good backup, you will be spending a lot of time reinstalling applications and finding your lost data.

What You Know

Once you have iOS4 in your hands, there are a few features that will likely be first on your list to try. Among those "tentpole" features are the home screen wallpaper and folders. iOS4 comes preloaded with the water drop wallpaper seen in all the demos on the home screen. You can change it in the same way you previously changed your lock screen wallpaper, either through settings or by choosing "set as wallpaper" when looking at a picture. While this means you can load your own images, you should also try out some of the new example wallpapers iOS4 comes packaged with.

Folders is another great new feature which allows you to group applications and organized your device. The process is very similar to how you rearrange and delete icons on the home screen in iPhone OS3. Simply tap and hold on an icon until it begins shaking, then drag it on top of another icon. A folder will be created and automatically named. You can rename it at any time by tapping and holding on it to go back into edit mode.

One of the most requested features iOS4 brings to the iPhone 3gs and iPhone 4 is multi-tasking and fast app switching. Multitasking allows you to keep apps like Pandora running so your music doesn't stop just because you get a text message or you don't miss an exit if you close your GPS program. Fast app switching lets you quickly move back and forth between applications. This means you can easily load up a new podcast without losing your place in Angry Birds or check the weather outside while you're text messaging about your weekend plans. Both of these features are accessible by double-tapping the home button at any time.

What You Might Not Know

There are over 100 new features, some of which you may not have heard about. One is the ability for the iPhone to access a WiFi network while in sleep mode. When the screen is off, the iPhone is still performing activities like checking emails and listening for push notifications. Previously it did these over 3G or Edge which used more KB on your data plan and also potentially lowered the battery life. Being able to use WiFi should improve both of these numbers. The iPhone's email features got some updates as well. New features include the ability to use more than one Microsoft Exchange account, view all of your accounts in a single inbox and view your emails as threads. Gmail users also gain the ability to archive messages instead of deleting, and sync their calendar and notes with Google.

In the camera app, there are also a few new changes. One is the addition of digital zoom when taking still images. Tapping on the screen when taking a picture now brings up a zoom slider allowing up to 5x zoom. Another noticeable change is that pictures save much faster, which gets you back to the viewfinder screen sooner. This means shutterbugs trying to catch that perfect picture, will be able to snap multiple photos much quicker.

Conclusion

These are only a handful of the 100+ new features in iOS4. Keep watching in the coming weeks for updates on the features and availability of both iOS4 and the iPhone 4.

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