iOS4 First Impressions

At roughly 8am-10am PDT Monday, Apple will release the latest iPhone OS, now called iOS 4. We’ve got our hands on the last beta release (dubbed GM, which we believe means final version) and here’s our first impressions.

Install

The install went without a hitch. It’s significantly longer than previous minor v3 updates, but there was no dramas installing it on an iPhone 3GS.

Of note though: you’ll need the latest version of iTunes to run it (9.2). We installed it with iTunes 9.2 beta, but we’re presuming that the release version will be available along with iOS 4 when released.

First Impressions

The first thing you will notice is that your wall paper now appears behind your apps. It’s a minor thing, and a feature standard to Android, but it’s a first for the jesus phone, and it’s a nice touch.

Folders

Folders are new to iOS4, and they’re a god send if you have lots of apps. Using folders are easy: hold down on one app (same as if you were resorting app locations) and drag them into another app. The OS is smart: it automatically detects what sort of apps you are trying to combine; however you can name those folders from your iPhone, at least from what we could see. You can in iTunes though, and it’s as easy as clicking on the folder.

Multitasking

Finally iOS4 offers multitasking, but if you haven’t watched a video, you may not know how to.

To the question: “how do you use multitasking on iOS4” the answer is rather simple: double tap the home key.

In warning though: apps need to be iOS4 compatiable to truly support multitasking. I could get Tweetdeck into the space for example, but it did a full re-open every time. Safari and mail work though.

Other things

I’m still playing with it, but one stand out thing I noticed is that iOS4 delivers a serious speed improvement with the iPhone camera. There is supposed to be 5x digital zoom as well, but that feature isn’t clear. The speed though is: there’s less a delay in loading the camera app, and taking a picture is clearly quicker.

Overall

A lot of the new features have been wanted since the first iPhone, but likewise it’s now nice to have them. iOS4 is clearly quicker, and handles apps better, at least on an iPhone 3GS. Couple the OS with the twice as powerful iPhone 4, and finally Apple may have a phone that kills Android as a serious competitor.