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I am trying to get an overview of what kind of native iPhone features I can get access to when I write a Web App (using html/css/javascript, running in Safari).
Meaning: I like to know whether I can get access to features specific to "smartphones" in general and iPhone/iTouch in particular (accelerometer, address book, photo library, the iPhone's unique identifier, camera, compass, available Wifi networks, etc.).
I suppose there must be an overview somewhere, probably on the Apple developer site, but I have trouble finding it, because it's all about native apps now.
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Safari is the default web browser across all Apple devices and is designed from the ground up for privacy and efficiency. Apple claims that its browser is faster than any other available on macOS. Apple Pay, saving and sharing websites, and extensions make up some of the primary features for Safari.
To access the settings menu, open the Safari app and on the menubar click on Safari > Preferences... (Fig. 1).
To change these settings, choose Safari > Settings, then click Websites. The settings you can customize (such as Reader and Content Blockers) are listed on the left. To apply a setting to a website on the right, first select the setting, then choose the option you want from the pop-menu next to the website.
Check out "iPhone Human Interface Guidelines for Web Applications" on Apple developer site.
It does not say so explicitly, but based on what it talks and does not talk about, looks like you can NOT get access to any of the advanced iPhone capabilities that you mention. So, iPhone web apps are basically just web pages that may have an optimized user experience for the iPhone (the above guide has good specific instructions for optimizing the experience).
The only exception seems to be geolocation that seems to be accessible from within the web apps. But this is not because MobileSafari is doing something special about the iPhone; it is simply because the geolocation API is (going to be) part of web standards, and MobileSafari just implements the standard.
Added: looks like you also get a notification when iPhone orientation changes, see the comment below about onorientationchange event.
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PhoneGap is not the solution you were looking for, but might be interesting for any web developer, planning apps for smart phones.
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