Apple iOS 4 review: Getting there

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.

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.