What's New In Apple iOS 5?

Apple has just released a major update, iOS 5.0 in a major overhaul of the operating system used by all of its mobile devices.  We're not going to look at every one of the 200 new features, but it's worth looking at some of the biggest changes.


Although the company's servers have experienced a few teething problems, anybody with an iPad, an iPhone (3G S and above) or an iPod touch (3G and above) can upgrade to iOS 5.  Of course, the brand new iPhone 4S will run iOS 5.0 Straight out of the box.

Apple cuts the cord

The biggest change in iOS 5 is that you no longer need to get your iPhone (or iPad or iPod) to your computer to update it, sync your apps or find out how much room you have left.  All of that now happens over the air via WiFi.

You don't need to own a computer to use an iPhone, and you don't even need to use one to activate it either.  Apple has finally cut the cord, and the only thing that you still need to do over USB is restore your phone using your iTunes account.  Everything else happens wirelessly.

iCloud: life on cloud 9

With iCloud, you can choose which content from your iPhone to back up on Apple's servers, with the first 5 GB of storage free.  For more space, you'll need to shell out up to £70 for 50 GB more.  The interesting part is that you can get to your stuff from any Apple device, including your computer or iPad.  And that includes photos, videos, notes, contacts, messages, calendars, documents, iTunes music iBooks e-books and more.

It's a very intuitive system: users can, for example, send a snap taken on their iPhone straight to their iPad or Mac laptop.  The Photo Stream is constantly updated with your hundred latest shots.  And should anything ever happen to your device, everything is waiting for you in the cloud and can be restored immediately.  You can also remotely wipe a lost or stolen iPhone, and if you want to be extra safe, you can still back everything up to your own computer

Real notifications at last

Compared to Android smartphones, most of which have an extra layer of software tweaks from the manufacturer, the notification system on the iPhone was beginning to look rather old-fashioned, but now iOS 5 has finally brought the iPhone and the iPad up to date.  You can access the notification centre by dragging it down from the top of the screen.  By default it includes weather and stock updates, as well as your upcoming appointments and incoming messages.  It gives a handy of overview of what's going on.

The lockscreen also contains much of the same information, and can also show alerts from third-party apps.  A single tap on the alert opens the relevant app.

That reminds me

A new app, Reminders, is supposed to do what it says on the tin.  It's a large, rolling to do list that has been integrated with other Apple apps, giving you reminders based on a date, time or even when you visit a certain location.  For example, it can send you a reminder every evening to remind you to pick up some groceries on the way home from work, or to buy a magazine when you walk past the newsagent ...

iMessage: blue bubbles

iMessage is a new instant messaging app from Apple that builds on SMS and SMS.  Clearly inspired by BlackBerry's BBM service, which is incredibly popular with its younger customers, we're sure iMessage will take off soon too, especially as it offers unlimited messaging between Apple devices.  Like BBM, it has delivery reports, allowing you to see when your message has been received and read, something that can't be done with SMS or MMS.

Messages delivered using iMessage will appear as blue speech bubbles, but ordinary texts are green.  iMessage relies on WiFi, and if you don't have a connection, then it will send your message using a plain old SMS. 

Photo editing

You can launch the camera on your device without having to unlock it, and the volume button is used to take a photo.  When you're done, Apple now includes a whole range of options for tweaking your photos, with an in-house app covering some of the same ground as the huge range of photo editing apps now available in the AppSore.

You can zoom in by spreading your fingers, the same gesture that's used for web pages, and even create albums on your iPhone.

Safari picks up the tab

The addition of tabs to Safari will no doubt please iPad users most of all.  Web browsing should now be easier, and users can keep their tabs organised by rearranging them.  A new Reader mode reworks articles, removing ads, to make them easier to read.

The mobile version of Safari also gains a private browsing mode which doesn't safe any data about the sites you've visited.

Twitter built-in

Twitter addicts will be glad to hear that the micro-blogging platform is now even more tightly-integrated with the rest of iOS.  Once you've logged in, you can tweet from almost any app without having to use dedicated Twitter tool.


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