Simple Gamer

iOS 5 Upgrade for iOS devices

Apple has released it’s latest iOS version for its mobile devices, namely iPhones and iPads. It’s compatible with iPhone 3GS and up, and both iPad 1 and 2. I went ahead and gave it a try last time, but it took absolutely ages to install. I think the installation process was fine, but restoring everything on to the device took years!

When the update finally did finish, my first thoughts were, why are they so many new icons? Then I realised that Apple got rid off the one iPod icon and split it into two separate Music and Videos icons. Along with that is the Newsstand (where you can supposedly download magazines straight into, however each time I try download something it downloads it as a new app – maybe there aren’t many compatible magazines as of yet?) and Reminders app.

This means that there are a greater number of default icons than ever before, i.e. apps created by Apple that you can’t remove from the device. It’s started to get too clustered, and I would love to be able to remove stuff like Newsstand, Game Center, Voice Memos, etc. from the device since I never use them. It’s just cluttering up my device, and something like Newsstand can’t even be hidden away in a folder since it’s a folder of its own!

Anyway, that’s my negative views so far, what about the positive ones? There’s one huge reason why I wanted to upgrade so quickly, and that is Notification Center. It’s about time that Apple sorted out its notifications on iOS devices, since the clunky pop ups were intrusive and annoying. Now they appear in a drawer that you can slide out from the top of the screen (pretty much same as Android devices) and view notifications there. They also list on the lock screen, meaning you’re not only going to see the latest pop up on your lock screen.

Besides that, there’s also iMessages which works like a charm. It somehow figures out who has iOS 5 and automatically sends them iMessages as opposed to normal SMS messages. It works like a charm, without the need for pin numbers to exchange or anything of the sort. It just works!

Those are my initial opinions for now, I’m sure more stuff will crop up. Most of the apps have been working fine with it except PingChat, which seems to crash any time I try to write a message, rendering it useless!