With the release of the iPhone OS 4.0 beta mere hours ago, many are keen to get their hands on a copy. Unfortunately, not everybody that wants to can do so due to a number of reasons, but thankfully, some developers are willing to provide screenshots of all the new features and additions:

Multitasking: The big one is, of course, multitasking. It isn't a new feature by any stretch of the imagination but it's one that has been a long time coming to the iPhone OS. Multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 works by double-tapping the Home button, which will then bring up a view of the currently running apps. You can leave as many as you want open for as long as you want yet (we haven't seen any battery life tests yet so it's hard to tell how it'll affect performance), though you can close them by holding your finger over a currently running one. This'll bring up a red icon to close whichever one you've chosen, stopping it from running altogether.

So, how well does it work? Not bad. It's not fantastic, but not bad. It can be pretty hard to navigate once you have a bunch of applications running, though currently, with third-party apps, it works more like an app switcher. This will be remedied once developers have had some time to work on their software, but in the mean time, it's not reaching its full potential (it's only beta one, after all). There are a couple screenshots in the gallery to help illustrate things a bit better, for those still confused.

Folders: This one doesn't take much explaining. Interestingly, a lot of people had issues creating a Folder for the first time � there isn't any indicator that you can do it aside from being told by somebody else that you can � which goes against Apple's trend of making things as usable as can be. In order to set a Folder up, you tap and hold an app until they're in editing mode (that is, you can move them around and delete them), then drag an app on top of another one. That'll set them up into a new group which can then be renamed and organized as you see fit. There's a limit of 12 apps per Folder, so if you have a ton of a certain type of application (such as games), we expect you'll have to create numbered folders as appropriate. Aside from the limit, it works well. It's animated smoothly, looks nice, and functions as advertised, which is all you can ask of it, really. Again, there are screenshots in the gallery.

Game Center: The Game Center app is already included with beta one though it runs in a sandbox mode which obviously doesn't have all the functionality, so we can't really comment on how well it goes just yet. Once a number of apps support it, we'll be able to play around with it and test out how it performs and works as a platform. Interestingly, Apple's service goes against third party ones already created, such as Plus+ from ngmoco, though of course, they all have slightly different features catering for different needs.

Camera: The camera application has undergone a couple of changes, most importantly being the fact that it now features a 5x zoom (though it's only software based, of course). It works pretty much as one would expect, with the highest level of zoom looking not particularly great. There are screenshots of this in action in the gallery, though keep in mind that they're not usually that blurry. In addition to the camera zoom, you can now rotate photos with ease within the Camera or Photos applications, which is a small but welcome feature. As Apple have introduced a camera zoom in this OS, it provides a pretty good suggestion that the next iteration of the iPhone will have a hardware zoom; having it implemented in software is nice and all, but it just doesn't compare.