By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
We've been following the developments of the iPhone OS 4, now renamed iOS4, since the early betas were released for developer testing. This new iteration of the iPhone operating system is said to bring 100 new features, the biggest of which is multitasking or the ability to run third party applications in the background efficiently. We loaded iOS4's GM (Golden Master) and tested it, here are some of the things that we found.
Testing iOS4 on an iPhone 3GS, we noticed that everything seemed just a bit snappier. There's also the option of adding wallpapers to your home screen, while this is mostly a cosmetic effect, it does help personalize your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Double clicking the singular "home" button now offers a number of options. You can, for example, access your music player directly as well as check out all the recently opened apps. Double-clicking also allows you to exit an app (and therefore leaving it in a suspended state) and open another app. This allows switching between apps without necessarily having to close the app fully.
In terms of speed, opening and closing applications is faster and there are now some neat transitions between screens. For example, if you are on the Facebook app and click a link that needs to open up in the Safari browser, you'll see an animated window appear.
Speed is most evident in the new camera software. Invoking the Camera app is now lightning quick as is the touch to focus and photo-taking experience. The previous version of the OS struggled and took time to focus and shoot photos which meant that certain photo ops came and went before you could get a shot. From our tests, iOS4 now has the fastest camera on a smartphone we've tried.
Spotlight search is now more robust and gives users a number of search options. Aside from mail, contacts and applications - you can now search music, podcasts, video, audiobooks, notes, calendar entries, messages. This is the closest thing to universal search we've seen on the iPhone and it is fast, efficient and accurate.
Folders is another interesting innovation in this version of the OS which allows you to drag apps into other apps to generate a themed folder. This helps keep things neat and tidy specially since there are now 250,000 apps on the platform and growing, there has to be an efficient way to organize all the apps you see.
Clicking on a folder opens a small window where all the app's icons are fully accessible. It is neat, intuitive and a great addition to the OS.Folders is another interesting innovation in this version of the OS which allows you to drag apps into other apps to generate a themed folder.
Unified Inbox, which is a mail feature that organizes all the mail in one screen is extremel useful specially if you're the type of user that has multiple e-mail accounts.
As described by Apple."iPhone works with popular email providers — including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and AOL — and most industry-standard IMAP and POP mail systems. Add multiple accounts and move between them easily. iPhone also supports multiple Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync accounts for business use."
Exchange support is a feature that will interest corporate users and firmly place iPhone as a viable option against Windows Phone and Blackberry in that market.
In terms of battery life, we observed that the iPhone 3GS with iOS4 seemed to drain significantly faster than with previous versions. Now, this could be an issue with some of the apps we're running (that have not yet been optimized for the updated OS) draining battery in the background. The new iPhone 4 is expected to have up to 40% increase in battery life, which could indicate that multitasking does indeed affect battery life, it only makes sense.
Apple is integrating Game Center, a gaming message and achievements system tied into its new line of iOS4 games.
This doesn't do anything right now but it is accessible nonetheless.
Overall, we're extremely impressed and excited about what iOS4 will bring to new and existing iPhones and iPod Touches come June 24th. iPads will be getting their upgrade in the fall, once all the kinks have been worked out. This OS will make these devices more capable, even easier to use and smarter.
The best thing about iOS4 is that it will be free for all existing iPhones and iPod Touches even if some of the features will be limited by the older hardware.