iOS 5: Best New Features and Download Link [For Developers]

Apple finally unveiled the long awaited iOS 5 on the WWDC 2011 yesterday. It’s a major new release and includes significant number of new features. According to Apple iOS 5 includes 200 new features as compared to the previous release. Although, they focused on 10 selected features of the iOS 5 and highlighted them. Here, we will give you a brief round-up of the best new features.

One of the most important key new features is new Notification Center. Gone is the super annoying message popups in pre-iOS 5 versions. Now all the message will be non-intrusive no matter what activity you are doing on your iDevice. They will pileup in the Notification Centre which you can bring-in by swiping down from the top. So all notifications are always available for the latter review there and can also be selectively deleted.

Another new feature is News Stand that might be interesting for some users. It is a centralized hub for all your newspaper magazine subscriptions. Apple is also touting the deep integration of Twitter in the iOS 5. For example, Twitter integration will be integrated in to Camera, Contacts, Maps and Browser etc. Mobile Safari also gets a major improvement in iOS 5 as the browser will now support tabs as well as a new feature called Reading List to save and read contents later on. Another new feature is the Reminders that is of course similar to the many Reminder applications (think To Do lists) on the Apple App Store.

One of the more exciting update is for the camera application that now can be launched directly from the Lock Screen, and Apple finally allow you to use the physical volume buttons to snap a picture! Also, the basic image editing features such as crop, rotate and red-eye removal are now included in the camera application.

Mail application also gets a facelift, as it supports now rich text formatting, search can also be performed on the mail contents and also now has the ability to flag messages. iOS 5 also comes with built-in dictionary that can be used by all the applications in iOS. iPad users now get the possibility of split keyboard to ease in typing. This is particularly handy for the people that use thumbs to type. There are also improvements o the Game Centre in iOS 5.

Regarding messaging iOS 5 now supports iMessage for all the iDevices that basically allows to send message, photos, video to each other on Wi-Fi or 3G connections. iMessage takes full advantage of the new notification system. iMessage also features delivery/read receipts, typing indication, and push support.

Finally, THE most exciting features according to my point of view is what Apple calls “PC Free”. It essentially means you can cut the cords (to the PC), and there is no need to tether to the PC to setup up an iPhone for example. Also, all the updates will be now delivered OTA (Over The Air) and using delta update technology. That means now no need download a full 400MB IPSW file for just a small update.

As for the support iOS 5 will support all the current iDevices that are supported by the iOS 4 (i.e. iPhone 3GS/iPhone 4, iPad/iPad 2, and the third and fourth gen iPod touch). iOS 5 is currently is beta 1 state and available for download for the developers by logging in to the iOS Dev Center here.

It will be publically available this fall, and some are suggesting this may be aligned with the release of the nextgen hardware from Apple (iPhone 5/4S).

[Images via Engadget]