After an excruciatingly long wait, iOS 5 was finally released last week and this gal waited patiently by her phone for 3 hours while it installed (luckily with no connection errors or timeouts – whew!).
The latest version of the iPhone software was highly anticipated by Apple fanatics. According to Apple, it features 200 upgrades “taking a mobile operating system that was already years ahead of anything else and moving it even further ahead.” I’d have to agree. Anything Apple does is light years ahead of its competition thanks to its late genius Steve Jobs.
I won’t review all 200 features but let’s look at some of the most prominent updates:
- Notification Center: The notification center can now be customized to display what you want – weather, stocks, Tweets, Facebook updates, etc. While the device is in lock mode, you’ll be able to view your latest updates from your apps and various social networks
- iMessage: This is a personal favorite. Text messaging from iPhone to iPhone is now free as long as you have a connection. iMessage texts are shown in blue and regular texts (not on the iMessage system or from other phones) are in green. iMessage allows you to quickly share videos, photos, files etc across the network and if you have a large base of iPhone users as friends and family you can cancel your unlimited texting plan and save some money.
- Reminders: No need to download any other reminder app. Reminders are now built in and can remind you to do something when you get home, at a certain place, at a certain time, or date. It’s pretty awesome and fairly simple to set up and use.
- Twitter Integration: With the new software, you can now tweet directly from various apps, Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or even send a map. It is still not integrated into every app on the app store but I’ve seen it slowly being rolled out as more developers catch on and figure out how to make it work with their own software.
- Camera and Photos: While the camera has none of the cool features of the iPhone 4s. This new upgrade will make up for that until you can get the new phone. My favorite time saver is the ability to click the home button twice and access the camera. In this day, it’s all about quickly capturing content and being able to share which is why the instant camera access and Twitter integration works so well. By accessing your camera, you can take a photo while your device is still locked and tweet is out. How cool is that?? The camera is also customized with grid lines, single-tap focus and exposure locks. There are also custom editing featuring that allow you to enhance your photos, control red eye, and crop images.
Those are my top favorite features of the iOS 5 software. Have you downloaded it yet? We’d like to hear what your thoughts are.
