I got up very early this morning, Melbourne time, to update my iPhone 3GS to the new iOS 4.

How early? Initially 2am, only to find I still had another hour to wait. So, back to bed, playing on my iPad, until 3am.

So 3am came and passed, but the iTunes on my computer still only registered OS 3.1.3. I kept clicking until, finally at 3:05am, iOS 4 was finally available. Download and install.

Half an hour later, my iPhone had this cute little home screen background (shown above) and I was on my way to setting my eight pages of apps down to a mere two...home screen and most of the built-in apps, plus another page of FOLDERS.

Yes, this was a welcome update.

The new folder system is quite easy. You hold an app till it shakes, then move it over another, similar app, which turns it into a folder with both of them, first of all with a suggested name, like Productivity, then, if you want to change it, to anything you want.

The backgrounds operate very much the same as for the iPad. In settings you now have an option for the lock screen and the home screen. Initially it starts with the same background as your lock screen, but I like having something different on each.

As you can tell from the image, iBooks is also now able to be downloaded from the App Store for iOS 4.

Email...the inbox is now combined, though you still have options underneath the "All Email" category to access each individual email address's inbox. So now I can simply go into the combined inbox and read or delete messages from there.

And finally, multi-tasking and fast app switching. Double-click the home button and you can see a row of the current open apps. The multi-tasking itself still needs to wait for those apps which have iOS 4 awareness programmed in, but it's still good having a nice task switcher.

There's more to explore yet, but so far so good. I'm not quite sure if iOS 4 affects my 3G data, though. Initially web pages seem a bit slower. However, this might simply be due to the signal where I tested this.

Of course, when iOS 4.0.1 comes out, we'll see just what's been tightened up then.

In general, the new iteration brings some much-needed features to the iPhone 3GS.

So how are the rest of you going with your own updates to the new OS version?

We're only a few days away from iOS 4.

My current iPhone is the 3GS model, so I'm expecting the next update I get to be a full one: backgrounds, folders, Apple-style multi-tasking, etc.

On the other hand, my missus has my old 3G iphone, so she won't get the multi-tasking part.

The nine-year-old and three-year-old have a second-generation iPod between them, so they're out of luck on a full update too.

Oh well...at least they'll be able to organise their apps a bit better and have a pretty springboard if nothing else.

Still, what we will get will be a vast improvement on what we've had the past year.  I also have to agree I do like the fact Apple wait till they've got things right before they bring in features other phones have had for a longer time.  I'm still impressed with iPhone OS 3's cut-and-past method, which beats the crap out of implementations I've seen on any Nokia phone.  I tend to like it a tad better than Android's method, too.

For most of us, the practical part of iOS 4 will be in having folders.  We've worked with a nine-screen limit for our apps on our iPhones prior to this.  We may have had specific screens for specific types of apps.  Now we can have a Social Media folder and all associated apps in it, one for Photography and so on.  And our app limit is now somewhere around 2,000 total apps...or until we run out of iPhone disk space.

Yep, the folders are probably more valuable to us than whether the system mult-tasks a bit better.

I also have to say I was seriously getting tired of looking at a plain-black home screen.

Once iOS 4 is out, I'll be able to see the difference between the 3GS and the 3G on the multi-tasking issue and be able to comment better on that topic.

At least now, though, I can start to think of having more apps to play with instead of having to do pruning whenever I'm nearing the nine-screen limit.

So what things are the rest of you looking forward to in the new iPhone OS?