iOS 5 has finally been officially released. I actually already had iOS 5 on the iPhone for a few weeks since I’m a “developer”. But I haven’t gotten around to updating the iPad. So I updated using iTunes. Couldn’t connect to the server. Looked like the servers are swamped so I waited till the evening before trying again. Still couldn’t connect to the server. Looked like they’re still swamped. Not a good indicator for iCloud and its infrastructure. I got a direct link and downloaded from there. It was pretty fast and in about an hour or two I already had the ipsw file. It seems bandwidth is not the issue. And indeed, when I tried “restoring” using the ipsw and everything went well until iTunes tried to verify the ipsw with the server and failed with an error 1654. Luckily, it went through on my second try and I was on iOS 5 on the iPad. Relatively easy compared to the experience of quite a few users. It’s good to be a techie.
Let’s Talk iPhone
Apple has finally sent out invites to their much anticipated October 4 press conference. So on Tuesday October 4 10AM at their corporate HQ in Cupertino, CA, Apple will make an announcement.
Of course, they will announce the iPhone 5. It’s not the iPhone 4S or 4+ because it makes marketing sense to have the iPhone 5 match iOS 5. And just one phone because the notification badge says 1.
There’s no need for a low-end phone because iPhone 4 will, after the announcement, become the lower end phone. Maybe they will come up with an iPhone 4 with lower memory but it will still be an iPhone 4. There’s no marketing sense in calling it iPhone 4-.
The iPhone 5 will be a taller, wider phone with an aluminum back following the general design pattern of the iPad 2. Although the display is bigger, resolution remains the same as the iPhone 4 because they want to leverage the current existing Retina apps. It will have a dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and 64GB storage in line with current smartphones specifications. But these will not be highlighted or maybe even mentioned.
Now let’s see if I got anything right.
Waiting.
iOS 5 beta 7
Finally pulled the trigger and registered on the Apple iOS developer program. First thing I did is, of course, download iOS 5 beta 7 and the required iTunes 10.5 beta 7. As soon as the downloads completed, I extracted the iOS 5 ipsw file and installed iTunes. Since this is the first time I’m installing iOS5, there’s no OTA update, and I had to update via iTunes:
- Back up iPhone.
- Restore iPhone. But press and hold the alt key before clicking the Restore button. This will let you select a specific ipsw file.
- Select the iOS 5 beta 7 ipsw file.
- Wait for the restore and sync to complete.
iOS 5 generally looks just like iOS 4. There were some minor cosmetic changes here and there but the biggest ones I noticed were:
- Notification System – Instead of the old pop-up notifications, you can now opt for discreet notification banners that slide down from the top of the screen and quickly slide up. To (re)view pending notifications, there’s a pull-down notification screen. Pending notifications are also viewable on the lock screen. And by sliding (to unlock) the particular notification, you directly go to and access the notification in its corresponding app.
- Widgets – The lock screen can also hold widgets, though right now there’s only the Weather and Stocks widgets. I’m pretty sure Apple will let app developers come up with widget extensions soon enough.
- Browser – There’s now “Reader” full-screen feature accessible on the address bar. In addition, there’s open link “in background”. Which means to say open a new tab and stay in the current tab (as opposed to open a new tab and automatically go to new tab). Finally, there’s “Reading List” which is a cloud-based bookmark.
- iMessage – the SMS app is now iMessage. It is a text messaging platform over data that works on iOS devices (for now). It will default to SMS when it is not available to you or the other party.
- Camera – The camera app can now be accessed directly from the lock screen. And you can take a shot by pressing the + button. There’s also a switchable grid to help in framing photos.
- Photos – You can now create and delete albums. You can add photos across albums. There’s also basic photo editing (rotate, enhance, red-eye removal, and crop). I’m not about to delete PS Express though.
- iCloud – Store mail, contacts, etc in the cloud.
- Twitter Integration – You can tweet directly from Apple’s built-in apps.
All pretty good and much-needed enhancements. Supposedly there are more enhancements in the final that were not included in the public beta. Can’t wait!
Nokia N9
I read the GSMArena review of the upcoming Nokia N9 and I was quite impressed. The hardware, as with the Nokia N8, is quite good. The software, MeeGo, seems to be as good, if not at par, with iOS and Android. And with Alien Dalvik, it can actually run Android apps via emulation. Yet, the N9 will be coming out under planned obsolescence: it was confirmed to be the final MeeGo phone as Nokia’s dark union with Microsoft bears fruit to the N9’s lesser twin. Nokia already knew what MeeGo was and what MeeGo will be when they decided to go to bed with Microsoft. MeeGo was even then better than WP7. And yet they pushed on. What’s up with that?
Infinity Blade New Game+
I actually beat Zero Mech and the ancestor inside it a few days back but I wasn’t able to activate New Game+ mode so I had to go try beating them again. This time, I used the cheat exploit: Every time Zero Mech or the ancestor beats me, I exit Infinity Blade, terminate the Infinity Blade process, and start again in front of Zero Mech. Saved time going through the low-level champions again and again. I finally beat them both again and activated New Game+. Now I’m harvesting gold for the Zero Mech equipment now available on the store. This game sure is worth the $4.99 spent!