iOS 5 So Far

I've been running the iOS 5 betas on both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 for a little over two weeks now and am currently running the second version of the beta on both devices.  Plenty of other web sites have been talking about the new version of iOS and have been concentrating on the various new features found within.  There's been talk about iCloud integration, wireless syncing via Wi-Fi, photo streaming, deep Twitter integration, the new notifications system, and lots of other odds and ends.  I deliberately avoided writing about it all for at least a couple of weeks so that I could provide something else, perhaps a different perspective on the new operating system.  

I first want to offer up a few caveats about this blog entry.  

First, iOS 5 is currently still in beta testing and as such it's to be expected that there will be glitches, performance issues, broken apps, and more than a few instances of just plain hinky stuff going on.  I've beta tested software before for various platforms so I knew what I was getting into here.  Unless you've beta tested software before it's one thing to read about stuff being broken on your devices and a completely different thing to have them break on your device.  It will frustrate you at times.  In other words don't try installing this stuff yourself unless you're willing to take all those problems into account.  Trust me on this one.  Besides all that you'll have to either pay to access the developer program Apple has set up, know someone who can get you in, or take a chance on one of the many sites that offer to give you access for a fee.

Second, all these opinions about the iOS 5 beta are mine and mine alone.  I did not set out to test or find every single new or improved feature in the OS.  Instead I've been using my devices as I normally would and this entry will reflect that point of view.

To get the iOS 5 betas installed onto your devices you have to do a restore operation, such as when you want to return it to factory defaults and make sure you're running the iTunes 10.5 beta.  After a restore you can load everything back onto the device from a previously saved backup operation which is the route I took.  I backed up both devices with iTunes, installed the iTunes beta, restored from the beta iOS files (installing iOS 5), and then loaded my backups.  The whole process takes about an hour for each device with the iPad taking a few minutes longer.

One of the new features of iOS 5 is that you no longer need to hook up your iDevice to a computer to use it the first time and the screen shots so far are the same screens you'll see if you buy a new iDevice after iOS 5 is released.  It basically walks you through linking your device to an Apple account and setting up a few default options such as iCloud and store purchases from iTunes.  After that you'll have a blank device ready to start using or restore a previously saved backup.

The first thing I did after loading up the beta was to set up how notifications are handled on an app-by-app basis.

I have very few apps that can do alerts at this time (email, messages, weather alerts, missed calls and voice mails).  I've got the rest turned off.  One thing I do like very much is that I can now see any missed email or text messages from the lock screen.  I've not been using the new notification bar all that much but I hardly ever used that feature on Android either.

At first I was very excited about the new integration of Twitter in iOS 5 but then I found out you need to have the "official" Twitter for iOS installed to use it..  Personally I prefer using Tweetbot for my Twitter duties but I installed the Twitter app just for testing purposes and it seems to work all right so far.  I'd like to see Apple bake in some Facebook integration as well but I'll take what I can get for the time being.

One thing I really like is the ability to customize the sounds a bit more in iOS than one could before hand.  I like being able to select different off-beat sounds for incoming email, text messages, and the like.  It also seems that once iOS 5 goes gold one will be able to buy notification sounds from iTunes the same way they can ring tones.  One thing I need to test is if regular ring tones one creates themselves will work with this new sound scheme.

In my day to day usage of the iOS 5 betas I can say that it's not as stable as a full release product but it is way more stable than I expected it to be based on previous beta testing experiences.  It seems that Apple took a bit more time working with the new code before going wide spread with the testing and that has me really looking forward to the final product when it comes out in a few months.  

There are however a few rather annoying bugs that need to be worked out.

Battery life under the first iOS 5 beta was not up to par, but still better than any other smartphone platform I've ever used, but the second beta seems to have addressed that and I'm almost back to the battery life I had under the previous iOS release.  The first day I had the beta installed on the iPad it lost its charge completely in just a few hours after installing it but not the iPhone.  I don't know if it was an app issue or an OS issue but it never happened again and since the second beta was installed this past week the iPad is back to its usual over ten hours of use before needed to be recharged.

One bug on the iPad has gotten on my nerves.  When using the Smart Cover I have to turn the screen off before closing the cover.  If I don't do that first then when I try to wake the iPad it's locked up on a black screen requiring me to do a hard reset of the device.  This started with the first beta and I had hoped they would have fixed it in the second but it's still there.  Maybe with the third beta release Apple will address this.

Another interesting bug that has cropped up relates to tethering my iPad to my iPhone.  I'm signed up with Verizon for tethering service but since I installed iOS 5 on both devices I'm not showing any usage on my Verizon account.  It still works and I still use it almost every day, I'm just not accumulating any usage statistics for the service.  At this time I don't know which device is causing this quirk but I'll keep paying the monthly fee just in case.

As far as broken apps go I've only found two so far.  The Weather Channel app worked with the first beta is broken with the second and the Netflix app does not stream video on either device.  So far that's it for broken apps which is impressive if you ask me.

I'll keep using the iOS 5 betas until the final release and I'll try to be more prompt with updates as I go along.