Yes, iOS 4 and the iPhone 4 have both landed in consumers hands, of course, not without bugs, glitches, a few class action lawsuits, and of course, still missing features. After having had the opportunity to sit with iOS 4 for about a week and a half or so, I have had a chance to look at the features offered by iOS 4, and come up with a list of features that the OS itself is lacking. Surprisingly, all the ones in this blog are merely things that need to be updated in the existing base features. I am sure we could go on for ages about apps in general that need to be updated, but for now I think we should stick to existing apps that come with the iPhone by default.

Custom Dictionary
Yes, the iPhone finally sports the ability for users to add there own words into the phones dictionary, dropping the need for countless people across America to tell people to go “duck” themselves or that they are “sipped” off. However, this new feature, as great as it is, has one major drawback. You have to enable a foreign keyboard. Of course, you can’t enable just any keyboard. It has to be a Chinese or Japanese one, meaning that if you use the Emoji keyboard, you now have a spare click to get back to English. I know that this is probably a software bug and would be easy enough for Apple to fix in their upcoming iOS 4.0.1 release, which is also expected to deal with battery issues and the signal issues. The short fix for the dictionary though, as I have already stated: remove the need for a Japanese keyboard.

Home Screen Wallpaper
It’s beautiful that iPhone users can finally set wallpapers for their home screen on the iPhone as well as the lock screen, but I have a feeling a few adjustments would help make this feature just a tad better. First off, let us set a different background for each home screen, as well as Spotlight. I know that in principle this sounds like a so-so idea, but think about it like this. My current setup is this: my lock screen features a shot of several planets and my home screen is a tropical background (both gotten from the free app “Backgrounds” in the AppStore). I have 3 home screens at this point: my first is for apps like Utilities, Entertainment (iTunes Store, AppStore, YouTube, etc.), Social Networks, Books, Reference, settings, and news. My second is all different game folders, and the third is for Random apps, shopping apps, art apps, etc. I would love to be able to set a different background for each page, based on it’s “Theme”. The first is like my desktop so the island is fine, but I would love to have a Nintendo-esq background on the games page, and maybe a nice piece of art on the third page. The other feature I would add, which would almost fall under multitasking is the ability to change the background every x amount of seconds, minutes, or hours. I know we probably won’t get to see that on the basis of battery life, but it’s a thought to be put out there. I mean, I have a computer with Windows 7 (in fact, it is what I am writing this first blog on) and I love having a “Slideshow” for my background, of a couple hundred HD wallpapers I found online.

YouTube
Even the YouTube app is in need of at least a few minor updates. For one, I would love to be able to post a video response to a video from right within the app; I would love to be able to access my notifications and messages from within the app; and I would love the ability to view a persons channel from within the app. All of these are simple and while I would love to see them in iOS 4.1 or something, I doubt these features would show up before iOS 5.


Safari
Safari has been Apple’s web browser for God knows how long, and it was only fitting that with the introduction of the iPod Touch and iPhone that there would be a mobile version of the browser to run on these products, but even this one is in need of a little bit of fine tuning. The first (which we probably will never see, as per Steve Jobs) is some form of support at least for Flash video. While HTML5 may be the standard for different aspects of the web at some point in the future, right now Flash still holds that standard. I am not saying that I want to be able to play Flash based games on my phone, but at least let me watch videos online. The next is a download ability. This is something most tech-savvy iPhone users will tell you they have wanted from the beginning, because browsing the web is great, but let’s say you find a program or file you want: let us download it on the go and then transfer it to Safari or FireFox (iE support should NOT be encouraged at any rate). Add-ons would also be nice, seeing how they exist for the desktop version of Safari, so why not on the mobile platform.

Voice Control
The voice control feature on the iPhone currently supports voice playing of the iPod and voice dialing but here are some notes for Apple’s dev team. I have a lot of apps on my iPhone and many more coming thanks to the new 2,160 limit due to folders. Instead of having to make me dig through all of these folders to find an app I am looking for, let me hold the home button and say “Open Appzilla” or “Launch Twitter”, saving me at least a little time. Then add that feature into apps. Like “Search YouTube for Harry Potter Trailer” and then open right up to the search page with that result. I mean, there are computer programs that let you control a computer with your voice, it’s time Apple steps this one up with a total overhaul for the year 2010.

App Store
The App Store has been around with the iPod Touch/iPhone since firmware 2.0 I believe. Although it is a great way to buy apps for the iPhone over the air, there needs to be just a little tweaking to it. Namely, don’t close the app every time I start to download a new application. It is a royal pain in my behind having to reopen the app store every time I want to get a bunch of free apps. If you do that Apple, I will consider the App Store, fixed.

Digital Zoom on Video Recording
Even though digital zoom isn’t really the way to go…ever…seeing as optical kicks its butt any day, but for people who are recording video and don’t have access to optical zoom, let us do some digital zooming on videos. Again, this is a long off feature though seeing as we JUST got digital zoom for still photos.

Photos
Only one feature is really missing from the Photos application and that is the ability to directly upload photos to Facebook. I mean if I can directly upload videos to YouTube the least you can do is give me a direct link to my Facebook photos.

Those are pretty much all of the updates I can think of that I would really love to see implemented into the iOS line at some point in the near future. On thing I really want to tack on though is a feature that is starting to show with wallpapers that I am sure can be expanded upon greatly.

General Themeing
One of the major reasons people have jail broken previous iPod Touches, iPhones, and even the iPad is because they want the ability to add themes to the these devices. Now bare in mind that the ability to add a wallpaper to your home screens (which is a feature that should have been around since the start) is a step in the right direction, but come on Apple. Give me a few more abilities: let me customize my dock! Let me change the system font and text color to something that works with my background. In fact I would love to be able to change the main iPhone app icons (YouTube, Phone, SMS, Calendar, etc) to match my theme. I mean, I know this is asking a lot, but if jail breakers can figure it out I know that someone on Steve Jobs payroll can get this one up and running.

Aside from that, that’s all I can think of. Got another update you want to see to iOS or a feature you really want to see implemented. Leave a comment. Also be sure to check out my upcoming blogs covering things such as “My Top 5 iPhone Apps”, “Universal Logins”, and “The Perfect Social Network”. Until next time.

Peace.