Quality Time with iOS 5: Some of the New Features that Weren’t Mentioned at WWDC

 After spending some quality time with the new iOS 5, I’d have to remark it’s the most stable beta iOS Apple has yet to release. It looks like Apple took their user’s feedback seriously and took note of the key features that other mobile operating platforms offered rolling it all up into iOS 5.

The first thing I was drawn to was the notification center. Before, users couldn’t do anything inside their phone without being annoyed by a pesky notification. You can now customize how and what you want to be notified by. You can select the type of alert, the number of messages, and can have it display on the lock screen or choose to not have it on the lock screen (for those of you who value your privacy). Say goodbye to constantly tapping out of notifications. For example, you are playing your favorite app, Words with Friends and you get a FaceBook message, you see the notification at the top of the screen and it disappears after a couple of seconds. Continue reading on below for more aspects of iOS 5 that were not covered in detail yesterday at WWDC.

• The new default calendar notification works like a charm. You can now quickly go into your calendar, add a new event, time, and presto get out. For people who prefer their reminders to happen 10 minutes prior to the event will now not have to select “10 minutes” for each new event as it now set as a default.
• The option to choose custom alert tones for calendar reminders, alerts, and email is great.
• You can now set a caller ID up for FaceTime. If you FaceTime someone you can customize it to either display your phone number or email address.
• Current Location has now been synced with the Weather app. Something Apple users have been waiting on for quite some time. This will show the weather conditions wherever you are versus just what City and State you had previously programmed.
• One of my personal favorites, is while syncing with iTunes, you can continue to use your device as normal. No more cell phone separation anxiety.
• The call log is also updated allowing you to individually delete calls from the list.
• There is a ‘Sync Now” button which allows you to sync wirelessly to the iCloud.
• The keyboard shortcuts or “Autocorrect” is now finally customizable. You can create your very own shortcuts, so “ttys” will be replaced with “talk to you soon”.
• The Twitter integration is extremely smooth and installs directly from your settings bypassing the App store. Sign in once via your settings and you’re off Tweeting from Safari, Camera,Photos, and YouTube.
• When you Tweet photos it displays as powered by Photobucket even though it’s iOS.
• There is an option to print out from the Maps App.
• Moving and adding photos to Albums is effortless.
• Editing photos is finally available. Tap to remove red-eye in addition to auto-enhance, rotate, and crop.
• iMessage basically made the existing SMS app into a complete messaging service- when you start a message, Apple looks at your contact and checks to see if they are also on iOS 5. Your green text message turns into a blue iMessage. Once you initiate an iMessage with one of your contacts any conversations you have after, will be marked as blue, being that they will continue on as iMessages.

iOS 5 is expected to be available sometime in the fall of 2011. Continue here to be notified of its arrival.