I am interested in using the full text search capability of SQLite.
I understand it was not compiled in to the iPhone/iOS version.
Is this still the case
It is not available in the standard build of sqlite3 on iOS But you can still use it.
The best way to use it is to download the sqlite3 amalgamation and configure it for FTS3. Add the sqlite3.c and sqlite3.h file to your project and remove sqlite3 from your frameworks list on your application.
Statically adding it this way will work perfectly.