After reaching its fifth birthday, iOS 5 has undergone major changes. Apple have released the new iOS in conjunction with the release of their latest handset, the iPhone 4S.
It’s safe to say that the iPhone 4S was a hit seeing as it sold over 4 million units in its first weekend of sales and on the first day of pre-order there was over 1 million units ordered, which smashed any previous record.
But the question everyone wanted an answer too was; “How good is the new iOS?” Well we have a review on the latest iOS to hit people’s iPads and iPhones. According to Apple there’s well over 200 new features on the new iOS. Don’t worry we aren’t going to list all of them for you, that would be ridiculous and would definitely take a long time to read through.
Notification Centre
First of all we’ll start out with the general feel of the new iOS. There’s a lot that’s had an overhaul, but there’s also a lot that hasn’t had any kind of change. There’s the all new notification centre which has been introduced to the iOS 5. Anything from Facebook and Twitter notifications to text and Whatsapp notifications will appear in the notifications centre.
It also has a new banner that appears at the top of your page when you get a notification. So if you’re busy killing pigs on Angry Birds, or slicing your way through fruit you won’t get interrupted by a big, horrible, blocky looking notification; instead it will be a sleek banner that rolls in and rolls out at the top of your screen. A lot smoother, less annoying and more aesthetically pleasing, we think.
Twitter Integration
The next big thing that has been introduced in iOS 5 is Twitter integration. It has been integrated into the heart of your handset and it allows you to Tweet anything from your phone, so if you’ve just taken a really cool photo, or maybe a stupid one of one of your friends then you can Tweet it directly from your photo library. We think this is pretty cool and it saves you constantly opening up your Twitter application.
Siri – iPhone’s Personal Assistant
If you have an iPhone 4S then you will be more bothered about how good, or as the case may be how bad Siri is. If you don’t have an iPhone 4S then for those of you who don’t know what Siri is then it’s pretty much your very own personal assistant.
You can hold a conversation with him, ask him to text or ring people for you, and he will even set alarms and reminders for you. Siri is sadly not available on the iPhone 4, but there have been a few people who have managed to port it onto a jailbroken iPhone 4.
iMessage – Apple’s Answer to BBM
There’s long been rumours of a cross platform app that allowed you to talk to people who used the Blackberry messaging system (BBM) but nothing ever materialised and it still hasn’t, however Apple have brought out their own version of BBM, iMessage.
This is where anybody who has an iPad, iPhone or one of the newer iPod touches with iOS 5 on it you can all talk to each other, cost free. It leaves behind the pin system used in BBM and it just recognises any iOS 5 registered Apple device. Pretty seamless and very sleek if you ask us, and definitely cool!
iCloud – Free Cloud Storage
With all the rave about how you can store things from your computer “in the cloud”, apple have decided to take that concept and bring it to their iOS devices. This brings you iCloud. Wireless back up, and “in the cloud” storage for all of your songs, apps, contacts and emails. You get 5GB free storage but if you’re upgrading the OS on say an iPhone 4, you will undoubtedly need to purchase some of the extra storage space.
There’s the option of 10 GB, 20 GB and 50 GB. All of which you need to pay for but if you want the extra room to store all of your apps, songs and photos then you will more than likely pay for the extra room.
Last but not least, the new iOS is a massive improvement on the previous one. It’s an awful lot slicker, better looking and it operates a lot better than the old version of iOS. So, it seems that they’ve got a bit of a job on their hands when it comes to the next update of the iOS and we’d love to see how iOS 6 will look this time next year, and yes; iOS 5 is definitely worth the download!
