Apple iOS 5 review

Follow this link for our full Apple iPhone 4S review – with photo and video comparisons to the previous model, plus benchmarks and Siri tested.

The iOS operating system has been steadily updated ever since the original iPhone was launched. iOS 5 is one of the biggest updates Apple has released, and unlike early upgrades, is free to download via iTunes. The iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (as of now) will ship with iOS 5 pre-installed, as will the 4th generation iPod Touch. Owners of the iPhone 3GS, 4, iPad and 3rd-gen iPod Touch can download the update free via iTunes 10.5.

One of the main grumbles about iOS devices is that they require a connection to PC or Mac before you can use them. iOS 5 changes all that. You can start using the iPhone 4S straight out of the box, creating an Apple account if you don’t already have one. Future updates to iOS can be downloaded via Wi-Fi straight to the device, so there’s no need to involve a computer at all.

In tandem with the release iOS 5 Apple has launched iCloud in the UK. This is best thought of as an internet version of iTunes which lets you store all your music, photos, videos on Apple’s servers, plus backup your settings. iCloud is another service that removes the PC from the equation, but it also brings benefits to the PC and Mac, since it provides a way to sync your device via Wi-Fi.

Annoyingly, you have to plug your iPhone into a power source before synching, and the PC or Mac has to be on the same Wi-Fi network as the iOS device. The good news is that all your content automatically synchronised across all your iOS devices (and iTunes on your computer) automatically, including music, photos, apps, documents, calendars and contacts. Email can also be synchronised, but only if you have an @me.com address. You can create a free account in the settings menu. The iCloud service is free if you can live with 5GB of storage space, but this won’t be enough for most users. An additional 10GB costs £14 per year (or 20GB for £28). 50GB of storage will set you back £70 per year.

In order to use iCloud on a PC or laptop, you’ll need to download the iCloud Control Panel for Windows from Apple’s website. Without this add-on, you won’t see photos and videos from the new Photo Stream on your computer, nor calendars and contacts. For calendars, Outlook 2007 or later is required.

Siri
One of the main new features – albeit one that’s only available on the iPhone 4S – is Siri. This improves immensely on the capabilities of the iPhone 4’s voice command facility, which wasn’t very accurate, or useful. In combination with other new features in iOS 5 this ‘intelligent assistant’ can set reminders, send emails and text messages, make calls, wake you up in the morning, answer maths problems and more. Siri works with almost all the built-in apps (not Twitter, though), so you can ask it to find a weather forecast, read out a text message, find information on the internet and start a timer. It’s particularly useful for the blind and visually impaired, but also a time saver for everyone. For example, you can say to Siri, “Send a message to my brother” and it will ask which contact details you want to use after bringing up your brother’s name on the screen. Equally, you can say, “Set a reminder for Dad’s birthday on 29th February”, and it will put this in your calendar.

Unfortunately, it’s currently in Beta, which means it can’t answer certain questions in the UK. For instance, it can only look for businesses, maps and traffic information in the US at the moment. Until Apple strikes a deal with a UK-based information provider, British owners will have to wait. In our tests Siri struggled with regional accents, only working reliably for people speaking the Queen’s English. It could cope with slight accents, but proved hit and miss.

As with Dragon Dictation, a free app that’s been available for a while on the iPhone, Siri has to send data to Apple’s servers for processing. The transcription isn’t carried out on the iPhone 4S’s dual-core processor. This will eat into your data allowance, and means that Siri will not function if you don’t have a Wi-Fi or data connection via your mobile provider.

Siri, in our tests, was able to discern punctuation in our speech, so was able to send texts and emails with neatly formatted sentences. It doesn’t work out where the punctuation should go – you have to include the words “comma” and “full stop” where they should appear in the sentence.

Siri’s voice has also got a long way to go before it sounds natural. We can see a big market in offering celebrity voices, just as with TomTom’s satnavs.

One of the best features of iOS 5 that isn’t limited to the iPhone 4S is Notification Centre. It’s very similar to Android notifications and discreetly tells you about new text messages, appointments and more via a pop-up at the top of the screen, no matter what app you’re runnning. You can tap on the notification to open the relevant app, but you can also drag down from the top of the screen in any app to see recent notifications. The home screen has also been updated to show notifications, and you can swipe any of these to jump straight to the app they come from.

Another addition is iMessage. This copies BlackBerry’s popular Messenger in allowing secure text messages to be sent to any iOS device, not just iPhones, but iPads and iPod Touches too. You can use iMessage to send photos, videos, locations and contacts, and the iPhone will automatically use iMessage if the recipient is also using the service – messages appear in blue rather than green for standard SMS messages. If you want to use iMessage on an iPad or iPod Touch, you’ll need to know the email address that other users have associated with iMessage before you can communicate with them – or already have it included in the contact’s profile, since contacts can be synchronised via iCloud. If you type in a new email address in iMessage, it will check if the user is registered before enabling the Send button.

Reminders is a new app for creating to-do lists. You can set deadlines if you want to be reminded about an appointment, for example. On devices with GPS receivers, including the iPhone 4 and 4S, you also get a location option, so you can be reminded of a task when you leave or arrive at a specified place. It’s far better than the old method of creating an appointment in the Calendar app and setting an alert to serve as a reminder.

Twitter is now integrated, so you can tweet from Safari, Maps and choose photos to upload from your camera roll. Photos can now be edited: you can crop, rotate and remove red-eye. Emails now support rich text, including bold and italic and underlined fonts. The Calendar has been given new views: a year view on the iPad and week view on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Weather app hasn’t been forgotten – there’s now a Local Weather tab which gives you a forecast based on your location, and it also provides an hourly forecast.

A less obvious change is the ability to show everything on your iPhone or iPad’s screen on your TV via AirPlay Mirroring. Previously you were limited to photos and videos in Apple’s own apps. Now, you can see any app on the big screen, and it also supports screen rotation and zooming.

There are a few enhancements specifically for the iPad, including a system-wide split-screen keyboard. To enable it, simply drag the keyboard with two fingers to the opposite sides of the screen. An update to Safari puts web pages in draggable tabs, just like in a desktop web browser. This is much faster than tapping a button to show thumbnails of all the open pages. Yet another addition is new gestures, including four and five-finger swipes, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, pinch to return to the Home screen, and even swiping left and right to switch apps.

All in all, the number of updates is impressive and really makes iOS a better operating system. The smaller details such as being able to use the volume button on the iPhone to take photos make a big difference, while bigger changes such as Notifications bring iOS in line with Android. Given that the only feature not available to older hardware is Siri, it gives iPhone 4 owners even less reason to upgrade to a 4S.