Chris Gray

So, I took the plunge and updated to iOS 5 despite some of the warnings about errors during the update process.  Everything went smoothly without a hitch I’m please to report, but I’m rather disappointed in what is a major release of a OS.  Just like the jump from XP to Vista/7, one would expect some significant changes and improvements both under the hood and visually.

Under the Hood

Ok, so there are some modifications, most notable the iCloud sub-system and removing the need to be connected to iTunes via a cable. Nice, quite happy with this one!

Visually

Visually, there are some minor additions/enhancements.  There are the changes to notifications which is much better than previous versions of iOS.  But still nothing that really jumps out at me screaming “I’m worthy of a whole major release”, I still think this is more like iOS 4.5 rather than 5.0

Functionality

There are some new functions such as iCloud, Notification Centre, new Camera features and these are all good, but again, there are many other things that could be improved apon, when are we going to get folders in folders (yes, I know about the hack, I don’t want hacks). When will we have support for more media formats? When will Safari get visual tabs (on iPhone) and have “find in page” functions? What about Safari having more settings to control its behaviour such as the bookmarks screen that appears when there are no tabs to display?

Conclusion

Basically, I’m pretty happy and excited with any changes or additions to my iPhone 4, It’s an amazing piece of technology in my opinion although it suffers some draconinan software restrictions from Apple.  iOS 5 is good, not amazing, and not really worthy of a major release.  All in all, hair splitting aside, I feel as though my iPhone is starting to grow up and I look forward to future iOS updates.