iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5 And iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release 2 Changes

As promised earlier today, we've got our list of new and noteworthy feature list for the latest iPhone OS 3.0 Beta as well as changes to the latest iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release. After a full day of poking and prodding, the changes this latest beta brings can be best described as minor. Here's a breakdown of the changes we found and things we noticed:

Upgrading from Beta 4 went smoothly. All settings were retained.Installing iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release 2 on top of Pre-Release 1 was a non-event. Went smoothly. All settings were retained.
Despite Apple's notice that iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release 2 is required to install Beta 5, I can confirm that is not true.
You can now e-mail Podcast links from within the iTunes app.
New option in iTunes Pre-Release 2 to open iTunes when a specific iPhone or iPod touch is plugged in. This is now a device-specific option.
Parental Controls on the iPhone now allow for age-specific restrictions for downloading.
MMS and iPhone tethering no longer work although there are reports of workarounds but I cannot personally confirm them to work.
Overall speed of things on the iPhone and iPod touch seem to be snappier. Previous lag seems to be gone.

All in all, I'd say that this is the most solid release to date of the iPhone OS 3.0 betas. Apple is obviously cleaning up the bugs and beginning to polish things off in anticipation of the final release due sometime in June or July. The more I use the betas, the more I can't wait to have the finished product up and operational. Let's all cross our fingers and hope that it drops sooner rather than later! If any of you have noticed differences with Beta 5 and iTunes 8.2 Pre-Release 2 that weren't listed above, please let us know about them in the comments.

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