Yesterday Apple released a beta version of iPhone OS 2.1 to developers. Along with the 2.1 beta firmware a new version of the iPhone SDK has also been seeded.
The new beta versions cannot be used to submit applications to the App Store at the moment, this may be due to some changes in the firmware itself.
This new version has added a bunch of core Location features that track the direction you are heading and the speed you are traveling. These new locations services seem to point to the possibility of turn-by-turn directions in the near future.
Apple has also implemented a very early version of the push notifications service which should be available this September. This addition points to a September release of firmware 2.1 which would make me guess that we will see 2.0.1 very soon with bug fixes to tide us over until 2.1 is ready for the masses.
There isn’t much more details available about 2.1 but I’m hoping that it will bring some updates that will improve power efficiency, once we are all getting notifications pushed to us all the time our battery life will definitely take a little bit of a hit, but if Apple will be able to manage essentially the same battery life on older phones along with push notifications being turned on they will deserve a kind pat on the back.