Apple iOS 5 Review
by Vivek Gowri, Andrew Cunningham, Saumitra Bhagwat & Brian Klug on October 18, 2011 3:05 AM ESTSafari
Safari, too, has gotten a UI refresh on the iPad side of things. We finally get tabbed browsing, which really makes life easy when you’re browsing - it was the single most useful feature that Honeycomb had over iOS last year. The tab bar is located underneath the URL bar, and the active tab has an “x” on the left side to close. There’s not too much more to say here other than that it’s well integrated, and being able to see all the open tabs at once really makes the multipage browsing experience quicker and more seamless. It’s a seemingly minor detail, but taking out the extra two screen presses really speeds everything up. It almost makes me wonder why Apple took so long to implement it on the iPad.
Reading List ties in very well with the other new browser feature, Reader. Reader basically takes a webpage and renders it in the most readable way possible, stripping all formatting and displaying the text and image content alone. Think of it like iBooks, except for webpages. Getting to it is pretty easy - just wait for your page to load, then hit the Reader button in the URL bar. The cool thing is that for multipage articles like the ones on AnandTech, it’ll load the next page automatically as you finish reading the previous page. It’s a relatively minor feature, but if you read a ton of longer (*cough* AnandTech) articles on your iPad or iPhone, Reader ends up being really, really useful.
Safari Performance Improvements
There's been a trend among mobile browsers recently, and that trend is increasingly fast JavaScript performance. Both iOS and Android have been trading blows for the JavaScript performance crown, and iOS 5 includes the latest set of improvements from Apple's side.
The brief outline version of this story is that each successive release of iOS has improved JavaScript performance. First, iOS 4.3 brought desktop Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine with JIT (Just In Time compilation) to MobileSafari in iOS, which gave a substantial boost to its performance in synthetics and other tests. The latest improvements in iOS are thanks in part to an update which brings MobileSafari back up to parity with Safari 5.1's codebase on the desktop side. For a while now we've been keeping track of iOS performance in SunSpider 0.9 and RightWare's browsermark, and now SunSpider 0.9.1 as well.
Sunspider 0.9.1 we haven't been keeping track of for very long, so we don't have as many results yet, but that will change in time. The other two graphs really tell the story of how Mobile Safari has seen steady improvements to JavaScript performance over a short history going back to iOS 4.0. Again, the 4.3 added Nitro with JIT, and 5.0 updates Nitro to the absolute bleeding edge version of the codebase, same as the desktop Safari. That said, I don't expect things to speed up much beyond this, and though I'm not showing Android results (since the context of this story is all about iOS), I expect Ice Cream Sandwich to bring Android right back up to parity with Mobile Safari's scores on similar hardware.
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name99 - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 - link
It's worth remembering that Apple also did not say, on day one, that FaceTime would be available on desktops. In fact they announced
- FaceTime for Phones in June 2010.
- FaceTime for iPods in Sept 2010.
- FaceTime for Macs in Oct 2010.
I'd say, given the FaceTime experience, there is no reason to assume iMessage for Macs won't appear as soon as Apple feels the time is appropriate. (Who knows when that will be, but it will probably be thrown into, to spice up some Mac related announcements, rather than just appearing silently in OSX update 10.7.3).
The limitation to the Apple world may be a bigger hassle longterm, at least in terms of wanting to avoid SMS charges. I guess if you have lots of non-Apple using friends, you need to stick with Viber and suchlike.
The REAL attack on the telcos comes when
- FaceTime offers a voice-only mode AND
- Apple offers VoIP transport to foreign numbers (like Skype does)
My guess is Apple has plans for both of these, but they'll be introduced at the point where the Telcos no longer have the power to screw Apple over (which Apple probably feels requires a larger critical mass of customers than they have today).
alpha754293 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
How does the new iOS affect battery life?techloverLA - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link
Hello,I own a Mac that recently got the iCloud upgrade. I turned it on and registered a new .me ID just to try it out for fun. Later when I turned it off, it gave me the message that "turning off iCloud will delete all iCloud data from the Mac. User can still access iCloud data with other iDevices." That scared me a bit, as I thought all my calendar/contacts on my Mac will get deleted. I logged on to iCloud.com and found nothing has been sync'd, so I went ahead and turned iCloud off. Nothing happened to my existing data on Mac. However this makes me wonder, does turning off iCloud wipe off data from the advices? I don't own an iPhone, but am considering one. However I don't want to have to delete data from my device should I choose not to use iCloud. Do you find that true in your test? Thanks.
RosiePerkins - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
I think that if you are so pedantic as to worry about mising calls constantly. Or enough to be thrown by the fact there is no 'repetitive and annoying' alerts, then you should either get into a habit of constantly checking your phone. Which you would be if people were ringing you so often that you always miss calls or text messages.You're being rather lazy by expecting a feature in an already highly advanced phone to compensate for you not wanting to hit the wake button. If you are then unsatisfied with the way you have to wake your iPhone now and then maybe you should reconsider ever having it leave your person. This way there is no need for features that would cause stress for every one else around you.
IndyJaws - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Thank you for one one of the most thorough recaps/reviews I've seen on iOS 5 - excellent work!One thing I'll share with others at the risk of looking stupid...I couldn't figure out why iTunes kept launching on my 2 computers for no reason at all (phone was not connected at the time). I'd shut it down and it'd start back up, seemingly randomly, from time to time. Silly me, I had iTunes configured to sync to iCloud, but to still launch iTunes when the iPhone was connected. So...the wireless sync would kick in (at intervals much more frequently than I would have expected), causing iTunes to launch. Clearing that checkbox fixed the issue. Just an FYI in case anyone else runs into the same issue - I'm sure there are others, but not willing to admit it!
mashimaroo - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - link
Mirroring in the iphone 4s and ios5 makes doing presentations on my iphone so much easier. I can simply connect it with a vga connector or a/v connector to my aaxa p4 pico projector and im good to go. I can use whatever docs goodreader or keynote. i can even play games with it and stop staring at my tiny phone screen.