iOS 5 is now available for download

I recently joined Apple's iOS development program in order to begin writing my own iOS apps and loading them onto my iPhone.  One of the perks of doing this is being able to download the latest iOS beta as well and check out some of the new features.  While I've wanted to write about these for a while, I wasn't able to because of the NDA Apple requires from developers.  Now that iOS 5 is public, I can talk about my findings.

Here is a small list of the iOS 5 features I found noteworthy.  I'll add to the list in future posts as I've had more time to explore iOS 5 and see what's new.

- Customized sounds for pretty much all alert types now:  FINALLY!  It's about time we are able to set the type of tone we'd like for things other than ringtone and text tone.  You can now set a different tone for ringtones, text messages, voicemail, new mail, sent mail, tweets, calendar alerts, and reminder alerts.  The sounds you can choose aren't just limited to the standard set of ringtones or text tones within their respective categories either.  You can now use any of your customized ringtones for any of these types of alerts.  There is also a button for 'Buy More Tones' that will let you purchase more tones similar to how you can purchase ringtones through iTunes.  Along with all of this you can customize a different ringtone AND text message alert for different contacts as well. 

- Customized vibrations:  You can also set the type of vibration alert you want per contact as well.  This is a feature that appears to be somewhat hidden at the moment.  You have to go into the Settings > General Settings > Accessibility section and turn on "Custom Vibrations" to enable this.  Once enabled go back to Settings > Sounds and scroll to the bottom of the screen.  Here you can choose one of 5 standard vibration alert types or customize your own by tapping on the screen to set you own patter, which I think is pretty cool.  I'd probably not recommend getting too crazy w/ your vibration patterns as I'm sure it will have a decent impact on your battery performance.

- Camera: There are a few new features on the camera functionality that I like.  First of all you can quickly access the camera by clicking the home button twice from the lock screen.  An icon appears in the bottom right portion of the screen letting you get to the camera app quicker.  You can also take a picture using the volume up button now instead of having to tap the screen.  While in camera mode you can also access the pictures you recently took by swiping from left to right on the screen.  It will only let you see the pictures you've taken with the phone locked since your phone is technically still locked, which is a nice privacy feature.  To see the rest of the pictures in your camera roll or other photos, you have to unlock your phone.  There is also an 'options' button on the camera screen that will let you turn on/off a grid and the HDR setting.  At first I was hoping you could turn on additional filtering effects through this menu, but none exist yet.  Hopefully this is something Apple will add on in a future update.  Also, I had trouble finding the zoom feature.  Previously you could tap the screen and see the zoom bar and adjust it from there, but now only the options menu appears.  I discovered (and remember reading elsewhere now) that you pinch to zoom now.  And finally, when viewing photos you can now rotate the image, apply the auto-enhance (found in iPhoto) and also use the red-eye reduction which lets you tap a red-eye and remove it (also similar to iPhoto).

- Twitter integreation:  I'm not a huge Twitter user, but maybe integrating this into iOS might cause me to use it more (...and I just Tweeted a pic. See? Progress already!).  You can send pics and links through the usual email/text menu and you will also receive notifications if you are mentioned in a Tweet.

- Reminders:  The reminders app is pretty basic and lets you create different lists for different occasions and has search integrated.  Instead of setting a remider by date and time, you can now create reminders based on a geofence so that when you leave or arrive at a certain location your reminder will pop up at that time; however currently you can only set this to your current location or an address that you have in your contacts list.  It'd be nice if you could manually type in an address at the prompt instead of being forced to chose one in your contacts.  Also keep in mind this will cause your location service to stay on so the app can tell when you leave or arrive at a location.  So far the Reminders app has worked pretty well and I find myself using it more and more.

- Notifications:  The notifications have changed in a few different ways.  First of all they are less intrusive in that pop-up notifications now appear as a bar across the top fo the screen for a few seconds then roll away.  The effect is pretty cool but it should maybe squeeze down the rest of the window instead of cutting off the top part of whatever app you're in.  Second, notifications on the lock screen now build up as a list when you have multiple items appearing.  You can slide the icon for that app from left to right to open up the notification in that app.  Third, there is now a pull down shade to list notifications that is very similar to Android's notification list.  You can customize what type of alerts you see on the pull down shade and the order in which they appear.  You can also have stock and weather widgets display info as well.  I haven't found myself using the pull down shade too often yet and forget that it's there.  I was hoping they would put a widget to easily turn on/off wifi and airplane mode on this pull down shade so that it's easier to access instead of going to the Settings menu, but that hasn't happened yet.  Hopefully feedback from users will prompt them to add this feature soon.

So have you downloaded iOS 5 yet?  If so what do you think about it so far?  What are your favorite improvements and what is still lacking?