I own an iPhone and an iPad, so when Apple announced iOS 5, I was more than mildly interested. But now that it’s been released, there have been grumbles in some quarters about the performance of some apps, the lengthy upgrade process, and the general underwhelmingness of it all.
I know you’re desperate to know what I think too, so here goes.
I upgraded my phone on Thursday night, and left it there overnight for the download to finish. In the morning , it had finished downloading but, despite leaving it as long as I cold, still had not finished reinstalling all my apps, music and content.
I must add that my Internet connection is not the fastest, and the 700 odd megabyte download will have taken several hours.
Nonetheless, I was able to play with the iOS that day, and when I plugged my phone back n that night it sorted the problems out straightaway. So what’s new, what’s different, and what’s rubbish in iOS 5?
Overall look and feel
One feature of iOS 5 is that it is essentially the same as iOS 4.x. Apparently it will run faster, and as the new iPhone has the same faster chip as the iPad 2 that may well be the case. But other than adding a couple of new icons (video, reminders, newsstand) to my home screen it really doesn’t look any different.
The biggest difference is a new Music app that replaces the iPod app. It does exactly the same thing, although the interface has been smartened up on the iPad.
App speed
Undoubtedly some apps will run faster, but on the whole there’s no discernible difference. The (new and supposedly improved) Facebook app seems to open a lot more slowly than before, but I think that may be to do with the redesign of the app rather than the OS.
Many app developers have brought out iOS 5 compatible versions of their apps, but that may be more to do with new OS features like notifications instead of speed upgrades.
iCloud
One of the most eagerly anticipated upgrades was iCloud, an Apple-certified way to store calendars, contacts and mail in the cloud.
I’m using it for my calendars and contacts, and it’s great. It can sync contacts and calendars across all my devices, and it makes it easy to share my calendar with my wife. Unfortunately, is means I have no excuse for double booking myself!
There are other options out there – Gmail and Google calendars springs to mind, but iCloud is a very simple way to organise yourself.
Reminders
Linked to your calendars, reminders is a fairly useful app – its a place you can store all the things you need to do. There are undoubtedly apps out there that will do similar things, with even more functionality, but the tie-in with your iCloud calendar is a bonus.
Notifications
I’m a big fan of the notifications centre. It gives you granular control over how apps notify you – for each app you can choose to be notified by a pop up (that you need to dismiss), a new, very subtle popover at the top of the screen, that disappears after a couple of seconds, or not at all.
There is also a way to see all your notifications by swiping down from the top of the screen. This is a handy way to see all your texts, emails, Twitter mentions and Facebook messages in the same place. Much better than getting 20 popups each day.
The notification screen also appears on your lock screen, so it’s easier than ever to keep up to date. The lock screen also has a new camera feature: double click the home button and, in addition to the iPod controls, a camera icon appears next to the “swipe to unlock” message. Pressing this immediately opens the camera, and you can now use the volume up button to take a picture.
iMessage
Another great feature for me is iMessage. Another step towards iPhone users being able to communicate without the need for a call plan (after the excellent FaceTime), iMessage means that when you send a text to another iPhone user, it doesn’t use any of your text allowance, but sends using your data plan. There are a fair number of my friends and family who have iPhones, and texts to them all will now be free!
This has the added benefit of working over wireless as well as over the phone network, so even when I’m at home, where reception is patchy, I can send and receive texts from a huge group of people really easily. It’s a great feature, and I predict that soon iDevices will be able to call each other for free too, when the carriers have been beaten down.
Conclusion
Overall, it’s not a groundbreaking upgrade, but I don’t think that’s likely now. The OS is already pretty advanced, so any changes to it now will just be functional. Siri, which is available on the iPhone 4S, allows voice control of your phone to an unprecedented degree, but in the same way that the last big iOS upgrade allowed things like copy and paste, this upgrade simply enhances many of the features that were already available.
It’s the integration of services that makes it good. You can now tweet from within apps, you can sync your calendars seamlessly, you can message iPhone users for free. All of these things were possible before, using third-party apps, but their inclusion in the iOS core is a good, if not groundbreaking, addition to Apple’s fastest-growing OS.