If you cannot wait to get hold of the new iPhone 4, should you have been lucky enough to have successfully pre-ordered, then you could always upgrade your existing iPhone 3G/3GS to iOS 4 and get many of the same features.
Be warned, though, the update itself is not without some problems. Things got off to a bad start when the iPhone 3GS decided to take rather longer than usual to back up before starting the upgrade procedure. A deep breath, a reboot and I started again, but the upgrade froze during the backup portion completely. Third time was the charm, although it was still a painfully slow process which took over an hour from start to shiny new iOS 4 finish. I've read reports across the Internet of users experiencing very similar backup freezing and slowness. But once installed, what does iOS 4 bring to the iPhone party which is worth waiting for?
Well the multi-tasking support is great fun. Or at least it would be if more third party apps actually supported it. So far I've been able to enjoy using a Twitter client (Twittelator Pro) and Safari, cutting and pasting between the two and accessing them with the 'double home click' trick to pop up icons for running apps. I can listen to streaming radio courtesy of the TuneIn Radio app which has been updated for iOS 4 while doing something else with the iPhone now, which is nice. But that's pretty much it right now for me. OK, at least I can look forward to a slew of further updates in the App Store as developers get their collective fingers out and push multi-tasking support out to the masses.
I quite like the subtle change to the way the official mail app handles Gmail now, showing the number of messages in a conversational email thread for example. We particularly like the feature which has changed the swipe to delete option to a swipe to archive one - so 'deleted' Gmail messages are now archived and searchable in the 'all mail' box, not actually deleted at all. I also like the ability to get a view of my messages from all my accounts in a single unified inbox which is organised how I want it to be.
I'm also impressed with the new folders option, which enables you to group apps together in single folders on the iPhone desktop. As well as enabling me to hide all those default apps you cannot delete, it means I can now stuff far more apps onto my iPhone desktop.
The iBooks application, supported by iOS 4 and much fuss made of this by Apple, is OK as far as e-book (not i-books if you will) readers go but it's nothing to get overly excited about on a device as small as an iPhone. The ability to create playlists right there in your iPhone is rather cool however, and has been very nicely implemented in iOS 4. Talking of which, the automatic spell checker works well in Mail, Notes and other apps very nicely indeed.
I have not seen any great performance increase as of yet, despite what some others may claim my 3GS has not discovered a new lease of life and gone into high octane mode. And don't even get me started about all that pointless wallpaper...
