iOS 5: The Top 10 New Features - Gizmodo

iOS 5: The Top 10 New Features

Jesus Diaz — The new iOS 5 is here. It is a "major release", according to Apple. It brings revamped notifications and more than 200 new features for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. These are the top ten. Updating live.

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Notifications

The first big feature is notifications. At last, Apple will get rid of the annoying popups that break your flow, replacing it with a new app called notification center. It's very similar to Mobile Notifier, the iOS notification app—which makes sense, since Apple hired its developer a while back. It not only includes app notification, but mini-widgets that show live information from apps like Weather and apps.

The notifications extend to the lock screen too, so you can see more stuff right away without unlocking your phone. Sliding your finger on it will automatically lead you to the app that generated that notification.

It looks very straightforward and useful.

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Newsstand

Apple has built a virtual newsstand right onto iOS 5, very similar to the iBooks app but exclusively for magazines and periodicals. It looks like a cross between iBooks and a folder view, actually.

Twitter integration everywhere

iOS 5 will have Twitter integration everywhere. Apps like camera will be able to directly post the image to Twitter. The YouTube App, Safari or even Maps will support direct sharing in Twitter. It also adds a new Twitter address field to your Contacts application.

A new Safari

Safari has been revamped with new features. Reader will allow you to reformat a site on the fly, taking out ads and reformatting text so it looks better on your iPad or iPhone screen.

This feature flows into Reading List, which is a way to save those pages for later offline viewing, keeping them synchronized between all your iOS devices and Lion. Presumably via iCloud.

Apple's web browser also adds tabs in this version. Your open pages will line up right below your address bar. According to Apple, switching between pages is "lightning fast," so perhaps they have made some magic with the memory management to reduce the reload of pages in older devices.

New Reminders app

The new Reminders app makes it easy to make to-do lists. The interface is very simple and it's synchronized between iOS 5 devices and your Mac OS X desktop or notebook.

via gizmodo.com