What's new in 4.2?!

Hello again and if you have been here before, welcome back. For those that are new to my blog all I can say is "where have you been?"! You will have to excuse me it's been a long day!

Today's post is entitled What's new in 4.2, so sit back, turn down the lights and read on!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Monday saw the release of IOS 4.2, basically an upgrade to the iphone 4 operating system. The release was mainly aimed at Apple Ipad users, bless them they are playing catch up with us, the iphone 4 users!, but there are some new additions to the iphone 4, not all fully functional as yet. I will try and explain what is new below.

New SMS (text) tones.
Prior to 4.2 the iphone 4 had a paltry 6 text tones and some of those were ordinary at best. With the new upgrade we now have access to 17 new tones!

To access the new tones do the following,

Tap settings>tap sounds>scroll down to the new label "Text Tone".

You can also assign these tones to individual contacts by doing the following,

From your contacts widget select the contact you wish to assign>tap edit>scroll and tap on the setting "text tone">select the tone you want to use>tap save.

Most of the new tones are really nice. My current favourite is Sherwood Forest, however Telegraph is extremely annoying lol. All in all the new tones are a very welcome addition.

Parental controls.
I actually prefer to call these new settings "annoying friends who fiddle with my iphone 4" settings! We can now prevent apps from being deleted and adding friends to Game Center. To access these controls do the following,

Tap settings>tap general>tap restrictions and from there you can alter restrictions to suit yourself.

Volume slider widget.
We can now access a new on screen volume control.

To view the slider you have to access the multi task dock at the bottom of your iphone screen. To do this double tap the home button. Then scroll left, past the ipod controls, to the volume slider.

Air Play.
Unfortunately I do not have access to Air Play. To gain access you have to have either an Apple Ipad or Apple TV. Basically Air Play allows users to stream music from the iphone 4 to these other devices. Should you be lucky enough to have one or both of these then you can access the Air Play controls by repeating the steps for the on screen volume widget and/or via your YouTube viewing screen or Ipod screen.

If someone is currently using Air Play regularly perhaps they could leave their thoughts etc in the comments box below.

Air Print.
Now this new addition is not fully functional at the moment. It basically allows the user to wirelessly print pictures and/or documents directly from the iphone 4. Currently there are only a very limited number of printers that have the relevant software to enable this and these are restricted to certain HP models. However I understand that there will be more makes of printer accessable in future updates.

If you do have one of these printers then you can print by doing the following. From a document look for the little icon that looks like a box with an arrow coming from it as seen below.

Showing the print icon.

To print a picture again you need to tap on the same icon as above. This will bring you to an option screen as seen below.

Print option.



Once you have tapped on the relevant icons you will get the print option screen as shown below.

Printer options page.






From this screen select your printer and number of copies you wish to print.

Once Air Print is fully functional it will be a very welcome addition as you will be able to print, literally on the go. There are some after market apps available from the Apple App store. I found one that supports my Kodak wireless printer but, alas, I can only print photos at the moment.

Find text in Safari.

This setting within Safari is really handy. It allows the user to search a web page for a specific word or phrase. For example, you are reading an article on Iphone cases and it is very text heavy. If you type a keyword you are looking for, i.e Leather Case in the google search window, you can scroll down to where it says "on this page" ( number of relevant matches) and the page you are viewing will have the phrase highlighted. You can tap the "next" button at the bottom of the page and it will take you to each search phrase in turn. This is extremely useful when you want to search a document swiftly but thoroughly.

New type fonts in Note.

At last we have two more type fonts other than Helvetica in notes. These are Chalkboard, as seen below,

Chalkboard font

And Marker Felt as seen below,

Marker Felt font

To access the new fonts do the following. From settings tap notes>tap on desired font.

Although not ground breaking these two new fonts are a very welcome addition to the rather limited settings in notes, I really like Marker Felt which looks really nice with the default yellow back ground.

Well that's it for 4.2. I hope you find my post informative, it really is worth playing with all these new settings. Once Air Print is fully functional the iphone 4 is going to move onto yet a higher level of functionality in comparison to ALL the other, current smart phones on the market.

I will be back later with a review so remember to check in from time to time. I do publish a link to new posts on Facebook so feel free to add me as a friend.

Andy