Apple iOS 6 review

PASSBOOK

Passbook is a brand-new app that could be really exciting. The idea is that it acts as a kind of electronic wallet, housing your Boarding Cards, Tickets, Store Cards and Coupons. It’s location and time aware, too; for example, when you arrive at an airport, Passbook will automatically bring up your boarding pass.

Passbook could be brilliant, but UK support is currently limited

It’s a great idea and the demonstrations we’ve seen make it look really good. The only issue now in the UK is that not many companies currently support it: Only iHotel, United Airlines, Lufthansa and American Airlines are listed in the App Store.

Provided Apple can get more companies on board – and we’re sure it can – Passbook could be one of the most useful apps you own and an end to hutting around for rarely-used cards or bits of printed paper.

PANORAMA

New is a panorama mode. All you have to do is hold the phone steady and pan up to 270-degrees to create one massive image. It’s very easy to use – just keep the arrow on the horizontal line – but you’ll need to keep your hand steady to avoid any artefacts or odd blobs in the final image.

Panorama mode is very easy to use, but just keep your wrist steady when you’re using it

When you use it properly, the final results can be stunning. It’s a great addition and perfect for those moments where you want to capture something spectacular, but don’t have your camera with you.

Panorama lets you capture shots that otherwise wouldn’t be possible

OTHER UPDATES

There are other updates, too, including a VIP inbox in Mail for all of your most-important correspondence. You can also now make Facetime calls over 3G, rather than Wi-Fi only. There are, in all, more than 200 changes to iOS 6, but these are mostly quite minor.

AVAILABILITY

As with previous upgrades, a big advantage of iOS 6 is that it’s available to most of Apple’s mobile users and was since its day of launch. To clarify, it’s available as a free over-the-air update to the iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, fourth-generation iPod touch, iPad 2 and the new iPad. It ships as standard on the new iPhone 5. Compared to Android with its slow updates and fragmented range of versions, Apple still has the lead when it comes to updates.

The version of your phone impacts on what you get, so the iPhone 3GS doesn’t get 3D Cities, Siri or turn-by-turn navigation, for example. You can see exactly what options are available on your handset on the Apple iOS 6 page

CONCLUSION

Normally we’d say that any iOS update is worth installing immediately, but it’s not so easy with iOS 6. On one hand, the iCloud integration is better and there are some neat new features, but on the other the new Maps is currently terrible. It’s also disappointing that the home screen still can’t display any live information. As it stands, iOS 6 is still very good, but if you’re running iOS 5 you may want to stick with it and Google Maps for the time being.