iPhone OS 3.1

The latest and greatest jailbreak tool has been released and it supports iPhone OS 3.1 on the 3GS hardware. Before you get too excited, keep in mind it will only work if you've already jailbroken your iPhone 3GS when it was running 3.0 or 3.0.1 firmware.

Turns out if you've installed an update directly from Apple using iTunes on your iPhone 3GS or the device came pre-installed with firmware 3.1 then you're out of luck. PwnageTool 3.1.3 is only available on the Mac platform. Dev-Team has stated it has no intention of developing a windows version of this particular tool.

The latest firmware update released by Apple may have improved security and added features, but some iPhone owners are having problems. Reports from users on the Apple support forums indicate a major problem with updating to iPhone OS 3.1 on the iPhone 3G.

Users are ending up with bricked phones, and iPhones that crash several times, requiring a hard reboot. Holding the sleep and home button doesn't always work, however. Some users are finding it necessary to downgrade to iTunes 8 and firmware 3.0.1 to solve the problems.

The latest iPhone firmware is live. Steve Jobs announced the release of iPhone OS 3.1 today at Apple's Rock and Roll media event. The latest iPhone firmware can be downloaded using iTunes.

The software adds new features and includes bug fixes. iPhone Dev-Team has recommended against updating your firmware until further notice if your iPhone is jailbroken and/or unlocked.

We've seen how to paste full-resolution photos into email using iPhone OS 3.0. The latest reported changes to firmware 3.1 will allow even more functionality by making it possible for users to paste full-resolution video directly to email.

As seen in this video, it's a simple process. Just hold down and use the copy function, then switch to email and paste. This feature is illustrated using iPhone OS 3.1 beta 3, which was just released this week.

You may have wondered why it's taking so long for the augmented reality application Nearest Tube to hit the App Store. This time the delay isn't really due to an Apple approval issue, it's just the small fact that the developers of augmented reality apps are using unpublished APIs (application programming interfaces).

That's right, Apple hasn't even released these development tools yet. The good news is that intrepid developers are soon to be vindicated by iPhone OS 3.1, which promises to include many new APIs that make augmented reality applications possible.