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iPhone OS 3.0 – Search

With OS 3.0, the iPhone has finally caught up with one of the old features of Palm OS – the global find. In OS 3.0, in addition to the screens with application icons, there’s a search screen which searches a whole host of things – applications, contacts, calendar, mail, music, podcasts, etc. Here’s a screenshot of the search screen: Search ScreenThere are some configuration options that control the behavior of the home button (via Settings | General | Home) including access to the search screen:Home button configuration

Search results can further be customized to include or exclude items and reorder them: Search customization

One caveat about the global mail search – it only searches the To/From/Subject fields of messages downloaded to the phone. The mail application has its own search screen too, which behaves the same way but it includes an option to search via the server (at which point search results depend on what the server provides): Mail search

Comments

Rainman said…
So, the global search feature is pretty much Spotlight ported to the iPhone platform, right?
Anonymous said…
Yes, it's the iPhone-friendly clone of Spotlight.

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