Apple iOS 5.1 software update
Time for another update regarding Apple’s presentation yesterday (7th March 2012). Along with the brand new iPad, they’ve also released the next major version of iOS, their famous mobile Operating System. This latest addition brings us up to iOS 5.1, and there are some nice little tweaks and enhancements we thought we should update you on!
Permanent Camera Button
If you’ve got an iPhone 4S, 4 or 3GS the quick access camera button is now a permanent feature of your lockscreen. The interaction with this button has also changed, going from a tap to a sliding motion. To access your camera from the lockscreen you now slide the entire lockscreen upwards (the camera starts up in under a second on the 4S).
Siri Speaks Japanese
Yes, with this latest release comes a big update to Siri. She now natively supports the Japanese language. There have also been updates to the English versions, making the feedback more fluent, smoother and easier to understand. There are also some minor tweaks to Siri’s voice recognition, meaning Siri should be able to understand people with accents a little better.
Photo Stream Deletion
Photo stream, the revolutionary way to push any photo you take to all of your devices at once, was a huge hit when iOS 5 first launched. However, admiration soon turned to disdain when people realised that you can't actually delete anything from the stream. This meant that any photos you’d taken on that drunken night out were at home on your computer, ready for your other half or parents to view. iOS 5.1 now brings the ability to delete photos from the Photo Stream, which will then be deleted on all other devices.
Camera
The camera has received a little bit of a makeover for iPad users. Boasting an entirely redesigned UI to make it take advantage of that beautiful retina display on the new iPad we were talking about. The camera will now recognise all faces using face detection and accurately display them on the screen.
Bug Fixes
Last but not least, iOS 5.1 brings a lot of fresh bug fixes that reared their heads in 5.0.1. The main issue being fixed is the bane of any iPhone 4S customer, the battery life. I’ve had my 4S on 5.1 for a full day now and the battery life has increased dramatically! I mean, I'm actually going to get a full day out of this now! Various other bug fixes include fixing an issue that caused audio to drop out on outgoing calls, as well as iTunes Match fixes.
How do I update to iOS 5.1?
If you want to get your hands on this new version of iOS and havn’t already done so there are 2 ways to go about it!
- Do it over the Air.
If you head into the Settings app on your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and select 'General', then 'Software Update', there’ll be a nice notification for you asking you to update to 5.1. It’ll display all the information about what’s changed and will download the update to your device and update itself. Easy peasy. You need to make sure you’re on Wi-Fi for this however as the Update comes in at 193mb!
- Plug it into iTunes
If you haven’t yet adapted to the wireless ways of iOS 5, you can still go ahead and plug your iDevice into your PC or Mac and load up iTunes. (Please note, you may need iTunes 10.6 for this download.) iTunes will pop up a notification letting you know there’s an update available. Simply follow the on screen instructions and voila. Doing it this way downloads the entire file rather than just the changed files. Depending on your device this can range from 400mb – 900mb – so make sure you’ve got a reliable internet connection for this!