New beta of iPhone 3.1 SDK shows signs of life for MMS on AT&T
Registered developers who log onto the Apple Dev Center this morning are being given an interesting little message (and 9to5Mac.com has a screenshot): With the iPhone 3.0 SDK having just been released, the first beta of the version 3.1 SDK began distribution last night.
Perhaps topmost on the list of iPhone 3.1 features that developers have been searching for, but were denied with the 3.0 release, is evidence that instant messages may at last include MMS. This blogger shows screenshots of images that can be cut-and-pasted to the text entry line, which implies that they can be sent using MMS protocol...at some point. AT&T has not enabled that protocol over its network yet, though the carrier is saying it will enable that feature this summer.
Second on developers' lists of most heralded 3.1 features today has to do with video editing. Apparently iPhone users who made clips and changes to the videos they'd just shot with their on-board cameras, had no other option but to save those changes over their original videos. That changes with 3.1, as developers have located the new "Save As Copy" button, enabling "non-destructive video editing."
And maybe a close third will be the ability for Bluetooth users to issue voice commands to the iPhone -- a feature that competitive phones have had for years.
One of the iPhone's most heralded development teams, the "Dev-Team," is the group that provides tools that break AT&T's and Apple's lock over the iPhone content, letting independents put whatever they want on their phones. This morning, the Dev-Team blog posted a warning saying that developers who try the 3.1 SDK beta may not have all the advantages of their unlocking tools.
"ultrasn0w users must stay away from any firmware updates past 3.0 (including today's 3.1 beta) until we release the tools that let you update the firmware without updating the baseband," the team writes. "For most phones out there, baseband updates are irreversible and you'll lose ultrasn0w."