Maybe the long wait for this brand new OS has somehow diminished excitements about it. We’ve seen these new features demoed by developers.

Nevertheless, having a first hand experience with the iOS 5 today on my iPhone, here are my top “favorite” new features:

  • Notifications center – having all notifications and alerts in one place is one feature that has long been wanting in iOS, that’s why I have it at the top of the list. Yet, just like in Android, I would have preferred to have the quick toggles for cellular data, bluetooth and wifi in the same notification center. Plus, a lot other apps are not yet updated to push their notices to the notification center. Moreover, instead of or in addition to stocks and weather, I wish for an option to have foreign exchange rates and maybe LME prices to be likewise available in there.
  • Wifi Sync – you can now be fully independent from a computer system (either Mac or Windows) once you start using your iOS 5 device, but having iTunes to manage your media and apps is still a neat way to go. Now, you can even sync your device to your computer’s iTunes program via wifi. That’s one less cable system to worry about.
  • Over-the-air future OS updates – this we have yet to experience and find out how seamless it will be. Furthermore, Apple claims further updates will be smaller files compared to the past where it took around 700MB of download file every upgrade.
  • More alert tones via iTunes – now I don’t have to live anymore with the stock ringtones and alert tones of the iPhone. As a matter of fact, I just downloaded Marlon Brando’s “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” and Acoustic Pluckin alert tones for my use.