The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTMobile Safari
There are really only a few things that a smartphone OS needs to do right. Messaging (SMS and email), 3rd party applications (with a marketplace), PIM (personal information management – calendar, contacts, etc), and finally inclusion of a decent web browser. This last section is devoted to the iOS 6 improvements to Safari.
With iOS 6, Apple hasn’t dramatically changed anything but (you guessed it), made some tweaks. First is the inclusion of a full screen mode for landscape.
(Left) New fullscreen button at bottom right, (Right), Full screen view for Safari in iOS 6
If you rotate into landscape, there’s a new full screen icon which appears. Tap it and boom you’re given a full screen browsing experience without the loss of status bar and bottom bar. Tapping again in full screen mode brings up the toggle to switch back into windowed mode.
The other new feature is inclusion of an offline reading mode. Tapping on the send/action button lets you send the current page to an offline cache. I have no doubt this leverages some of the reading view backend. There’s a progress indicator under the bookmarks icon while the device is caching pages for reading offline, and it continues on into the background. Going in that menu brings you to another category with a list of what all you’ve made offline that has and hasn’t been read yet.
Another feature is iCloud tabs, which as the name suggests syncs open tabs across devices with iCloud logins. At some level this brings MobileSafari back up to parity with the equivalent feature in Chrome (synced tabs).
JavaScript Performance
This section wouldn’t be complete without mention of the speedups made to Nitro for MobileSafari, which is Apple’s JavaScript JIT engine which works for ARMv7. I tested the iPhone 4 and 4S on iOS 5.1.1 and iOS 6 GM and saw around a 10% and 30% improvement, respectively. I’m not entirely sure why there’s such a discrepancy between the two, however it’s possible that the new Nitro sends things off to multiple threads more effectively.
iOS 5.1.1 versus iOS 6 GM | ||||||||
Device | iOS Version | Sunspider 0.9.1 | Browsermark | HTML5test.com | css3test.com | |||
iPhone 4 | iOS 5.1.1 | 3553.1 | 52557.0 | 324+9b | 459 of 946, 221 | |||
iOS 6 GM | 3358.8 | 57351.0 | 360+9b | 498 of 946, 221 | ||||
iPhone 4S | iOS 5.1.1 | 2242.9 | 86062.0 | N/A | N/A | |||
iOS 6 GM | 1716.0 | 109775.0 | N/A | N/A |
There’s also a nice jump in HTML5 feature support, which I’m always a fan of seeing. The user agent string in iOS 6 GM now reports webkit 536.26 alongside safari version 8536.25.
105 Comments
View All Comments
CharonPDX - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
You state that it's a new features that the status bar can be changed by apps, and specifically call out Twitter as one that can add status messages to it.That was in iOS 5. It annoyed me when Twitter would put a status update in the status bar, because the status bar then lots its "tap to go to the top" function until Twitter's update went away.
Second, you state that the main Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams are exclusionary, an either/or proposition. I beg to differ. My photos still get dumped into my main Photo Stream, while I can have multiple Shared Photo Streams (either invite-only or public.)
The_Kristoffer - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link
When are you going to publish the rundown of Haswell? I've been waiting for, what feels like, forever!videogames101 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I believe a full sphere measures 4pi steradians.raok7 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
absolutely 4s will be better but i think very soon 5 is going to introduce so its will replace the market of 4s...http://www.jupiterelectronics.com/
http://www.steelrange.com/heavy-duty-racks.html
http://www.bajeria.com/
http://www.genesis-gifts.com/
http://www.opportune.in
http://www.fivebrosforgings.com/
http://www.aimaxprovider.com/index.php/magento-web...
Aboss - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Yes you are correct.https://www.bargaintents.co.za
https://www.bosstents.co.za
https://www.cheaptents.co.za
https://tentsonline.co.za