I’ve spent a while experimenting and found out basically how it all works.

If you set your contacts on the computer in windows or on mac address book etc and copy the photos into the application in the os, then sync down onto the iphone. The contacts photo will be a small one next to their name, without a large background.

If you select the contact from within the iphone from your photos or camera reel it’ll come up as a large background photo.

Okay? With me so far?

Now. It gets a little complicated. If you have a contact photo you set on the computer then synced down, so it’s a small contact, then go into the iphone and select ‘edit the current photo’ resize a little then resave. It’ll change to a large one from now on and be used as the background.

If you set a contact photo from within the iphone, then sync the contact onto your desktop app, then re-edit that photo in the desktop app it’ll change it back down to a smaller one when it syncs again.

Phew! So that’s the mystery solved.

Although there’s one thing. I’ve seen from screenshots online before where a person calling has both a small photo then another background photo too. I have no idea how to do that! I’d love to have that.

I really hope (although I know it won’t happen until a third party app is released) being able to browse contacts with their contact photo in the list, or as a gallery with the name underneath. At least when viewing a contact in non-editing mode touching their photo should bring up a large preview no? Otherwise it’s a right hassle to see it. :-/

Hope some that’s helpful.

I personally have addressed nearly all of my mail complaints by simply leaving my home computer on all the time. My regular mail client handles all of the spam filtering and application of rules. Deleting mail from the phone dumps the messages into the trash folder, and eventually the desktop machine will blow them away according to the rules I’ve specified. So to repeat, I’ve covered:
1) Spam
2) Rules
3) Deletion
without any intervention beyond what I was already doing. IMAP is great.

That being said, I’d argue that despite what people say here, iPhone Mail pretty much rocks. An e-mail client I can carry around with me that displays full HTML e-mail with enclosures, where I can perform an inertial scroll by flicking a finger and zoom in by using two…I’ve never seen an e-mail client that delivers even half of that stuff. I give it an “A.”

I’m not missing the two-pane view so much, but the multiple-delete, or - better yet - some implementation of mail rules would be great. There are a *lot* of emails that I don’t want on my iPhone but still want on my desktop. I don’t care if I have to create the rules on my desktop and transfer them via iTunes - I just don’t want them on my iPhone.

And a big “WTF” on the idling phone while messages are waiting.

One last wish: how about a “Don’t download messages larger than X kb”?

Another thing that changed is the caller’s picture (maybe this has been mentioned before, but I’ve not seen it). In the keynote, when Phil called, his little picture was next to his name, and the wallpaper stayed on screen. Now, obviously, the caller’s picture takes over the whole screen. Yes, I know, an astounding observation… ;-)

Oh, and they still have the x of y message indicator; it’s just not between the left and right-arrow buttons (which obviously have changed to up and down buttons), but rather to the left of the arrows.

(and replying from a different address than it was sent too… that wouldn’t be bad)

Having said that….why the F*#$ does the edit button NOT let you select multiple emails for deletion instead of one at a time. It’s like they were THERE, the thought was TRYING to come through. Did they BLACKOUT or something just as they were trying to implement the feature?! I don’t get it. Either way, the bottom line is, now with the new Gmail IMAP, I don’t care anymore.