Apple iOS 6 review

PHONE

Apple has updated the Phone App to include a clearer dial-pad, but it’s what happens when you receive a new call that’s better. Now, you can swipe up on an incoming call (provided the number’s not blocked), similar to opening the camera app from the lock screen, to bring up two new options: Reply with Message and Remind Me Later.

Reply with Message sends an SMS back to the caller. There’s a choice of three pre-set customisable messages you can send back, or you can write a brand new message there and then. Other phones have had this option before, but it’s nice to see Apple add it.

iOS 6 gives you more options about what to do with a call that you can’t currently take

Remind Me Later gives you a reminder of the call and gives you four options. First, is In 1 hour, which just uses a simple timer. The other three options are location based and include When I leave (it goes off when you leave your current location), and When I get home and When I get to work. The latter two options require you to set your home and work addresses in your own Contact. Both updates are neat little additions that make the iPhone a more useful device for telephony.

DO NOT DISTURB

Although the Silence button on the side of the phone is useful for cutting out audio notifications, your phone will still vibrate for incoming calls and other notifications. With the new Do Not Disturb feature, you can cut out all notifications. Primarily, it’s useful at night if you want to keep your phone on, but it’s useful in meetings.

Do Not Disturb is a well-thought out way to suppress all but the most important notifications

Options include setting a schedule, allowing calls from your Favourites and, for emergencies, allowing a second call from the same person made within three minutes of the original call. This has been very-well thought out.

SHARED PHOTO STREAMS

Photo Streams in iCloud let you synchronise your images across all of your own devices, but that was the limit. With iOS 6 you can share Photo Streams with other people. If they’re on an iOS 6 device, your Photo Streams will appear on their phone, but you can also create public websites, so that anyone can see your photos.

You can now share your iCloud Photo Streams with other iOS 6 users

If you’ve got an Apple TV, you can access all of your shared Photo Streams from there, too. Being able to share photos in this way is really useful and certainly saves the hassle of emailing lots of images around.