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.
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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.