Apple's iOS 4 Explored
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 22, 2010 3:27 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- iOS 4
- Gadgets
- Mobile
iBooks
I love my Kindle, but I hardly ever carry it around with me when I’m traveling on business. But I’ve always got my phone. The fact of the matter is that devices like the Kindle 2 or Nook were designed for a different demographic than the iPad or even the iPhone. They were designed for those who wanted more of a book reading experience. If you don’t mind reading on a LCD screen, especially a good one (ahem, iPhone 4), then Apple has your answer.
I like reading books through the iBooks app but the selection is just no where near as broad as what Amazon’s Kindle store has to offer. There’s unfortunately no way to buy books through the Kindle app for the iPad/iPhone, you need to use Safari for that. If Apple can compete with Amazon’s Kindle Store in terms of selection, the iBooks app is getting good enough to be a real competitor to the Kindle.
You can bookmark pages as well as keep bookmarks synced to your iTunes Store account. The iBooks app also doubles as a PDF reader, although flipping pages in image intensive PDFs can be laggy at times (the app itself isn’t particularly snappy to begin with).
PDFs sync through iTunes just like anything else. Simply drag the PDF over to your library in iTunes and it’ll get added to the Books subsection. You can search through PDFs and use the scrubber at the bottom to quickly get to a particular page.
Apple even provides you with a brightness adjustment widget in the iBooks app in case your optimal phone brightness setting differs from your optimal reading brightness setting.
Safari
An updated version of Safari ships with iOS 4 but the updates are fairly minor. Bing is now a search option although Google is still the default (for now).
The search box also autocompletes with suggestions.
The new Safari did crash a couple of times for us during the creation of this article but it’s too early to tell if it’s significantly less stable.
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rallstarz - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Forgive me for peeking at your email Anand, but I'd be excited about a fro-yo review on anandtech.... maybe fro-yo making machines, fro-yo flash freezers, fro-yo dispensers...Stuka87 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Over all I like the upgrade. My phone feels more snapping in several areas (3GS). However, I have two big issues.1: In Mail, I want a "Mark All Read" option. I tgets *SO* old having to go through 30-40 emails because I read them on another device. Not an issue with my Exchange mail, but is a major issue with my POP3 mail.
2: I wish I could exclude some apps from multi tasking. Because now I find myself running 4-5 apps at the same time. And most of them are apps that don't need two. Like weather, or calculator. I would love it if I could say "Dont ever multi-task this app". The same could be applied to some games.
metafor - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
"We still need faster SoCs and more power efficient platforms to make multitasking work on smartphones. I say faster SoCs because one of the best ways to improve power efficiency is to complete tasks quicker so that the CPU can return to an idle state.Because current smartphone SoCs don’t have the level of performance needed to quickly execute a ton of extra instructions and get back to sleep, smartphone OSes have to keep background tasks to a minimum. For the most part you don’t have to worry about what applications you have open on your notebook, your CPU is efficient enough and you have enough battery power to churn through any instructions idle apps may be throwing at it. We’re not quite there yet in smartphones."
I'm afraid this isn't true. The only difference between a netbook processor and a smartphone processor is that the former is running off of a relatively honking battery. Having the CPU "finish the task faster" is absolutely not a power advantage.
Let's break down the 2 main areas of power usage for a CPU:
1. Leakage. Here, you can make the argument that if a CPU is active longer, it suffers more total energy that is leaked between VDD and GND. However, this is almost entirely offset and in most cases overshadowed by the fact that a faster CPU (running either at a higher frequency, has more parallel execution resources, or runs on faster transistors) will always be significantly leakier than their slower counterparts. Leakage increases with the square of voltage and as everyone will tell you, when a CPU ramps up in frequency, it will scale up its voltage.
2. Dynamic current. This only gets worse at faster frequencies. Whether you're charging/discharging 500 million times a second (500MHz) or 1 billion times a second (1GHz), the same tasks requires the same number of charges/discharges whether it happens in 1 second or 2 seconds. The same amount of energy to perform the work is used. However, as mentioned before, to make a chip run faster, you'll have to also up the voltage and/or use leakier (but faster) transistors.
In fact, the argument for dual-core being more power efficient is that in the case where 2 cores running at 500MHz doing the same amount of work (assuming you're running, say, 2 tasks that would otherwise be context switched in the same CPU) as 1 core at 1 GHz, the 2-core solution would draw less power since a core running at 500MHz uses less than half the power of a 1GHz core.
You are absolutely right in that the limitations of multitasking has to due with power efficient CPU's and it is a compelling argument for multi-core cell phone SoC's and perhaps even heterogeneous multi-core SoC's. Luckily, we'll be seeing those soon enough in the next year or so.
Matt Campbell - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Angry Birds is a great game - but why do you have both the Lite and Full version installed in the screen shot? :)So far, my biggest likes of iOS4 are the responsiveness (3GS definitely feels faster) and the email threads, which really help on my Exchange account. I read a lot of eBooks on Stanza and will probably stick with that for the short term.
SunSamurai - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
Because he tried it before he buyed it? ;)Polizei - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I love that Anand is bumpin the 50 cent during his Iphone interview. Funny choice :Dsynaesthetic - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Anyone know if these ads show up on the iPod touch 3G upgraded to iOS 4?If so I probably won't buy a Touch...
I don't understand why *anyone* would prefer ads to paying more for software. Seriously, it's not worth it to me. TV commercials are bad enough.
SunSamurai - Friday, June 25, 2010 - link
You dont understand why people dont want to spend money when they dont have to?jasperjones - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
tbh, I somewhat doubt it...jay401 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
iAds will probably be enough to keep me from getting the new iPhone to replace my current cell phone. i just don't trust Apple with that sort of power over my user experience.i dont want ads interrupting and distracting me from my task. i want to get my chosen task done efficiently and quickly.
"If it wanted to Apple could even sell ads in books."
Yes, if Apple wanted customers to drive to Cupertino to punch the iAds team directly in the face.