**This guest post was provided by our good friend ZAGG.com – A leading provider in device protection. While you’re enjoying your new iOS make sure to protect with personalized iPhone skins.**

News of iOS 5 has been blazing across the internet, and many people (including myself) are excited for the new features it will bring.  According to the Apple website, these changes are in the number of over 200.  That’s a ton!  But for time’s sake, here are some of the bigger new features you can expect:

• Notification Center -The one stop spot to view all of your missed calls, texts, etc.
• iMessage -The ability to text, send video and other media to other iOS 5 users
• Newsstand -A place for all of your magazine subscriptions to be read in their most current issue
• Reminders -Streamlined To Do Lists that sync with other apps like iCal
• PC Free -The ability to use your iPad, iPhone or iPod right out of the box without first connecting to a computer
• Twitter Integration -The ability to Tweet and respond to @ tweets no matter what application you’re in
• Camera/Photos -Take more detailed pictures, take pictures from the “Lock” screen, zoom by pinching, snap the picture with the “volume up” button, organize photos in to albums, crop and remove red eye, and stream your photos to your other iOS 5 devices through iCloud

I guess that about covers some of the more major changes that are upcoming in iOS 5!  Now let’s take a look at what new features are going to be of the biggest benefit.  Everyone uses their iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad for different reasons, so certain changes may not be as important to some as others.  However, the changes that are going to have a major impact on many iOS 5 users are the Twitter Integration and Camera/Photo changes.

Over the past year or so, snapping photos with the iPhone 4 has become increasingly popular.  As more people are uploading their photos to Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, I think Apple has realized the importance of the mobile camera they’ve created.  In order to expand on this, Apple has made iOS photography even easier, adding the ability to edit photos and making it much easier to snap a photo on-the-go.

But Apple knows that people don’t take pictures just because; they want to share those photos with their friends. Currently people use a variety of 3rd party apps (like Instagram) to share their photos on Twitter. With Twitter being integrated into much of iOS 5, the ability to share photos with your friends (and especially with other iOS 5 users) will be ridiculously easy.

Personally, I am also very excited for the Notification Center changes. While not a game-changer, having all notifications in one place is going to make life a lot easier. I could also see iMessage having a large impact on other people, especially those who hate data plans.

Again, these are just a few of the changes upcoming with the release of iOS 5. With over 200 hundred changes incoming, there is likely to be something for everyone.

On a slightly unrelated note, I am freaking excited for the iPhone 5 running iOS 5.

Today was the start of Adobe’s Max Developer Conference and the big announcement from the conference so far is an enhancement to their Adobe Flash Platform that will allow their player to work on smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PC’s and other Internet connected devices. You can see the official press release from Adobe here. A public beta will be available later this year and will be available for Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, and all the major desktop OS’s with Android, Symbian, and RIM are all expected to be available at a later date as well.

As you can tell the list of vendors jumping on board to support the initiative is pretty broad, but Apple is no where to be found, which is perfectly fine by me but more on that in a minute. I think we need to look at why Apple is so hesitant to allow Flash on to the iPhone. Once they allow Flash on the iPhone Apple would be giving developers a way around their AppStore Cash Cow. While this doesn’t seem like a big deal for utility type applications because the user experience would not be the same (Flash apps would probably not be allowed to have an icon on the main menu system), this could be a big blow to Apple since they are marketing the iPhone as a gaming platform. If the iPhone had Flash that can take advantage of the accelerated graphics and video, why would developers create a game that is specific just for the iPhone and go through the Apple approval process?

On the other side I think more and more iPhone users are starting to get used to life without Flash, which makes you wonder how necessary it really is. Based on my usage, I really don’t see a need for Flash anymore and I hope it never comes to the iPhone. I visit more and more sites each day that just created a mobile or iPhone version of their site that works great without Flash. I find that most sites that I visit use Flash for either navigation or ads which can easily be replaced with a non-flash version of the site that performs better and does not eat up system resources. The only real use I could see for Flash would be for streaming such as video from Hulu, but I would rather see that implemented as a native app that is feature rich and not in the browser.

So where do you stand when it comes to Flash support on the iPhone?

Leave your comment below.

Today a company named Safeware announced a new insurance product for the iphone.  You can read all of the offical details on their website, http://www.insuremyiphone.com.  They provided this comparison chart to show how they compare against Squaretrade and BestBuy

[singlepic id=62 w=320 h=240 float=center]

In a previous post I talked about insurance offered by SquareTrade.  Squaretrade has better options when it comes terms, pricing, and the deductible.  Squaretrade is cheaper because of its term, and it also offers free battery repair if the iPhone battery life drops below 50% of the original.

Safeware does provide some additional coverage that Squaretrade does not, such as coverage against theft, fire, flood, and vandalism.  One other key difference for Safeware is that you don’t have a 30 day window for the coverage.  So even if you bought your 3G iPhone a year ago, you can still get coverage, where with Squaretrade you can’t.

It will be interesting to see if people report back on how good the service is.  I would still bet that its a better option than AppleCare, which is just a really bad option for protecting your iPhone.

[via Macworld]

Joe posted an update over on the facebook iPhone fan page about a new version of the facebook app will be released soon.  Here are the details:

Facebook for iPhone 3.0 is coming very soon. I can’t predict an exact date when I will submit to Apple, but I can say that I am about 98% done. So what’s new in this update?

1. The “new” News Feed
2. Like
3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

The one feature everyone is asking for, Push Notifications, is in development but it won’t make it into 3.0. You can expect it in a 3.1 update later this summer.

Here are two screen shots he posted:

[nggallery id=4]

YouTube announced today that they have seen an increase of 1700% in mobile uploads over the last 6 months.  They also acknowledge that the iPhone 3GS has increased mobile uploads by 400% A DAY! Here are some quotes from the article:

“This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks. It takes just a minute to connect your YouTube account to your Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader accounts.”

So while the new iPhone and the easy YouTube integration has certainly helped with the increase, social networks have also helped spur the growth.

[YouTube Blog]

Apple support just posted a chart that outlines the differences that exist between the 3 iPhone models that exist out there.  Here is the chart:

iPhone Chart Options

Apple Article

AT&T posted a PDF that seems to answer common questions related to the new iPhone.  Two of the bigger questions has to do with how they are going to handle MMS and Tethering.  While the pdf mentions that MMS will be provided at no extra charge, they still don’t address tethering.  As I stated in a previous post though, I would expect tethering to cost an extra $30 a month.

AT&T Questions from our Customers

On Monday, Apple officially launched the new iPhone at the World Wide Developers Conference and to everyone’s surprise AT&T was absent from the list of providers who will support tethering and MMS. On Wednesday, AT&T was quoted all over the web saying that they would support MMS by the end of the summer as they are in the process of upgrading their networks to provide the best service possible to their customers.

As for tethering, that still seems to be up in the air, but people are beginning to speculate on what the real motive behind the delay is and people are curious if they are looking at charging extra for tethering and MMS.  My thoughts on this is that AT&T will charge extra for the tethering, but not for the MMS.  If you look at their existing plans for smart phones they have tethering and messaging options for those phones.  Tethering is an extra $30 and according to the details of the messaging, it includes MMS.

Here is a screen shot from the AT&T website:

ATT Features for tethering and MMS

If iPhone users are given an “iPhone Tax” for MMS, then AT&T and digging their grave even deeper with iPhone users.

What are your thoughts about an iPhone Tax?

T-Mobile Netherlands just published specs for the iPhone 3G S.  The specs pretty much match what was rumored back in May by MacRumors.

According to the T-Mobile spec page, the iPhone 3G S has 256MB of RAM, which is up from 128 in the current iPhone 3G model.  The new iPhone 3G S also has a faster processor running at 600MHz, compared to 412MHz found in previous models.

[T-Mobile Link]
[MacRumors]

So now that all the new sexy hardware and software has been announced, we can now focus on what was not announced for the new iPhone 3GS:

Same Case/Body – The biggest thing that wasn’t announced for me was a redesign of the case.  I was really hoping that Apple would have moved to a soft back like the Storm has.  While I have already added my own case to provide that, it would be nice if it was built in

No glowing Apple logo – I am so glad this rumor is not true!  I could not imagine having something as silly as a glowing logo on my phone, and lets not even get started on how that would affect the battery.

No screen improvements – I was really looking forward to some improvements to the screen as this could have helped with some of the battery issues, but maybe they are holding this back for the next version

No color selection - No big loss here thanks to skins and cases, but I am sure some people would have liked to have the iPhone in various colors

No Verizon deal – Looks like we will have to continue to wait to see if the iPhone eventually lands with Verizon.  Based on what I have read so far today, there are a lot of Apple fans who are just flat out pissed with AT&T right now, so it will be interesting to see what happens here

No camera flash, or front facing camera – I have a feeling this will stay on the wish list for a lot.  I think we would see a front facing camera before a flash, but no one really knows

Adobe Flash support – I think for this one we can blame Adobe, but again we will have to wait and see.  The nice thing about this feature is they can add this through a software update.

Wireless N – Another nice to have and I assume this will be in the next revision.

What feature do you really wish they would have announced?