Google continues to expand iPhone features

World’s major search engine Google updated its offer for the iPhone. Google thus plans to continue the supporting iPhone that quickly became No.1 mobile phone hitting Google websites. The iPhone has beaten other smartphone makers that use Google’s services.

Photo: Google continues to expand iPhone features

Those using iPhone in their everyday mobile communication started to surpass BlackBerry users in accessing Google services. IPhone has thus helped Google in creating the second-largest Google user base following Symbian and Windows Mobile users.

Apple has sold more than 1.3 iPhones by the end of September. World’s most popular cell phone maker, Finland’s Nokia, has sold 50 million of its N-series phones. The number of BlackBerry subscribers reached 12 million as of the end of December.

Apple has widely advertised some of iPhone features, although the company was not the first one to introduce those features on the market. For example, Google Maps could be accessed on mobile phones before iPhone. However, iPhone owners use Google’s services more frequently.

Now that Google has updated its offerings for the iPhone, its users will be able to use a lot more features.

iPhone users can now customize Google services through the menu bar and iGoogle home page. When a user of iPhone visits Google.com, they can choose Google applications to appear as links in a menu bar that runs across the top of the page. Signing in once, users can then access a variety of Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs, and Picasa.

In addition, iPhone users can also visit their customized iGoogle page from their phones. iGoogle is a page that users can arrange to include widgets of their choosing, including news, weather, games, and recent Gmail messages.

The iPhone is a multimedia, Internet-enabled mobile phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player ("iPod"), in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. It is a quad-band mobile phone that uses the GSM standard, hence has international capability. It supports the Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) data technology.

Following the success of iPod, Apple announced the iPhone in January 2007. The announcement was preceded by rumors and speculations that circulated for several months. The iPhone was introduced, first in the United States on June 29, 2007 with much media frenzy and then in the United Kingdom, Germany and France in November 2007. It was named Time magazine's Invention of the Year in 2007. A new version of Apple's iPhone is expected to be introduced in 2008 that is capable of operating on faster 3G cellular networks.

The iPhone is able to access the World Wide Web via a modified version of the Safari web browser when connected to a local area Wi-Fi or a wide area EDGE network. It is not able to utilize AT&T's 3G or AT&T's HSDPA network. Steve Jobs has stated 3G would need to become more widespread in the United States and much more energy efficient before it's included in the iPhone. By default, the iPhone will ask to join newly discovered Wi-Fi networks and prompt for the password when required, while also supporting manually joining closed Wi-Fi networks. When Wi-Fi is active, it will automatically switch from the EDGE network to any nearby previously approved Wi-Fi network.