In my latest post on the YUI Blog, I describe the results of my recent research into mobile browser cache limits for Android, iOS (including iPhone 4) and webOS. Be sure to check it out if you develop websites for mobile browsers.

I’ve written an article for the YUI Blog describing some of the techniques I used to optimize Yahoo! Search for the iPhone. You can use these techniques to improve the performance of any JavaScript-heavy iPhone web app, even if you don’t use YUI. Check it out!

In June, my boss came to me with a challenge: bring the full Yahoo! Search experience—including SearchMonkey, Search Assist, shortcuts, and other awesome Yahoo! Search features—to the iPhone with as few compromises as possible. He wanted an iPhone search experience that matched the desktop experience and took full advantage of Mobile Safari’s excellent featureset. And he wanted it in a month.

I grabbed Tom Chi and Jeremy Hubert from Search UED and we hashed out a plan over lunch. We used Jeremy’s existing iPhone Search prototype as inspiration. Tom had to fly to Paris to judge the Imagine Cup 2008 interface design competition, but in his spare time he churned out interface mockups and perfected the design while watching “young ladies in debutante dresses drinking and getting on a boat” on the River Seine. Meanwhile, I wrote the code.

Two weeks later, we quietly launched Yahoo! Search for iPhone. Here are just a few of the awesome features you can now enjoy on your iPhone:

• Search Assist saves you time by completing your queries before you’ve finished typing them
• All your favorite SearchMonkey modules will follow you from your desktop browser to your iPhone (just make sure you’re logged into your Yahoo! account on your iPhone)
• Movie showtimes, weather, local results, breaking news, Flickr photos, and other useful Yahoo! Search shortcuts are now at your fingertips
• Other helpful features like Quick Links, same-host indent, and more

Try it out and let us know what you think. And if you don’t have an iPhone handy, head over to Flickr to see some sexy screenshots of the iPhone SRP.

I'm not sure when it happened, but it looks like Yahoo! oneSearch has been updated with a beautiful new iPhone-friendly interface. You'll see it if you visit oneSearch on an iPhone (and only on an iPhone).

Unfortunately I have no way to take screenshots and I don't have a camera with me at the moment to take photos of it running on my iPhone, but it's really very nice. The page automatically scrolls down to hide the Safari toolbar on load, and the color scheme, icons, and widgets all match the iPhone UI styles much better than the standard oneSearch design. I like!

I've had my iPhone for almost two weeks now and I absolutely love it. It's the best cell phone I've ever used and the sexiest gadget I've ever owned. But there are a few things about it that really, really suck:

1. iTunes

   iTunes is the only way to transfer music, photos, movies, or anything else to the phone, and the Windows port of iTunes sucks donkey balls. It's slow, ridiculously unstable, and completely ignores standard Windows UI practices. If it were possible to sync my iPhone by letting Chuck Norris kick me in the crotch, I'd choose the crotch kick over iTunes any day.

2. No native IM app

   There are a few good Ajax IM apps for the iPhone, but they're all severely limited by the fact that they can't provide audio alerts and only work when Safari is the active application. As soon as you switch to another app, lock the phone, or even look away from the screen, they become useless.

3. There's no way to email full-resolution photos

   The 2 megapixel camera on the iPhone is decent and certainly usable for casual photoblogging via Flickr, which is something I've been doing for years now. Unfortunately, when you email a photo from the iPhone, it sends a tiny 640x480 version of the photo rather than the 1600x1200 original. There is no way to change this.

   This means that in order to get my full-res photos on Flickr, I have to dock the iPhone, copy the photos over to my computer, and upload them to Flickr manually. That's retarded. Even my ancient Nokia 6600 from a few years ago could email full-resolution photos to Flickr.

4. The calendar won't sync with iCal feeds

   Despite the iPhone's excellent Internet capabilities, the calendar app can't be synced with iCal feeds over the 'net. Just like everything else, the only way to sync the calendar is to dock the phone and fire up iTunes, and even then it will only sync directly with iCal, Entourage, or Outlook.

   I primarily use Google Calendar and Windows Calendar (which comes with Vista and happily syncs with Google Calendar) to manage my schedule, but the iPhone won't sync with either of those, even though they're both capable of publishing iCal feeds. On Windows, it will only sync with Outlook, and I don't use Outlook. Lame.

   The fact that the calendar app is otherwise very good makes this omission suck even more.

5. No Ogg Vorbis support

   I know, I know. iPods have never supported Ogg Vorbis, so why should the iPhone? Truth be told, I didn't buy the iPhone for its iPod functionality; I bought it for the phone and Internet functionality. But it's so damn good at playing music that I've stopped using my trusty old iRiver H120.

   The only problem is that all the music I've purchased in the last two years is in Ogg Vorbis format, which the H120 supports very well. Now I have to convert all those Oggs to MP3s if I want to listen to them on my iPhone. I'm not sure what Apple has against Ogg, but I sure wish they'd get over it.

It may sound like I hate my iPhone, but I don't. I love it. I want to have like a million of its babies. The fact that I love it in spite of these major drawbacks should tell you something about how awesome it is.

I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for five or six years now. I’ve bought several phones from them and renewed my contract several times. While I’m generally pleased with their prices and customer service, their coverage absolutely sucks.

Even in some heavily-populated urban areas, I often have trouble getting a signal. Until recently, I thought this was perhaps just a problem with their Oregon coverage. Beaverton and Hillsboro, where I spent most of my time, aren’t exactly huge cities, and I tended to live on the outskirts of town.

And yet, since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, the coverage hasn’t gotten any better. The Bay Area is teeming with people. San Jose, where I spend most of my time, is the largest city in Northern California, and yet, in many places in the city, I’m lucky if my phone’s signal indicator shows a single bar. At Yahoo!‘s Sunnyvale campus I usually can’t get any signal at all.

When the iPhone was announced earlier this year, I was disappointed that I would have to switch to Cingular if I wanted one. Now I’m really looking forward to it.

There are a few details about the iPhone that still haven't been solidified. One of the most important questions (for software developers anyway) is whether or not the phone will have an open development platform that will allow users to install third-party software on the phone. You'd think this would be a no-brainer, since the phone runs a (presumably stripped-down) version of OS X, but the word on the street is that Apple will not be opening the phone to third-party software. That's a bitter pill to swallow. If it's true, it could be a huge mistake.

Somewhat less clear is whether the phone will allow the use of third-party widgets, but I'm betting the answer to this is that it will.

There's also confusion around whether or not the iPhone contains a GPS receiver. Steve Jobs didn't mention GPS in his keynote, but his demo of the Google Maps application seemed to indicate some sort of location awareness. Some websites (including MSNBC) are reporting that the iPhone does have GPS support, although this could be the result of a misunderstanding.

Jobs also made a remark during the keynote implying that the phone might have 3G support by the time it reaches Europe. The obvious question is why the hell it won't have 3G support here in the States. This is another bitter, bitter pill to swallow.

I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for answers to these questions. The iPhone really does represent a revolutionary shift in handheld gadgets, and it'll either go down as a triumphant success (ala the iPod) or a red herring (ala the Newton).

Update: David Pogue has answered most of my questions. No, the iPhone will not be an open platform (sob!); no, it doesn't have GPS; and yes, it will probably eventually support 3G, just not initially.

Wow. If you haven't seen the iPhone yet, look now. Do it. Apple's always been heavy on the hype, but this time they've created something that really deserves it. This is the most beautiful gadget I've ever seen. I must have one.