iPhone iOS4 Review & Initial Thoughts

While I won’t be one of the few people who upgrade their iPhones to the latest version (iPhone 4) come this Thursday, today did mark the day of the latest OS, renamed iOS 4. Apple typically releases their latest major OS updates at about 1 PM EST, and today was no exception. Having fired up iTunes in anticipation of having troubles downloading the update, I repeatedly clicked on the “Check for updates” button and sure enough, shortly after 1 PM, the download started. I must have been have good timing, because it was soon after that I started hearing some grumblings about how slow the relatively small download was taking  - some even claiming hours. In it’s typical iTunes fashion, my iPhone took forever to backup before beginning the upgrade process.

I’ve been highly anticipating this release of the OS since Apple announced it a few weeks ago at the WWDC. The features I was looking forward to the most was the ability to organize apps in folders, threaded email and of course, MULTI-TASKING! Finally. Thank you Mr. Jobs.

After rebooting my iPhone, I quickly started moving like-apps into a folder to better organize all the random apps I had installed. The process was quick and easy, and I found it to be much easier way to organize and move around the apps than even the iTunes interface that allows you to move apps from one “page” to another. For a company with a great reputation for user experience, that still needed some work. However, with the ability to quickly create folders and move apps around, that became a moot point.

After just a few minutes, I had my home screen looking something like this:

I now had easy access to over 50 applications where previously my home screen would have had a maximum of 20. It’s all about efficiency folks. Create folders by holding down an icon to get the dancing icons effect, and then press and hold down, while moving any icon over another icon. It will instantly create a folder, and for the most part, name the folder what you might expect to name it yourself. Of course, you can always rename the folder to what you want.

Here are some of the folders I quickly created:

While not every app is quite ready for iOS 4 in terms of multi-tasking features, etc, some are ready now. Probably the most anticipated one that I was looking forward to was the ability to play my Pandora radio stations while being able to open email, look at pictures, or check out what’s going on in Facebook. To quickly get access to Pandora, or whatever else you have running in the background, double click the home button twice, and the bottom of the screen will reveal the applications that you still have running. You can even pause or skip to the next song this way – either in Pandora or with your own music collection.

To close applications that you have running in the background, hold down an icon after double clicking the home button twice and you’ll have the option to close down whichever application you’d like.

The last feature that is also very useful, is threading of emails. Finally! I’ve been using Gmail since 2004 when the concept of threaded emails was a first, so this was a very welcome feature. Instead of having 48 RE: RE: RE: emails in your inbox, they are now all lumped into one and you can see how many emails belong in that thread. Click on the email to expand the rest of the conversation that’s going on.

One problem that I did run into, was that after I upgraded my iPhone 3Gs to the latest iOS 4 software, I noticed that ALL my contacts and calendars were gone! I have most of my accounts setup via Active Sync – Exchange via Gmail. After reading about some other users that were experiencing the same thing, I removed my Gmail exchange account and added it again. It took nearly 8 hrs for all my contacts and calendars to re sync with the Google servers, but everything seems to be fine now. Also, keep in mind that you can only put 12 apps in any folder, that seems to the limit restriction.

Now, if only I didn’t have to until this fall to see these features on the iPad. It will seriously be a bit of a downer to use the iPad now until these same features are offered come this fall. As for  you iPod Touch owners of recent models, for the first time you don’t have to pay $10 or $20 for the latest software, so upgrade away.

All in all, pretty happy with the new features.