12:22
What Gadgets
Introduction
iPhone 4 launch day came and went and Number Four has taken over. Today, as the dust settles, we hope to move away from the hype and take a clear-headed look at what’s new in the iOS4. No, this isn’t a full-featured iPhone 4 review, nor is it intended to introduce you to the OS basics.
Apple iOS 4
Instead we’ll stick to the new stuff. And Apple promised lots of that: multitasking, homescreen wallpapers, a revamped email app, and more. Here is our brief scoop on all the new stuff and all that’s still missing.
What’s new:
- Homescreen wallpapers
- Folder organization of the homescreen icons
- Multitasking and fast app switching
- Google/Wikipedia search in Spotlight
- Bluetooth keyboard pairing support
- SMS character counter
- SMS search
- Email threading
- Unified Email inbox
- Email archiving is now available when you setup Gmail
- Spell checker
- iPod music player can now create, edit and delete playlists
- 5x digital zoom in still camera
- Touch-focus in video capture (for video enabled iPhones)
- Keyboard layouts span over QWERTY, QWERTZ, and AZERTY
- Minor icon design facelifts
- Video call support (only in iPhone 4 and only over Wi-Fi)
- iBooks e-book and PDF reader
What’s still missing:
- No Flash support in the web browser
- No true multitasking for all applications
- iOS4 for iPhone 3G has limited new feature set
- Poor performance on iPhone 3G
- No quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or 3G
- No social networking integration
- No info widgets on lockscreen or homescreen
- SMS tones are still not customizable
- No mass mark emails as read
- No proper file browser or access to the file system
- No USB mass storage mode
- No vibration feedback when touching the screen
- No Bluetooth file transfers to other mobile phones
- Contacts lack a swipe-to-delete or mass delete feature
- No SMS/MMS delivery notifications
- No smart dialing (but Spotlight is a somewhat of a substitute)
- No DivX or XviD video support and no official third-party application to play that
- The whole iPhone is too dependent on iTunes - you cannot add the same type of content (video, photos, apps) to the phone from two computers, a regular file management interface would have been much better
With the iPhone it’s never about what the phone can or cannot do. The iOS 4 however seems finally determined to catch up with most of the today’s smartphones. You’re not to expect miracles though – such as a file browser, USB mass storage mode, web Flash support, and other stuff that seems irrelevant to Apple.
Anyway, we’ve tested iOS 4 on both an iPhone 3GS and a 3G. It’s worth noting that a lot of the new features aren’t available on the now discontinued iPhone 3G. Worse yet, the iOS 4 is heartbreakingly slow on the 3G. We somehow feel though that the average iPhone user is way more likely to go straight to Number Four than bother install the latest OS on an older device. Or at least that’s what Apple would prefer.
Anyway, it’s time to start our iOS 4 tour.
User interface 101
Homescreen wallpaper
Turning on the iPhone 3GS with the new iOS 4 ported, reveals the usual menu layout but the first thing to notice is the homescreen wallpaper. Yes, we knew it will be there, we’ve seen it on jailbroken devices, but it’s still kinda cool to finally see it official. Apple at last have the one thing that should have been there from the very beginning.
The homescreen with wallpaper
But let us start here on the positive side. There are 27 pre-installed wallpapers which you can set on both the lockscreen and homescreen. At least half of them are really nice and colorful too.
Setting wallpaper
The homescreen scrolling is fluid and the animation looks good, as it should. You can also set a custom picture – move and scale options are available too.
Setting a custom wallpaper
On an iPhone 3G is where it gets ugly. As you may already know, the iPhone 3G didn’t get the wallpaper treatment – supposedly because of the allegedly unsatisfying scrolling animations. We don’t know, but jailbroken phones have long had that option and they never looked unsatisfyingly slow to us. You even have the option to run a video as a background – now how cool is that? We’ll tell you – too cool for Apple.
By the way, over at our blog you can read all about our unfortunate experience of running the Gold Release Candidate of the iOS 4 on an iPhone 3G, now updated with impressions from running the final version.
Folders
The next advertised feature is folder organization. You can group up to twelve apps into a single folder. Check out the video below to see how it’s done:
It’s easy, isn’t it? Folder names are automatically generated depending on the selection of items you’re grouping together. But you can rename folders anytime. The folder icon is also created automatically – it simply displays the icons of the apps inside.
A homescreen folder • opening a folder • editing a folder
The folder animations on 3GS are fast and fluid, while on 3G you can notice a slight lag. Still we are happy Apple didn’t cut them out of the iOS 4 for 3G users.
Multitasking
Now it’s time for multitasking. Just to be clear here, Apple gave due warning it wouldn’t be the multitasking that hardcore users expect. It’s more of a quick app switching than actual multitasking.
To start the task switcher you double click the hardware home button below screen. At the bottom of the screen, a side-scrollable row of icons will display, showing the running apps. You can kill apps by tapping and holding on an icon – you then hit the red switch that gets displayed.
Multitasking interface • killing some apps
Apple’s idea of multitasking is not to continue running the minimized app in background, but to pause it till later access. There are exceptions for certain apps – such as iPod or Pandora – they can actually play in background.
Similar to some Android devices, all apps you’ve started keep running until you explicitly terminate them. They get saved in a sort of hibernation state and are not actually working in the background, so you can have more than 30 different apps readily accessible.
The positive side is the ability to quickly resume an application exactly where you left.
The only one drawback is you can’t leave MOST regular apps do their thing in the background and return to them later when they're done. If they are not among the lucky few sanctioned by Apple to run properly in the background (such as Pandora), they would simply pause instead.
Here is a quick demo video of how managing apps works on the iOS 4.
Bear in mind that not all apps are multitasking enabled. If you minimize a game that’s not yet compatible, later when you run it again it will start from the beginning instead of it resuming where you left.
As we said, the task switcher is a scrollable list of icons – but if you swipe to the left you’ll get quick iPod controls and shortcuts, along with the accelerometer lock switch. The latter will enable or disable portrait orientation lock.
Extended Spotlight search
Spotlight has been updated too – it now has shortcuts for search in your default internet search engine (Google/Yahoo/Bing) or Wikipedia. If you wouldn’t bother to open Safari you can type your search in Spotlight and tap on Wikipedia or Google. Safari will open automatically and will run that search.
The new Spotlight
News settings and security options
Let’s see what’s new in Settings. The guys over at Apple aren’t the kind to let you meddle deep inside your phone but still there are a few new tweaks inside.
It seems the Cellular Data on/off switch is now available on every iPhone, regardless of your carrier or country. It’s nothing new, but it now works properly.
There is a new security option for locking your phone too – you can now choose between a simple (4-digit) and a long alphanumeric lock code. We guess this makes some of you feel much safer.
The Cellular Data option • new passcode settings
The iOS 4 now offers dedicated options for the location services. You can now enable or disable the access of apps to location-based services per app from one central location.
Location Services menu
Changeable search engine
As we mentioned in the Spotlight, you can set your preferred search engine in the Safari browser. The available options are Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Choosing a search engine
Bluetooth keyboard support
The last piece of new stuff is in Keyboards. You can now choose your preferred keyboard layout: QWERTY or QWERTZ, for example. What’s more, you can set the layout of the Bluetooth keyboard you’re pairing.
Keyboard options
There is also limited dictionary functionality. It becomes available when you choose a specific secondary keyboard – we’ve so far confirmed only Chinese Simplified. Then under after the keyboard settings you’ll get a new option for a custom dictionary – a place where you can enter custom words that are off the approved punctuation or whatnot.
Other than all that, iOS4 looks just like the previous releases except for a few updated icons here and there. By the way, the new Calculator icon – it’s a total WinMo 6.5 rip-off.
Phonebook – faster contact adding, but still no social integration
The iOS phonebook hasn’t changed one bit, you’d think upon a casual look. It’s the same as Apple had it back on the first iPhone. OK, almost. There is one thing they did fix after all – the Edit Contact interface.
All those annoying buttons for adding new phone/email/address/etc. are now replaced with text fields. You will never again be redirected to a new entry page, all contact’s details are filled directly on the main screen. Yes, it was about time.
The new contact create/edit screen
What we really miss in the iPhone’s Contacts app is the social integration. Most of the Androids, and even some feature phones, out there have already taken full advantage of enabling Facebook and Twitter right in their Contact lists, complete with profile and status updates.
We really hope Apple decide to implement this in the upcoming iOS 4 updates, instead putting it out for iOS 5 or later.
SMS search and character counter, Email threading and archiving
Steve Jobs mentioned nothing at the unveiling (and with very good reasons), but this doesn’t mean the messaging app hasn’t got any new features.
The first one is the SMS character counter, which honestly just took too long. It’s there finally, but to use it you need to activate it in the messaging settings first, because it’s disabled by default. Strange, isn’t it?
SMS counter • Message options
The second upgrade brings SMS search. The search bar is placed above all your conversations and works like a charm. This was another missing feature that earned Apple much criticism.
iOS 4 packs some major modifications in the Email department – an aggregated inbox, thread support and email archive.
The aggregated inbox (called All Inboxes) brings all messages from all your email accounts in one place. Some may find this feature useless, or at least messy – there’re no account labels. It has its uses anyway and we are happy to see it in iOS 4.
The aggregated email view
Email threading is also enabled and works just like the conversations in the Messages app. All emails you exchange with a given contact are grouped in a single thread. A numeric indicator on the Email main screen shows the number of emails stored in every thread.
Email threading
Finally, comes the Archive option. It’s only available when you sync with Gmail. You can choose between Archive or Delete as the default action in the Email options. If you select Archive you’ll never lose an email. It will be archived instead and available for later access.
Turning Archive on • Archive instead of Delete
Apple thought about users who have installed additional office applications. If you want to open an email attachment with another app instead of Quick Look, you just need to tap and hold on it. A menu with the available options will appear. Obviously not all third-party apps are compatible with the feature – we didn’t get even one to show up in this context menu.
By the way, we couldn't find a sign of the rumored USB file transfer feature that was supposed to be available in desktop iTunes dubbed as File Sharing. We first heard of it a month ago based on a beta version of the iOS 4.
Attachments options: open with
Another major addition is the spell checking service. It works in the relevant places such as Messages, Email, Safari, Notes, etc. Every unknown word gets underlined in red and a tap on it reveals the suggestions.
The spell checker
The automatic correction is still available and works as well as in the previous iOS versions.
Apple iOS 4 review: Getting there
GSMArena team, 25 June 2010.
Gallery displays Albums, Events, Faces and Places
If you use iPhoto software on any of the Apple computers, you are now able to sync your Events, Places and Faces image holders. In iPhone’s gallery you will notice four tabs available at the bottom – Albums, Events, Faces and Places.
As usual, Albums holds all of your synced, downloaded and captured images.
Photos in Events and Faces can be uploaded only if you’ve pre-created them on your computer with iPhoto photo organizer. Unfortunately, you can’t populate them with photos from your iPhone’s camera.
All geotagged photos (saved from web or shot with the iPhone) appear in Places where they show up as pins on a map. Tapping a pin shows a small thumb with basic information.
The new Events, Faces and Places tabs in the Gallery
iPod can finally manage playlists
The iPod player was treated to only one, but important upgrade. You are now able to create, edit or delete playlists.
After you’ve created a playlist, you can add or remove tracks from it anytime you want directly on your iPhone. There is no need to sync with iTunes.
Creating and managing playlists
Yes, we know it’s an option available on almost every other phone, but we are happy to see Apple finally respond to users.
iPhone 3GS gets touch focus in video recording, digital zoom also available
iOS 4 brings digital zoom up to 5x to all iPhones. Unfortunately, it only works in still camera mode. We find it rather useless honestly – at least in still imaging where the camera already maxes out the resolution of the sensor. Digital zooming usually makes much more sense in video recording.
Digital zoom
Anyway, the camcorder has touch focus in video capture enabled instead. It works before and during the actual video recording. This lets you quickly focus on the objects of interest and helps minimize the blurry clips.
Apple obviously decided to stick to manual focus instead of implementing the continuous auto-focus we saw in the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. But this has its pros – you won’t rely on the automatic algorithm and hope it will focus on the right spot, but make sure focus is locked where you want it with a single tap.
Under iOS 4, the shot-to-shot time in the 3GS camera seems to improve – it’s nearly twice as fast as before. Unfortunately, the iPhone 3G is a different story – the shot-to-shot time is almost doubled.
Connectivity – connect a Bluetooth keyboard
Apple has added support for pairing a Bluetooth keyboard with your iPhone. It’s very easy and takes only a few taps.
Depending on what keyboard you have connected, you can choose its default language and layout from the keyboard menu (Settings – General – Keyboard).
Hardware keyboard options
Final words
We hope this is enough to keep you warm while you’re waiting on our full iPhone 4 review. We’ve covered most of the new software stuff available on iPhone 3G and 3GS but the iPhone 4 brings about even more new features – HD video recording, video calls, a three-axis gyro sensor, LED flash, etc.
Back to our story, the iOS 4 is a step in the right direction. It’s by no means revolutionary, compared to what contemporary smartphones can do. But it finally brings some long overdue features like homescreen wallpapers, accelerometer lock, multitasking, SMS search and character counter, threaded email, a common email inbox, iPod playlist management, etc.
There are still things missing though – tighter social networks integration, richer lockscreen functionality, dropdown with quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other features, and even custom SMS tones, if you like.
The iPhone is what it is. No other phone could’ve gotten away with omitting features that everyone takes for granted. So, where do we go from a Number Four that has so much to offer? We’re curious to know. It won’t be long we hope. And by the way, applicants for the next iPhone killer are welcome again.
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