Thursday 13 October 2011

Should I upgrade my iPhone to iOS5?

We've no doubt all heard about Apple latest iOS5 operating system as part of the press around the release of the new iPhone 4S. A couple of days ahead of the 4S launch Apple have rolled this new OS out to existing iPhone users. We've had beta versions for a while for testing and found it to be pretty good but today I've installed it and being using it on my everyday iPhone 3GS. The good news is that this upgrade was completely painless (just accept that you won't be able to use your phone for an hour or so!) and everything that did work is still working fine including calendars, reminders (these now pop up in a new cooler format!), email accounts, and importantly all my existing Apps and data.

I've only had a quick play and some of the new things (photo features, Twitter integration, iCloud) do work well.

So would I recommend you do the upgrade asap? Definitely :)

For those of you that want to know exactly what the new features of iOS5 are then here you go...

This update contains over 200 new features, including the following:

• Notifications
- Swipe from the top of any screen to view notifications in one place with Notification Centre
- New notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen
- View notifications from lock screen
- Slide the notification app icon to the right on the lock screen to go directly to the app
• iMessage
- Send and receive unlimited text, photo and video messages with other iOS 5 users
- Track messages with delivery and read receipts
- Group messaging and secure encryption
- Works over mobile networks and Wi-Fi*
• Newsstand
- Automatically organises magazine and newspaper subscriptions on Home Screen
- Displays the cover of the latest issue
- Background downloads of new issues
• Reminders for managing to-do lists
- Syncs with iCloud, iCal and Outlook
- Location-based reminders when you leave or arrive at a location for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
• Built-in support for Twitter
- Sign in once in Settings and tweet directly from Camera, Photos, Maps, Safari and YouTube
- Add location to any tweet
- View Twitter profile pictures and usernames in Contacts
• Camera improvements for devices with cameras
- Double-click the Home button when device is asleep to bring up a camera shortcut on iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation)
- Volume Up button to take a picture
- Optional grid lines to line up shots
- Pinch to zoom in the preview screen
- Swipe to camera roll from preview screen
- Tap and hold to lock focus and exposure; iPad 2 and iPod touch (4th generation) only support exposure lock
• Photo improvements for devices with cameras
- Crop and rotate
- Red-eye removal
- One-tap enhance
- Organise photos into albums
• Mail improvements
- Format text using bold, italic or underlined fonts
- Indentation control
- Drag to rearrange names in address fields
- Flag messages
- Mass mark messages as flagged, read or unread
- Customise mail alert sounds
- S/MIME
• Calendar improvements
- Year view on iPad and new Week view for iPhone and iPod touch
- Tap to create an event
- View and add event attachments
• Game Center improvements
- Use personal photos for your Game Center account
- Compare your overall achievement scores with your friends
- Find new Game Center friends with friend recommendations and friends of friends
- Discover new games with custom game recommendations
• AirPlay Mirroring for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S
• Multitasking Gestures for iPad
- Use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen
- Swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar
- Swipe left or right to switch between apps
• On-device setup, activation and configuration with Setup Assistant
• Software updates available over the air without tethering
• iCloud support
- iTunes in the Cloud
- Photo Stream
- Documents in the Cloud
- Apps and Books automatic download and purchase history
- Backup
- Contacts, Calendar and Mail
- Find My iPhone
• Redesigned Music app for iPad
• Hourly weather forecast
• Real-time stock quotes
• Wireless sync to iTunes
• Keyboard improvements
- Split keyboard for iPad
- Improved auto-correction accuracy
- Improved Chinese and Japanese input
- New Emoji keyboard
- Personal dictionary for auto-correction
- Optionally create keyboard shortcuts for frequently used words
• Accessibility improvements
- Option to light LED flash on incoming calls and alerts for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4
- Custom vibration patterns for incoming calls on iPhone
- New interface for using iOS with mobility-impairment input devices
- Option to speak a selection of text
- Custom element labelling for VoiceOver
• Exchange ActiveSync improvements
- Wirelessly sync tasks
- Mark messages as flagged, read or unread
- Improved offline support
- Save a new contact from a GAL service
• More than 1,500 new developer APIs
• Bug fixes

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 2
• iPad
• iPod touch (4th generation)
• iPod touch (3rd generation)

* Normal carrier data rates may apply. Messages will be sent as SMS when iMessage is unavailable; carrier messaging fees apply.