What We Should Be Excited About in iOS 5

As you may have known, the iOS 5 was announced in Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2011. iOS 5 comes with more than 200 new features, and the keynote highlighted the best 10 of them. I’ll be leaving the details about the top ten features with TUAW and Gizmodo.

Yet, I would like to highlight the features that I’m most excited about:

  • Notification — Yes, Apple copied Android in this way, and it’s because it’s a great feature. You have all your new items/notifications in one place and no more annoying popups especially while you’re engrossed into something else.
  • Twitter Integration — I can imagine “Send to Twitter” buttons built in every app in the future. Add that to the fact that @ mention features are also built-in. I wonder if it applies to hashtags as well.
  • Safari Reader — the use of the Instapaper can already do this, but in a less seamless way. You have yet to close Safari and open the Instapaper app. Nothing beats the seamless integration of this feature right within Safari.
  • Camera Lock Screen Shortcut — will make you miss that *winning* timeless moment less.
  • Camera AF/AE Lock — simply said: better photos.
  • In-Camera Photo Editing Features — there are a lot of photo-editing apps that offer even better photo-editing features. But a photo editing feature, however basic, built into the native camera app is certainly a big deal.
  • PC-Free!!! — Delta updates – no more 700MB download during iOS updates.
  • iMessage — a BBM-style iOS only messaging. I know there a lot of BBM-style messaging apps already, my favorites include WhatsApp and Kik Messenger, but a messaging app that’s “for iOS devices only” is something you can be proud of, right, Apple fanboy? *wink*

The WWDC also announced the iCloud service, which will enable the much desired iBooks sync.

Finally, here’s the iOS 5 Feature Keynote Video:

I’m really excited about the iOS 5, that I’m a little disappointed that I still have to wait until sometime in September (by Fall as Jobs said) for its release.

While on the issue of Apple copying these features from other platforms, my reaction is: what the heck, I love my iPhone, and these features/improvements are badly needed and welcome! I don’t want to delve anymore into the issue of how those other platforms are able to deliver.

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