#oneaday Day 635: Version 5.0

I’ve been playing with my shiny new iPhone 4S for a day and a bit now and I have to say it’s rather nice. While fundamentally pretty similar to the 4, as you might expect, the speed boost is nice and having a Home button that works made the whole upgrade process worthwhile, too — let’s hope that whatever “known issue” plagued iPhone 4 Home buttons is a thing of the past with the new model ones, because having to take 4 or 5 attempts to pop up the multitasking bar was rather annoying.

iOS 5 is the star of the show and, unlike when iOS 4 hit the iPhone 3G, older phones can benefit from most of the features. (For the unfamiliar, iOS 4 not only brought the 3G to a near-standstill, it for some reason couldn’t handle functionality as basic as Home screen wallpaper — and certainly no multitasking.) I spent a couple of days with my 4 running iOS 5 and didn’t have any issues — not heard from anyone who installed it on a 3GS, however.

The best change is to notifications. No longer do we suffer session-interrupting popups that monopolise the entire system. Instead, we have discreet banners at the top of the screen, or multiple messages with app icons on the Lock screen. Not only that, we have a pleasant pull down place to see all our recent notifications and jump straight to the app that sent them. Big improvement, particularly as this also integrates with the new Reminders app, displaying all your most important Reminders first. You can also turn off the OCD-nightmare badge counts — even for incoming emails — and set anything you like (that notifies you, obviously) to pop up with a banner. You can switch back to the obtrusive messages if you want, but if you do you’re a big silly.

Then comes all the voice recognition business. For starters, most apps that include the default soft keyboard now have a microphone button for dictation. Accuracy is generally pretty good, and it knows contextually which homophones you might be using, though if you talk a little too quickly or don’t say your words with perfect diction it occasionally struggles. (For the record, it dictated me saying “penis penis penis penis penis penis penis” at it perfectly earlier, but failed on a similar test using the word “buttocks”.)

With the voice recognition, of course, comes Siri, your personal assistant. While a lot of attention has been given to the numerous Easter eggs built into Siri’s responses — proving that Apple does have a sense of humour after all — the practical uses of the system are more impressive. “Remind me about my gym induction tomorrow at 11am,” I said. Siri responded by setting up a reminder at the correct time. “Set an alarm for tomorrow morning at 10.30 with the label ‘gym induction’,” I added. Siri complied, even adding the requested label and activating the alarm. Okay, belching at Siri twice did inadvertently dial my friend Holly’s phone number, but I wasn’t expecting a “pardon you”. That really would be impressive.

In terms of software, the speed increase of the new tech is very much noticeable in games — particularly those which even caused the 4 to struggle. Final Fantasy Tactics and Dungeon Defenders both run beautifully on the 4S, making me think that this phone, if any, is going to be the one to make big developer think “hmmm… yes.” We’ve already seen a couple of iPad 2/iPhone 4S exclusive titles appear — Machinarium only runs on iPad, for example, while Rockstar’s reissue of Grand Theft Auto III later this year will only run on 4S or iPad 2. We’re also seeing titles like Real Racing 2 offering enhanced graphics for the newer hardware, coupled with the AirPlay feature which effectively turns an Apple TV and iPad/4S combo into a Wii U, albeit one with no buttons.

So if you’re on the fence about the 4S and thinking “hmm, I’ll wait for the 5” first of all, stop it, the thing just came out — and secondly, don’t hesitate. The most accessible smartphone on the market just got a whole lot better. Sure, Android can do more — but iOS does it with grace, no need for rooting and you know that, as I said yesterday, any new features Apple have implemented are in there because they think — and are usually right about these things, given past performance — that the time is right for them to become “mainstream”.

In other words, you may feel like a dick talking to your phone now, but when everyone realises that we’re actually a step closer to Star Trek, shit’s gonna get real, yo.

Siri, publish this post. No, publish. What are you doing? No, don’t phone them! Damn you!