iOS 4 Review

A week after it has been released, I'm finally ready to write a small review of Apple's new iOS4. I own an iPhone 3GS and installed iOS4 the morning it came out and have had plenty of time to play with it. So far, I really like it. My favorite feature has to be the folders you can now create. This cuts down on clutter and makes it so you don't have to have 5 pages of apps. Instead you can consolidate that into about 2 or 3 pages.

Another very useful feature that has stood out is the multitasking. Previously each app had to be opened up independently. Now you can do relatively fast switching between apps. This is most noticeable with native iPhone apps. The switching between these apps is snappy. With other 3rd party apps you may still get their load screens but it's still relatively fast. Some apps have made better use of multi-tasking however like Pandora which you can now listen to in the background while you surf the web, write an email, or check the weather. Multi-tasking is perhaps the most asked for feature iPhone users have been looking for since its initial release and Apple has finally delivered.

Finally, I've become a big fan of  Google maps now working with your compass. This is very handy when trying to find your way around a city like San Francisco. You can now actually figure out what direction you really need to head in.

While the changes in iOS4 are a lot more significant than what I have written here, these few changes are probably the most noticeable and useful things in this release.

That's not to say that this new release is perfect. I have had the phone hang on me a few times since installing iOS4 and some programs either crash/freeze or still struggle. It is frustrating to have to do a hard reset on the phone, but I'm going to wait and see what happens. A lot of my problems may have to do with certain applications not quite being ready for iOS4.

For now though, despite a few hiccups I do like iOS4.