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
Spotlight Exclusions Make Your Phone More People-Friendly
As the iOS and devices that run it become more PC-like, so will the options that the iOS offers. The best example in iOS 4 is the ability to control what the Spotlight search feature is allowed to search:
You now have the ability to exclude contacts or emails among other things from appearing in your search results. This is an important feature if you let other people use your phone from time to time and don’t want something sensitive accidentally popping up when your friend searches for something innocent like snowballs on your phone.
The updated Spotlight search also lets you change the order of search results. If you’d like emails to appear above SMSes you can easily do that, just drag the icon to the right of the item you’d like to prioritize up or down in the list.
Another Password to Remember: Simple and Complex Passcodes Now Supported
Security is further improved by now allowing both simple and complex passcodes. The former is just a four digit number while a complex passcode can by any combination of letters, numbers and symbols. You can still configure the iOS to automatically erase everything on the phone after 10 failed passcode attempts.
SMS
SMSes are now fully indexed and searchable either in the SMS app itself or using Spotlight to the left of the home screen. This is super useful but also quite dangerous, thankfully Apple included the option to exclude SMS from your Spotlight search results so you don’t have to worry about any racy text messages appearing if someone uses Spotlight on your phone.
You can now enable a SMS character count if you send messages to friends on other carriers that don’t properly handle AT&T’s auto-split messages. The option is in the Messages control panel and the character count appears near the Send button the moment your SMS goes beyond a single line.
Two Wallpaper Options: Lock and Home Screen
Like the iPad you can now set background wallpaper for both your lock and home screens. While browsing your own photos you can now opt to set each photo as either or both backgrounds.
Calendar Options
Apple is a global company and as such it now offers multiple calendar options. You can choose from Gregorian (default), Japanese, Buddhist or Republic of China calendars.
Large Font Support
There’s now font size control for contacts, mail, messages and notes, whereas in iOS3 you could only specify minimum font size for email messages:
Location Services
Location services (access to the hardware GPS receiver) can be turned on/off on a per app basis. And apps that have used the GPS in the past 24 hours are marked with an icon in the Location Services settings panel. This is one area where Apple’s complete control over the app store is actually welcome, otherwise who knows what sort of viruses might exploit this panel. At least viruses today don’t know where you’re physically located at all times.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
46 Comments
View All Comments
Sazar - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Folders reduces clutter and reduces the number of swipes/pages you need to navigate to :)Essentially, I went from 6 pages of apps to 1, when I put everything into folders, labelled correctly. It takes a little getting used to and it is definitely a little different, but reducing clutter == props from me.
Nehemoth - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
In the calendar I do not understand why apple (or any other big player in the smartphone area) don't allow calendar information to be added.For example, I live in Dominican Republic, we have a lot of not-working days in the year, so would be amazing if we can find a way in which we tell to the apple calendar which are those days, more amazing even would be if for example we have the option so those days the alarm doesn't sound as is expected the normal days.
wittaker25 - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Just use google sync to get google calendar on your phone. You can mark off-days through google calendar. Works with my ipod touch.mathias_mm - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
You can probably find a feed somewhere on the net that has those in it - i know it exists for Denmark, which is all i need.I have no idea if this calendar is any good (I searched for dominican republic holidays ical feed on Google):
webcal://ical.mac.com/horacio.vicioso/Efemerides%20Rep%C3%BAblica%20Dominicana.ics
So, you take that link and paste it into your phone. This has to be done in a weird spot, i think it's inside the mail art of settings where you tap add account, and you can then choose calendar. Then the phone will add all the dates from that feed into the calendar app. Any changes done in the feed will also be updated on your end.
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
You forgot to mention when listing supported devices that iOS 4 is available for 2nd and 3rd gen iPod Touch as well. What's more, it's free. As an iPod Touch owner this is one of the most important aspects of iOS 4. Device fragmentation may be getting worse with the introduction of the iPad and now iPhone 4, but at least OS fragmentation is being addressed.Hopefully, you'll be able to run some performance comparisons between iOS 3.1.3 on the iPhone 3GS and quite important for those users, iPhone 3G.
dumpsterj - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
why wont they bring this stuff to verizon ? im using an almost 2 year old samsung omnia. Im waiting out to see what windows phone 7 brings to the table (im a zune guy). I would seriously consider switching to the ipod/iphone ecosystem if they would bring it to verizon. However , after spending time with a friend who had att , his phone cut out all the damn time while my old omnia and vzw had no problem. Ill never use ATTCiNcH - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I don't really get the test with multitasking and the conclusions that were made concerning battery life. If you are doing two expensive tasks at the same time, it will of course drain the battery. With Pandora running in the background, you get about a fifth less of time for web browsing (either 3G or WiFi). Isn't that reasonable? I mean someone has to decode audio.. and according to the specs, the iPhone can do so for about 40 hours and not an infinite amount of time.vol7ron - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
"...when you return to the home screen you’ll actually end up in the last folder you were in. Hit the home button a second time to actually get to the home screen. I suspect this is a bug that Apple will fix however."I have not upgraded yet, but I could see this as a good thing, rather than a bug. With a JB iOS, there is an app called Categories, that provides the folder functionality. It performs how you would like: you go to an app, when you hit the home button, it takes you back home, not back to the folder.
I'm not a fan of that. One of my folders is "websites" or "print," which house apps from websites (eBay, Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, etc) or journal apps (Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, RSS Reader, TechCrunch, etc), respectively. If I'm getting my daily reading in, it's annoying to have to keep re-opening the folder. The same would be true if you're in a mood to play games. I'd be more likely to go from game to game.
I could also see this feature having benefits. If you put all your primary apps in a folder, then essentially you could create a home screen folder, thereby negating the need to go to the actual home screen. What I hope to happen is that the Springboard will be filled with folders, instead of apps. I may also hope to put folders inside of folders.
vol7ron
solipsism - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
I'm with you. I can see Anand and/or Brian's point on the matter as a personal preference, but the best method is to have a folder remain open until the user chooses to close it.If you need to get out of the folder quickly just hit the Home button again or hit anywhere outside the folder, but if you need to get back to the folder constantly it can be annoying to flip pages, open the folder and then click another app.
Sazar - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - link
Yah, I see their point but I have had no problems navigating in folders right now.I can still get back to the home-page, with an extra click, but it sure as heck beats the swiping from side to side to get to what I wanted before.
Still getting used to it.