The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTPhone
With iOS 6, Apple has finally added some much needed call management features to the Phone app and a simple UI to get the job done. So now when you get a call (and can’t answer), there’s a new swipe-up menu that lets you reply to the caller with a message, or set a reminder to call back. The UI is similar to the lock screen camera option introduced in iOS 5.1.
Apple includes a few pre-defined messages like “I’ll call you later.” and “I’m on my way.”, but you can reply with a custom message as well, if time permits. The text for the pre-defined messages can be edited to your liking under Phone settings.
The reminder feature allows you to set a time or location based reminder, which is quite handy. I’m notoriously bad at calling people back, and I have to admit I’ve used these reminders quite a bit already.
Finally, the dialer UI has been toned down to softer hues of white and blue; a stark departure from the darker, bubbly UI that everyone’s been accustomed to. I believe the main dialer view was changed to this grid format to accommodate the iPhone 5, where it resizes up and takes up the whole vertical area in portrait mode. That said, it makes no sense to change this so radically and then leave the in-call dialer the old style, which retains the original iPhone UI look.
Why are these two dialers from iOS 6 now vastly different styles? (Left: in-call, Right: mail dialer)
That’s about it for the Phone app in iOS 6. The new call management options have been a long time coming, but have been integrated rather well in the OS.
Do Not Disturb
Continuing the focus on call management, Do Not Disturb is another well thought out feature in iOS 6 that is incredibly useful if you’re planning on skirting calls. This is accomplished in a couple of different ways. You can designate scheduled “Quiet Hours”, during which all calls, texts and notifications will reach your phone, but stay hidden until the quiet hours end. During quiet hours, your phone will not ring, vibrate or light up unless you receive a call from an allowed group of people, such as your Favorites. All missed events during quiet hours are stacked, and you can review them once quiet hours end.
There’s also an option to enable repeated calls, which does not suppress a second call received within three minutes of the first one. Do Not Disturb can be toggled from the main Settings page, but you’ll need to go into Notifications to set the quiet hours and play with the other options.
The DND features are a welcome addition to iOS. It's good to see improvements to the phone part of this smartphone platform.
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Leonick - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
The satellite images are interesting. You can zoom further in on my house in the middle of a forest in Sweden than you can Seoul, the image is in greyscale for some reason but you get fairly close and it's also fairly recent. (A shame the road that goes by the house doesn't have a name or can be found with search even though the road itself is on the map.)Another interesting thing that I noticed while looking around is that at least here in Sweden Apple seem to have a lot more current imagery than Google or even Eniro (local service) does (Eniro seem to mostly have the same as Google though). In Kalmar, a moderately sized city on the south eastern coast a bridge was constructed over the railroad about 2-3 years ago, in Google Maps there are just two piles of sand on both sides where the bridge will be, in Apples imagery the bridge is there.
Spoelie - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Wouldn't it be swell for Google to now sue Apple over mundane features like dropping a pin in their maps app? Sweet vengeance over Apple suing OEMs over the bounce animation or showing a menu while tapping on numbers, ...Not that I agree with such practices, but at least it would balance things out ;)
yticolev - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
If I'm not mistaken, the push pin in the Maps app is Apple developed, not Google. The entire Maps app used an Apple interface with Google data.welltoldtales - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"one of the new OSes have done a great job of dealing with the problem of displaying content from two applications at once"I know people will rip me for saying this, but the Blackberry Playbook actually does THE best job of multitasking. Having used on with my work I attempted to use a 3rd gen iPad and simply couldn't handle the lack of multitasking. Same with an ASUS Transformer.
steven75 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Do you know about the multitouch gestures? Most iPad users do not, but they are indispensable for multitasking.faizoff - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
There seems to be many people unhappy with the native maps app. I read about it yesterday in many forums but today many news sites seem to be reporting it as well.Heck BusinessInsider has a step by step guide to get the website google maps on your home screen.
http://www.businessinsider.com/get-google-maps-bac...
Conficio - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
"and at present it [Google] literally is the 9000 pound gorilla for maps."That is only true if the Google maps can connect to the Google servers. If that connection is not there a 5 year old navigation device with no updates beats it hands down.
Flying Goat - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Have you played with Google maps offline mode? I haven't, but it may be handy, assuming you plan in advance, of course.chinkgai - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
i'm not sure i like his writing style. he doesn't seem as concise as the other writers here.marioyohanes - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Brian, you might wanna check Siri again in international location, I'm pretty sure Dubai will works just great now. From my experience in Jakarta Indonesia, last week I couldn't ask Siri for anything related to location based questions. However, yesterday, as iOS 6 officially launched, I can even ask Siri for nearest dentist and it even listing nearest food stall with delivery option. I'm very overwhelmed with how good Siri is righ now, for the first time, my investment in 4S paid off :)