By Lawrence Akers

For those of you who don’t own an iPhone, you may want to look away.

For those of you that do, the big question that everyone is asking is whether or not you should update to the new iPhone operating system?

Already, urban myths are springing forth, telling stories of people whose iPhones went into a self induced coma, self destructed or become decidedly ‘touchy’. However, what is the truth behind this and is it safe to update your iPhone operating system?

The short answer is, “Of course!” The most common complaints so far seem to concern the backup process for the phone slowing right down and some installations have taken anywhere between 20 minutes to just under an hour. However, with over 100 new features, it is well worth investing the time to get your phone smack bang up to date!

What better way to tempt you than to tell you about some of the features that come with the new operating system.

Multitasking support for third party apps, allowing processes to be completed in the background.
Folders to better organise and access apps.
Mail improvements including a unified inbox to view all accounts in one.
Support for iBooks and iBookstore
Photo and camera improvements, including a 5 x digital zoom when taking a picture.
Searchable SMS and MMS features.
Wireless Keyboard support.
Enhanced location privacy
Control to lock portrait orientation
New languages, dictionaries and keyboards
Accessibility Improvements
Bluetooth improvements
Exchange Server 2010 compatiable
Support for Juniper Junos Pulse and Cisco AnyConnect SSL VPN apps (available from the App Store)
More than 1,500 new developers API’s
Bug Fixes

Of course, if any of the urban myths are true, it may have been because people are not checking which products are compatible with the new iOS4 software update. You need to make sure you have a 3G, 3GS or 4 iPhone, iPhone touch (2nd or 3rd generation models (late 2009 models with 32GB or 64GB). Not all features are compatible with each phone either – for instance, the multitasking functions are only available to the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 models. Additionally, those that have ‘jailbroken’ their phones should take additional care with updating their operating system.

For more information, check out the Apple website. For those experiencing issues with updating, you can check out here to see a document from Apple support on how to move it all forward.

Have you experienced an issue updating your iPhone operating system? Do you think it was all worth while? Share you stories with us and we’ll publish them to the world!