When you have an iphone, you know who among your friends own iphones as well (perhaps because you all have the same message and ring tones). It's amusing how we were all giddy with anticipation. And why not, it's a free upgrade to a better OS promising long-awaited features in the wraps.
The best features of the upgrade:
1. General improvement in speed, transition + wallpaper The icons seem to pop out of the screen more. The transitions between pages (when you scroll to the left or right) is smoother. When going back to home screen the icons have a different effect, like they're popping in from the outside. They seem like small improvement, but they are what you see most of the time so it matters.
The new wallpaper option is just dandy. It also helps make those icons pop out.
(iphone pickup line: hey, that's a nice wallpaper. they really bring out the color of your apps).
2. Folders I used to have about 8 pages on my iphone. Now, I only have 5 with ample space on each page for new apps. That's almost a 50% decrease! All the games I don't play are now cluttered into a folder (2 actually), apps I use for travel are stowed away, the default iphone apps I never use are out of sight, and in general I feel more in control. My phone seems less cluttered.
3. Spell Check, Undo, and User Dictionary When you first start using an iphone/itouch keyboard you worry a bit. But as your brain learns what your (fat) fingers are pressing, you learn to appreciate the keyboard. One thing you struggle with a bit longer is auto-correct.
Somehow, the phone thinks it knows what you want to type more than you do. If you're typing a word and it has a suggestion (which it hurriedly tries to prompt) and you ignore it (or just don't see it) and continue to type, it keeps ITS suggestion.
But now, we have an undo. When the phone suggests something, and you continue to type causing it to accept its suggestion, just hit backspace and the edited word pops up. Tap it and you just undid the auto-correct. Nice.
Even better is integrated spell check. As how you would think it would work, red squiggly lines indicate an unrecognized word. Tap it and the alternate suggestions appear.
Last is the user dictionary. This can be a bit tricky to find. You have to select another keyboard aside from your probably default US-English one. After doing that, you will have another option in the keyboard settings which is User Dictionary. What's the big deal? Well, if you have words that the phone usually corrects (especially non-English words) put it in the user dictionary and the phone stops prompting to correct it.
3. Threaded Emails + Google Calendar & Notes Sync Following in the barely visible footprints of Google (read: finally), you can now see connected messages via threads. It's not as pretty as how Gmail does it, but that's expected. Google Calendar & Notes can now also be supposedly synced (even without MobileMe). Google Calendar sync works on the fly almost real-time and is great. I haven't really figured out how to sync Google Notes yet.
The Unified Inbox I suppose is also a good thing, but I don't really mix nor have multiple email addresses.
4. Cellular Data Off Switch I no longer have to edit the Cellular Data Network everytime I want to turn off mobile internet. There's now a switch in the Network settings that can turn off Cellular Data.
Curiously though, I don't know when they ended it, but Globe Telecoms no longer provides per kb data charging. I reckoned that I could save money moving back to per kb charging with such easy switching, but well, P5 for 15 minutes will do I guess.
5. Multi-tasking You'll probably first notice it when you use Safari. Web pages load in Safari even if you're in another 'tab' and even when you 'close' Safari. When you go back, the page has loaded already. Finally!
I'm not sure though how many other apps already know how to use this feature though. I know it works with Foursquare and Safari. It doesn't work with TweetDeck yet.
You'll know it's multi-tasking cause of an isosceles triangle near the time at the top of the iphone.
Also, when the app can multi-task, if you tap the home button, it will give you a list of previously opened apps so you can switch with ease. If it doesn't work, you go back to home.
Other notable new features:
- Digital Zoom for the camera
- Improved picture importing (uploaded pictures are clearer when zoomed in)
- Quick Search / Spotlight Search (the search that comes up when you swipe to the left from home) now includes internet, Wikipedia, and SMS search.
Post upgrade, I've been on my iphone as much as I was on it when I first got it. It's fun trying to figure out all the new features and trying to make them work. It's a good thing that Apple gives free OS upgrades, even for their consoles. And these aren't just geeky, technical updates we're so used to in the PC world. Consumers actually look forward to something new in their upgrades.
Again, the new things aren't really new in the real world--they're available elsewhere also for free and for quite a while now--but in the ever growing closed almost autistic world Apple users live in, it's a good thing. At the end of the day we're happy that we've been given more choices on how to modify our shackles.
Should you upgrade to iphone4? From what I gather, if you've a 3GS, you're crazy to want to upgrade. But if you're using a 3G and below, go ahead, don't feel guilty thinking about it. Or better yet, get a discounted 3GS and then wait for the iphone 5. You lose out on the gyroscope and the front facing camera, but you can live without those.
3G users have lived without a compass and voice dial (two things which I use a lot) and just a year and a half after the 3GS was released, they can now upgrade to iphone 4.
If you're not an iphone user, should you get an iphone? See, I'm an Apple hater but I have an iphone. As far as I'm concerned, as of last year (when I got my phone) it was the best option. I think it still is. It has the best hardware, pretty decent software, and still the best apps store.
Given a few more years though, I'm switching to an Android phone. I reckon they would have caught up with the hardware by then. The Android app store is growing exponentially by the week and in a year or so they would have already caught up with Apple. This is not to mention that the Droid apps currently do a lot more than iphone apps do.
But I'm also pretty sure that in a few years time, when Android finally catch up with Apple, the evil geniuses at Apple would have already come up with something that makes smartphones obsolete.
No comments:
Post a Comment