I installed iPhone OS 3.0 a little ahead of schedule (ahem) on my 1st generation iPhone 2G.
I can’t comment on the features that will only work on the iPhone 3G S (yet), but as for the rest, I have to say that for me, the feature that stands out was somewhat unexpected: search.
You see, the iPhone application launchpad was designed before the iPhone SDK, the App Store, and 50,000 apps hit the cloud. While it’s fun to flick the screens left and right, it’s a royal pain in the ass to rearrange your app icons in a meaningful way, if like me, you have 7 or 8 screens worth of apps (x 16 apps per page…)
When Apple previewed iPhone 3.0 a few months ago, I was hoping for radical change in this regard, and the Spotlight Search feature seemed like a lame response.
I was wrong.
After playing with iPhone OS 3.0 for a short while, I think I can safely say that I couldn’t care less about my giant messy heap of half-sorted apps anymore. It takes fewer taps to swipe left from the main home screen to reveal the search keyboard, type a couple of letters, and tap the app, email, calendar event, song or contact of interest, than to flick through the Home pages.
And that means I’m a happier iPhone geek.
Update: I noticed that when you’re on the main home screen, you can press on the physical Home button to go to the Spotlight Search screen, and back.