Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTReminders
Reminders is more or less a portable to-do list. Once you create a reminder, you can edit it, making it remind you on a selected date (after which you can also set up recurring reminders), assigning it a priority, switching the reminder list it appears on, or making notes to associate with it.
You can have multiple lists of Reminders set up, just as you can use multiple calendars or email accounts. By default, you have one list that lives on the device locally (syncing Reminders to iCloud will replace the local one with your iCloud copy), and Exchange tasks can also appear as a Reminders list. In list view, the app will allow you to swipe between your lists of active and completed tasks. You can also use a calendar view for time-sensitive or recurring reminders.
For those of you connecting to Exchange servers, your Reminders will sync with your Tasks lists in Outlook. You should note that, whether you have one Exchange list and one iCloud list, or two iCloud lists, or any other multiple-list configuration, a given Reminder can only live on one list at once.
On certain devices (namely, the iPhone 4 and 4S), you can also set location-based reminders that will trigger an alert when you’ve arrived at a certain geographical location. The accuracy of this feature is contingent on the accuracy of Apple's background location service, which uses cellular based location calls that are limited to the iPhone 3GS or higher. It isn't entirely clear which level of background location method is being used for Reminders, however the "significant-change location service" state outlined under "Tracking the User's Location" is the most likely. This doesn’t work on other WiFi-only devices for an obvious reason - this level of background location service uses individual cell sites to determine rough location. It's curious that the 3GS doesn't get Reminders, but no doubt Apple is reserving this feature for the higher end devices as a selling point.
For those of you connecting to Exchange servers, your Reminders will sync with your Tasks lists in Outlook. You should note that, whether you have one Exchange list and one iCloud list, or two iCloud lists, or any other multiple-list configuration, a given Reminder can only live on one list at once.
On certain devices (namely, the iPhone 4 and 4S), you can also set location-based reminders that will trigger an alert when you’ve arrived at a certain geographical location. The accuracy of this feature is contingent on the accuracy of Apple's background location service, which uses cellular based location calls that are limited to the iPhone 3GS or higher. It isn't entirely clear which level of background location method is being used for Reminders, however the "significant-change location service" state outlined under "Tracking the User's Location" is the most likely. This doesn’t work on other WiFi-only devices for an obvious reason - this level of background location service uses individual cell sites to determine rough location. It's curious that the 3GS doesn't get Reminders, but no doubt Apple is reserving this feature for the higher end devices as a selling point.
We experienced varying levels of accuracy, and again this depends on the density of cell sites in your particular areas. Obviously urban areas are going to have much more granularity, and rural areas might require some significant changes in location to trigger. Apple's guidelines stipulate around 500 meters as being average, which is about right. Some other developers have done their own statistical studies and come up with a good breakdown of how far one must travel for the location-trigger to happen based on this background location level. If you use Google Latitude on iOS, this is (best we can tell) the same background location service used there.
Twitter Integration
You may not really notice this if you don't use Twitter, but for heavy users of the service it's nice to see it integrated more fully into the OS - the ability to share photos and links via Twitter is a first-class menu option, right alongside printing and emailing.
You'll need to have the Twitter app installed to enable this functionality, and you'll also have to save your Twitter authentication credentials in Settings - iOS prompts you to do both if you haven’t. Once you’ve done this, you can select individual apps that can send Tweets using your account (Safari and Photos are here by default, but expect more as developers adopt the APIs).
Custom Vibrations & LED Notification
There are some new accessibility features in iOS 5. You can now create custom vibration patterns as an alert (even on a per-user basis), as well as rely on the LED flash for notifications. The flash isn't quite as nice as a subtle LED notification indicator for normal use but if you need a highly visual alert system, it gets the job done.
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lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I disagree. Anecdotal reports better antennae reception in the 4s over the 4. Also the internals are almost completely different between the 4 and the 4s.Andrew Rockefeller - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
...but then again, I come here for the info that I don't/can't get elsewhere. Is there really any need for yet another review on a spec bump? What magical new insight could be added to the dearth of info already available??http://lmgtfy.com/?q=iPhone+4S+review
uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Well, reliable comparisons of battery life and antenna performance would be good start.LordSojar - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
It's the Android notification system we've had for years with a few minor tweaks. Wow, Apple sure is revolutionary.Why isn't Google suing them again? Oh right, because Google aren't a**holes... my bad.
uhuznaa - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
I thought Android was "open" and even GPL/Apache licensed? Hard to sue anyone doing what the license allows them to do, really.lurker22 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
Oh please just stop already it's getting old.name99 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
"Why isn't Google suing them again? Oh right, because Google aren't a**holes... my bad."Presumably because Google don't have a patent on the idea. Why not?
Maybe there is prior art? Maybe Google just didn't get a patent?
Either way, throwing out random statements as you are doing is not informative. The law has its flaws, but it's not just a popularity contest. If you have something useful to say about the legal issues go right ahead, but what you have said is not helpful, implying as it does that Google would never sue over patents. To take an example, if someone started copying pagerank or the adwords system, I expect Google would be suing them the next day.
Yann Bodson - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
The music app new design is inspired by the old Braun vinyl players.http://www.wearesuperfamous.com/wp-content/3511586...
cjs150 - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - link
There is a lot to admire about the new OS, and to be fair to Apple, the iPhone has been the class of the field since it first came out.Problem is that the field has raised their game. The rest of the field has no hang ups about making sure their phone works well with lots of software not just "Apple approved" products - particularly Microsoft products (I am not going to start on the Flash argument - lets just say it is an example of the closed universe that Apple wants).
Simple fact is the overwhelming majority of businesses run Microsoft products and in particular Outlook and exchange servers. If Anandtech cannot the iOS 5 calender to work with Outlook consistently what hope is there for the rest of us.
Great as a home phone, fantastic for kids. No better than B+ for business
More positively I really like the Apple philosphy of getting all their mobile products working the same way, there will be loads of people with mobile phones and iPads and an MP3 player of some sort. I would take issue with the idea that make OS upgrades "PC free" is a novel concept. The iPad 2 probably has more processing power than the office machine I used 7 years ago, so the concept that freeing updates from the PC is revolutionary is feeble. The real question is why did it take so long to achieve such an obvious step.
steven75 - Monday, October 31, 2011 - link
Funny because many of here at this Exchange shop use iPhones with our work email just fine, calendar and all. In fact, it works quite nicely.We have our choice of company phones and it's extremely rare for anyone to pick anything but an iPhone. I'm sure that would be different if it didn't play so nicely with Exchange.