Of iOS 5

The Apple special event October 2011 went like a breeze with people stuck to their favorite gadget news sites following it live(me including, thanks to Engadget liveblog).
There were a lot of speculations, including my own, and I'm feeling really good that most of the ones that I thought of turned out correct.


Starting with iOS 5- I'm just covering up the best ones, rest all you can always find on Apple's website.
iOS 5-
They call it the most extensive software update until now, and no doubt, it definitely is, both in terms of the number of devices that are going to get it(6 devices, not including the iPhone 4S) and in terms of features(more than 200).
Let's shine the spotlight on some of the most amazing new features of the iOS 5 -
1)Notification Center - current iPhone users will really love it as they suffered from the previous notification system where the notifications disappeared after unlocking the screen or interuppted the user in midst of something when they recieved a notification. New iPhone users will have a comfort as they will start of with something revamped and improved. All notification are now in a notification center which can be pulled out by swiping down from the status bar.(Some may call this a rip off from Android, but well you got to pull it out of somewhere). You can also find all your notifications on the lock screen.

2)iMessage- In people's terms, it's BlackBerry Messsenger for iPhone, and quite literally, it is, so basically it's free messaging between iOS 5 users on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch over data connection or WiFi. So apart from free messages, what's new? Read Reports, when a person reads yours message, you get an alert with a time stamp when they read it. Quite cool, huh? Of course you can share pictures, videos etc over it.

3)News Stand- News stand was demoed only on the iPad, but it appears it has an icon for iPhone as well in the screenshots and as seen in the betas(Until now, there was no special store available on the app during the beta stage so it remained empty). Sadly there have been really few number of magazines available on iPhone, of course you can always download a PDF and sync it to iBooks and read in near same comfort but of course the luxury of a subscription, with a new copy waiting for you every time it gets out is something we can't really deny.
So Newsstand brings all your subscruptions, from newspapers and magazines(I don't know if in India Times of India or Hindustan Times will be offering one) in one place, organized. It features background downloads, so you don't have to download again and again, wake up and you'll find your copy of day's newspaper waiting.

4)Camera- 1st up, the Camera app is now available from the lock screen, double click on the home button, and Camera Icon appears, no hassle of going through the passcode or anything else. You can now snap a pic from the Volume up button/shutter button.
There's on the fly editing now available in the photos app.(Red Eye, Auto Enhance, Cropping etc).
There's grid available on the camera as well so you can use the rule of thirds to compose.

5)Reminders- Really nice app, does what it says in it's name, Gives you reminders for anything you want. But what's so cool, a lot can do that. There's location based reminders, One very good use that I found, I frequently forget my license while driving out, so I can set a reminder on my phone to remind me to take my license while i'm driving out of my home. Really cool.

6)Twitter Integration- Twitter itself is very excited about it, expands a whole new market once again, people will be more comfortable as one can use twitter from all around the phone, tweet photos directly, tweet locations, updates etc, all from one log in. It may have much more to it, which we'll get to know on october 10 and 12, when I believe Twitter is holding a developer tea time just for iOS integration.

7)Now, a very important one, and one which makes a big difference to the current line of iPhones, that is, PC Free, Yes, now you don't need to own a computer to set up your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, just start off right away.(There's a lot of integration with iCloud which we'll talk about later)

There are much more, Game Center improvements, New mail improvements, Wireless Sync, Multitasking gestures for iPad(you can get them on jailbroken iPhone as well with a simple tweak), Safari updates(Tabbed browsing on iPad and Reading lists)  new Accessibility options, Assistive touch, Custom Vibration patterns, LED flash alerts. For the developers, there are a host of new APIs.
There are a lot more features, and like it was said, there's a feature for everyone.
Just try it for yourself. iOS 5 comes out on October 12.

It's available for iPod Touch 3rd and 4th Generation, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, iPad 1 and iPad 2.

A note to users of Jailbroken devices - Avoid updating to iOS 5 when it comes out, unless there's an untethered jailbreak available at hand. For those who don't get it, untethered means, you can use your device independently, and when you switch off and on again, the jailbreak remains, which is not the case in tethered jailbreaks, where the jailbreak is gone after you switch it off and on again, you need a computer to boot up in jailbreak mode, thus the term originates, from being tethered.
If you rely on all your apps pirated and 'appsyncd' or from 'installous' avoid updating to iOS 5.
Users of unlocked devices should beware most, you may end up updating your modem firmware(or else called baseband) which will render your device useless.