Wednesday 18 September 2013

Bright and Colourful! Presenting a brief overlook of iOS 7

Like many other people with "current" iPhones, iPads or iPods, today marked the day that iOS 7 came out. Not wanting to deal with overloaded servers, I waited till about later afternoon to install the new OS.

A friend recommended that I install a clean version of the OS, so I entered my phone into DFU mode and reinstalled iOS 6.1.3. Once that was completed (made me realize that I should have deleted old apps and songs that I don't listen to for next time so I don't have to wait as long), I went ahead and updated my iTunes.

Once iTunes was installed, I went ahead and downloaded the new OS. It failed the first time, but I was able to install it after the second time. All in all, the reinstalled iOS 6.1.3 to installing iOS 7 took me about an hour and a half.

But it was definately worth the wait. The first thing I noticed when my phone rebooted itself was the Apple Logo. It was no longer the "metallic" (metallic looking to me) looking Apple sign with a slash across it. Instead, it was simply the Apple sign, one that you can find on top of Macbooks.

Like how it was presented weeks/months ago, the Lock Screen was hugely different than the outgoing OS. Gone are the boarders that once resided since the very first iOS I believe (or at least iOS 4). Instead, it's a very simple, clean look. The numbers used for the time is slimmer, but looks just as good as the old one to my eyes. Instead of signal bars, you have signal dots instead. Also, another significant difference is the Control Center. You swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access key settings like airplane mode, wi-fi, night mode, brightness, etc. I believe it was a feature in Android, but I'm glad they put it into the iPhone. I especially like how they have a dedicated flash light button (using the LED), clock and calculator buttons added to the Control Center.

Finally, when you go onto the home screen, you see a whole new change to the interface. I'm not familiar with the other platforms (Windows, Android and whatever else there is), but I heard its a mixture of many of them put into one. Initially, I wasn't too fond of the bubbly like appearances of the app buttons, but after time, I started to like it. (Maybe I should get a White iPhone next time? Might blend better with the white bezel). I haven't tried all the built in apps yet, but I had a chance to fiddle around with Safari. I have to say it's a lot better now. To me, it seems faster, and I like how they integrate the url bar with a search bar. The mail app looks great too, though I think it's a bit buggy. It says I have 3000+ unread emails, when I actually read all of them already!

On the iPhone 4, I have to say that there's a bit of lag in terms of performance, but it's not too noticeable in my eyes. I have to say that iOS 7 is quite the welcoming change for Apple as it competes with strong competition from the likes of Android. All in all, I'm really enjoying the OS! I can't recommend it at this point, since I wasn't able to play with all the features, but I'm definitely liking what I have now!

 iOS 6

iOS 7

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