During last night’s event hosted by Apple, the company announced the iOS 4.1 update for the iPhone.

While this may not be the most exciting news ever unveiled as the new iOS update is mainly to resolve bugs – proximity sensor issues and Bluetooth  on the iPhone 4, and the interface on the iPhone-3G – 4.1 comes with some pretty good new additions too.

Firstly, there’s the Game Centre function. This lets you play all the compatible games in the App Store in multiplayer mode. You can invite friends to play a game or compete against strangers, and the Game Centre will show you the score and make gaming more interactive.

Then there’s the HDR (High Definition Range) photography. This is presented as an option in the iPhone’s inbuilt camera interface, and when selected will take 3 photos at once – one over exposed and lighter, one under exposed and darker, and one normal. By merging all 3 into one image, the resulting photo should be more realistic with shadows highlighted and darker areas lightened. Such definition is often lost in normal exposure even though this level of detail is what the human eye sees. With the HDR feature on, the iPhone will take a regular photo and a HDR photo, so you can choose the one you like best.

Other extras in the new iOS 4.1 include HD video uploading, for automatically uploading your HD footage onto websites like Facebook and Twitter.

This operating system update is being rolled out to compatible iPhones and iPod Touch devices only – iPad users will have to wait until November when the iOS 4.2 launches with extras including AirPlay for streaming multimedia to and from the Apple device.

Although this will naturally disappoint iPad owners, those of you with iPhone 4 contracts or earlier models of the mobile phone can access the iOS 4.1 via iTunes from next week onwards.

Tags: Apple, Apple-iPhone-4, Apple-iPhone-4-contracts, iOS-4.1, iPhone, iPhone 4

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Apple News, Manufacturers News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.