Apple iOS 4 Review

Apple iOS 4 Review

After more than a month of waiting, the iOS 4 update has finally landed for our iDevices. If you haven’t updated your phone already, take a break from reading this and go to iTunes on your computer and install the new update on your iPhone 3GS, 3G or the iPod Touch third or second generation. Because today, we are not going to tell whether the latest update for the iOS devices is worth downloading or not; the fact that it’s great is given. We are just going to describe some of the new features that it brings in and it would be that much more easier to understand for you if you have a device ready with you, full updated as you read this. So, let us begin.

(From hereon, whenever we mention the iPhone, we are talking about the iOS devices excluding the iPad, unless mentioned specifically otherwise).

Multitasking:

After three years of coming up with its first iPhone, Apple has finally implemented multitasking in its mobile operating system. However, unlike Apple’s desktop version, it works in a slightly different way. Apple prioritized device performance and battery life, which meant traditional means of multitasking could not be applied. In Apple’s implementation, apps do not continue to run when they go in background. They merely suspend their activity until they are called back again. With a little something called Fast App Switching, applications are able to save their state and resume from that exact point where they stopped. If it is a game, it will even give you a little countdown before it starts again. Of course, the way the app resumes is completely dependent on how the developer implements the feature in his apps. Yes, multitasking on the iOS 4 is application dependent and if the developer does not take the effort to take advantage of the new API’s that Apple is providing him then resuming that particular app would be no different than starting it from scratch.

Switching between apps on the iPhone can be done by double tapping the home button. I prefer this method to the press and hold method that other mobile platforms such as Symbian or Android implement. I’d rather press a button twice, thrice even if required but I hate having to press and hold, waiting for something to happen. Of course this also means that you can no longer assign a particular task to be performed when you double tap the home button as before (this function is still available though to iPhone 3G and iPod touch second generation devices as they lack multitasking).

When you double tap the Home button, the screen slides up, revealing a row of icons. These are the apps that are running in the background. You can swipe right to see more icons. However, we would have preferred if instead of arranging the icons horizontally and then swiping through them continuously, which can be quite tiring if a lot of them are running simultaneously (which is quite likely to happen), the icons had instead been stacked vertically in a grid, so they would have been quicker to access.

You can quit and application if you want to. Just press and hold and then the icons will start to wiggle and a minus sign will appear on them.

When you double tap to bring up the screen of running apps, the first screen that is shown is actually the second screen. The first screen is permanently assigned to the iPod application and the music playback keys. Also something that I’ve been wanting ever since I started using an iPhone: an orientation lock switch. The iPhone or iPod touch may not have a hardware button like the iPad, but this software switch is also good enough. However, unlike the iPad’s switch it cannot lock the display in any orientation but just portrait mode. Unfortunately, the orientation lock switch is not available for the iPhone 3G and iPod touch second generation users, which is just ridiculous. Apple could have easily put that option somewhere in the settings menu and it would have still been fine compared to not having it at all.

Finally, there are the music keys, which actually can be used for any application that may be playing audio at the moment and not just the iPod player. They are quite handy, however, as I mentioned before, if you are not near the first group of apps on the multitasking row, you will have to swipe several times before you can reach them. The icon for the iPod app is also found here, which I thought was a bit unnecessary as the icon is already present in the list of running applications when the music is playing.

Another weird thing is that the row of icons in the multitasking tray only appear in portrait mode. So, if you rotate the phone in landscape orientation the icons do not rotate.

Unfortunately, multitasking is not available on iPhone 3G and iPod touch second generation. This is kind of a bummer for a lot of people out there. I’m sure both these devices could have pulled it off and even though the experience wouldn’t have been as smooth as on the 3GS or the third generation iPod touch. But that’s the thing with Apple; it’s all about the experience.