Apple has just released a new iOS with faster apps, better security, iPad multi-tasking, and under-the-hood fine-tuning

Sep 16, 2015 20:00 GMT  ·  By
NEW FEATURES  IMPROVED APPS
IMPROVEMENTS  COMPATIBILITY
NEW APPS  CONCLUSION

Apple announced iOS 9 during the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) event on June 8, and the new operating system has been publicly released today, September 16, as a free update for all users of compatible iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices (see end of this review for a complete list).

The new iOS version is focused on increasing the overall quality and on making all the devices it runs on a lot more intelligent.

Apple’s strategy for their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch iOS operating system has changed with their latest release, and it shows if you use it for more than 10 minutes.

With iOS 9, Apple has decided to take a step back and put all their efforts in making their mobile operating system more stable, faster and leaner, as opposed to previous releases, when Apple added a redesigned interface in iOS 7, as well as Apple Pay, Continuity, HealthKit and HomeKit in iOS 8.

While testing it on both an iPhone 6 Plus and an iPhone 4s (the oldest model supported), iOS 9 felt a lot smoother than iOS 8, with most of the delays experienced before when launching or switching between apps completely gone.

There are still bugs that need Apple’s attention though, with some apps freezing and having their thumbnails grayed out in the app switcher, and with others crashing while running in the background on the iPhone 6 Plus. The Podcasts app was the one that stopped working most often, so third-party apps are not the ones that should get the blame.

As mentioned above, iOS 9 improves the previous iOS release with better battery life for all devices running it. It is also a lot more responsive and provides users with a more secure environment by taking advantage of new built-in security features.

The iOS 9 Home Screen
The iOS 9 Home Screen

iOS 9 also comes with faster apps, which, coupled with the clean and user-friendly interface inherited from iOS 8, made for a great experience while using it on a daily basis on both the iPhone 4s and the 6 Plus.

The battery life will most probably be the biggest improvement everyday users will notice, since I’ve been able to get between one and one and a half hours of extra battery life on the iPhone 6 Plus when compared with iOS 8, after using it around the clock to make calls, watch videos, write, record videos, take photos, and play games.

However, a newly added feature, the Low Power mode, available in Settings > Battery, also came in handy when the battery was dangerously close to getting completely discharged. When this setting is activated, iOS 9 will automatically reduce power consumption by reducing or turning off visual effects and limiting your apps’ capability, performing various automated tasks like refreshing in the background, and automatically downloading updates.

From what I’ve been able to learn during the testing experience, iOS 9 is to iOS 8 what OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was to OS X 10.5 Leopard, a release focused on refining and fine-tuning the previous iOS, with better battery life and noticeable speed improvements while working with and switching between apps.

Now let’s get through what iOS 9 brings new or better to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

NEW FEATURES

3D Touch

The new 3D Touch-enabled gestures and actions add a whole new dimension to iOS 9, but they are available only on the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models.

If until now you had to open an application for tasks like creating new documents, now it can be done by pressing on the app’s Home Screen icon. This will display a dialog containing some of the tasks you can perform on an older device like the iPhone 6 Plus only after opening the app.

The new 3D Touch display also makes it possible for iOS 9 users to preview content without having to open it in the associated app, much like they would do when previewing content on OS X using the inbuilt Quick Look feature. If you want to open it using the default app, all you have to do is press a little harder on the display.

Pressure sensitivity is yet another bonus for iPhone 6s and 6s Plus users, and it will help them use the pressure-sensing features built within the 3D Touch display, for instance, to draw thicker lines when creating a new Note sketch.

Improved iPad experience

On iPads only, iOS 9 allows you to use two apps at the same time with the Split View feature and easily resize them to make one larger than the other.

A new Slide Over feature has also been added in iOS 9 for iPad users who want to interact with a second app without having to leave the one they are working with at the moment.

iOS 9 also comes with a new Picture-in-picture feature designed to continue watching videos or Facetime calls in a smaller screen area, on top of the currently active application. To activate Picture-in-picture, you have to press the Home button and the video window will automatically resize and settle next to a corner of your iPad’s display.

Additionally, iOS 9 on iPads now comes with support for 4x4 layouts instead of 3x3 and with a redesigned notification center for the landscape view.

Android to iOS Migration

As presented by Phill Schiller during the September 9 keynote and already featured on Apple's website after 2015's WWDC, iOS 9 also makes it easier to migrate to an iOS device from Android using the Move to iOS Android app.

This utility was designed to help Android users effortlessly move their contacts, multimedia content, as well as messages, e-mails and calendars onto an iOS device. Moreover, it will also take care of moving your apps, adding the free ones to the App Store download list and the paid ones to the iTunes Wish List.

Proactive Siri

Apple’s Siri digital personal assistant comes with a revamped and more colorful interface on iOS 9 and is capable of reminding you to perform tasks that use the items on your iOS device’s screen.

Siri also comes with support for using accents when choosing English as its input language, with American, British and Australian being the ones available at the moment.

Siri is now smarter and faster. During our tests, Siri was more responsive than on iOS 8, and it manages to recognize and provide useful answers to more questions than ever.

iOS 9 features a whole new way of getting things done quickly: the “Siri Suggestions” section, which is pre-populated with content that matches your interests, from contacts that you get in touch with often to apps you use at a given time during the day, unlike the default iOS search screen that only displays app suggestions under the Spotlight field. “Siri Suggestions” can be activated by swiping left on the Home Screen.

Siri dictation
Siri dictation

As an example of how it works, if you usually read the news in the morning while drinking a cup of coffee, the News app will be added to the “Siri Suggestions” field on the search screen.

Siri also displays interesting places nearby and will also list the most important news for your location if you have enabled Locations Services from Settings.

As a downside, if you’re not fast enough when exiting an app, holding your finger down just a little bit longer will summon Siri instead of sending you to your iPhone’s Home screen.

Spotlight

On iOS 9, Spotlight’s search capabilities have been improved, and it can now help you find apps within the iTunes Store, on your iOS device, pinpoint content within Apple apps, as well as apps created by third-party developers.

In addition, the new Spotlight can now search the web without you having to open a web browser to do it.

Extras

Besides the features mentioned above, iOS 9 will also automatically detect when you connect your headphones and will launch your favorite audio application.

For example, after exiting Softpedia’s building and plugging in my headphones, my iPhone launched the Podcasts application and started playing the last podcast I had been listening to earlier, continuing from where I paused.

If you receive a call from an unknown number, iOS 9 automatically searches within your e-mails and lets you know if it finds anything, so that you can decide if you want to answer the call or not.

IMPROVEMENTS

As already specified above, iOS 9 focuses on delivering a more streamlined user experience and polishing everything that wasn’t quite up to par in the iOS 8 release. The following topics are the ones that got the most attention from Apple in this iOS version.

More responsive interface

With iOS 9 apps using Apple’s Metal API, the operating system and all applications running on the newly released iOS version are perceptibly faster because they can now take advantage of all the power the device’s CPU and GPU have to offer.

As a bonus, Apple has also reduced their displays’ touch latency in iOS 9 from sixty milliseconds to around thirty milliseconds, and although you might not think so, the difference translates in your gestures feeling smoother than on a device that runs iOS 8.

Simpler and smaller updates

iOS 9 allows for even more flexibility when it comes to updating your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to the latest iOS release. You can now set the device to update on its own when it’s idle or when you’re sleeping, for less downtime and to avoid missing calls while watching the Apple logo during the update process.

Also, with iOS 9, Apple has implemented an update streaming mechanism designed to make all updates a lot smaller by removing the download and unpack part from the update process.

As described by Apple, while on iOS 8, users would need 4.58 GB of free space on their iPhone for an update. On iOS 9, the space needed goes down to 1.3 GB for the same update. This would most probably be a huge thing for all owners of 16 GB iOS devices.

Prolonged battery life

As I already said above, after installing iOS 9 on my iPhone 6 Plus, I got up to one hour of additional battery life between charges, a fact that confirms Apple’s obsession regarding energy consumption optimization for both iOS and the apps that run on it.

The already mentioned “Low Power” mode is designed to help iOS 9 users set their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to use the energy resources more conservatively by limiting background content updates and reducing visual effects in the user interface.

As estimated by Apple, after “Low Power” is toggled on, you will have an extra hour of charge to find a power source until the device automatically powers down.

Enhanced security

Another important improvement in iOS 9 is the boost in terms of security. The new iOS release comes with six-digit passcodes, designed to further strengthen security by increasing the number of possible combinations to one million, as opposed to ten thousand.

Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security for iOS 9 users, and it is designed to make sure that none of the data protected using your Apple ID can be accessed by third parties.

iOS 9 Settings
iOS 9 Settings

The new two-factor authentication feature will roll out starting this fall and will gradually be made available for all users that have logged in using their Apple ID on the following types of devices: iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 9, Mac with OS X El Capitan and iTunes 12.3, Apple Watch with watchOS 2, and Windows PC with iCloud for Windows v.5 and iTunes 12.3.

To learn how to set it up for your own Apple ID, you just have to follow the instructions available on the Apple support website, on the “Availability of two-factor authentication in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan” page.

After you’ve signed up for two-factor authentication, and it has been enabled on your device, you will automatically be prompted to verify your identity using the code you’ve received from Apple via text message or phone call.

NEW APPS

Wallet

Probably the most important new app added to iOS 9 is Wallet, a utility designed to replace Passbook. It also adds support for Discover, store-issued credit and debit cards and store loyalty cards to Apple Pay’s features.

Furthermore, with the release of Wallet, Apple has extended Apple Pay to the United Kingdom.

News

The News app is designed to replace Newsstand, and it offers curated and personalized lists of news articles from various popular news sources such as newspapers and websites, covering a vast array of topics.

All the articles available in the News app will be displayed using a responsive layout that make the content fit your device’s screen better.

News app
News app

At the moment, the News app is available to users from USA, UK, and Australia, but if you’re not located in any of these territories and you want to have it on the screen of your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you’ll be able to get it by changing your Region from Settings > General > Language & Region.

iCloud Drive

Although Apple’s iCloud is old news, the new iCloud Drive app makes it easier to use by making it effortless to access all the files you have saved in your iCloud account from the Home Screen.

The iCloud Drive also keeps all your iCloud files and folders up to date on all your devices connected to the same iCloud account and allows you to work on the same file using multiple apps.

iCloud Drive comes with 5 GB of free storage, and it is capable of storing any file if it doesn’t exceed a 15 GB size limit and you don’t reach your iCloud storage limit.

Furthermore, if you’ve accidentally deleted a file or folder, you can get it back within 30 days by logging into your account on icloud.com and going to Settings > Advanced > Restore Files.

IMPROVED APPS

Notes

Next comes the improved Notes app, which now makes it simple to create notes containing finger-drawn sketches, generate quick checklists, and add photos to make your notes even more content-rich.

Notes also allows you to customize the body, the title and the headings of each note you take using custom fonts and, more importantly, to add a wide array of attachments from text and pictures to maps, web links and entire Pages documents from anywhere on your iPhone using share sheet extensions.

Additionally, Notes now also comes with a Recently Deleted folder that will help you find accidentally deleted notes, and an Attachments view where you can browse through all the attachments you’ve added to your notes.

Maps

In iOS 9, the Maps app has been improved with the addition of public transportation directions in over 300 select major cities from multiple countries around the world.

The new Maps version now displays a Transit view, which helps you get the shortest route between two points using public transport facilities, such as busses, trains, subways, and ferries.

Maps app
Maps app

Moreover, Maps has a new “Follow up by Email” feature that makes it possible for Apple to get back to you with an answer to any Maps issue you’ve reported.

Mail

The Mail app also comes with a couple of new features which will make it simpler to share files with your friends and colleagues, as well as find information within your e-mails more quickly.

Mail now enables you to send attachments of up to 5 GB via Mail Drop, avoiding limits imposed by your internet service provider.

Mail Drop comes with a 1 TB storage limit (with only the first 5GB being free), but given that your attachments will automatically be removed after 30 days, it’s quite hard to run out of storage space.

To prevent abuse, Mail Drop is designed to allow you to send up to 200 messages with attachments per day, to no more than a total of 1000 recipients and 100 recipients per mail.

Mail’s search feature has also been enhanced, now making it possible to pinpoint any e-mail you’ve sent or received using a combination of criteria containing the message’s recipient, subject, and sender among many others.

Attachment markup is another new feature in Mail which will enable you to add comments, drawings and even sign image or document attachments.

Settings

The iOS Settings have also been enhanced with the addition of a much-awaited search feature, which aids iOS 9 users find the relevant settings page for a given option in no time.

Although very useful, the new Settings search still needs some attention because it won’t work as expected every time. For instance, when trying to pinpoint the “Low Battery” mode option, there were no relevant results available when searching for “low,” “battery,” or “mode.” Combining the terms did not yield any results either, even though when searching for “mode,” I did manage to find the “Airplane mode” and “Hearing Aid Mode” options.

Settings search bug
Settings search bug

There are also new video recording settings available in the Photos & Camera preference sheet that can be used to tweak the quality of your video recordings between 720p@30 fps, 1080p @ 30fps and 1080p @ 60fps. The frame rate used when recording slow motion videos can also be changed between 120 fps and 240 fps.

Keyboard

The iOS 9 keyboard has also received a much-needed overhaul, and it will now make it simpler to understand when the letters are lower-case or upper-case when the SHIFT has been toggled.

The keyboard will now also allow you to disable the character preview feature and to use extra emoji characters.

Extras

As a side note, as opposed to iOS 8, which wouldn’t allow you to download files, Apple’s iOS 9 will now let you open them using an app compatible with that file format and present on your iOS device, or, if you have one installed and configured, save them to a cloud service.

While testing the new iOS release on my iPhone 6 Plus, I had to save lots of documents while browsing the web, and after sending them to my Dropbox account, they were available on all my devices running the Dropbox client.

COMPATIBILITY

First of all, these are all the iOS devices compatible with iOS 9 and, as you can notice, Apple has kept its promise of making iOS 9 available on all devices that were compatible with iOS 8.  

iPhone iPad iPod touch
iPhone 6s iPad Pro iPod touch 6th generation
iPhone 6s Plus iPad Air 2 iPod touch 5th generation
iPhone 6 iPad Air
iPhone 6 Plus iPad 4th generation
iPhone 5s iPad 3rd generation
iPhone 5c iPad 2
iPhone 5 iPad mini 4
iPhone 4s iPad mini 3
iPad mini 2
iPad mini

CONCLUSION

As stated in the beginning, my test devices were an iPhone 6 Plus and an iPhone 4s, chosen to help me differentiate between the user experience available on the oldest possible device on which you can install iOS 9 and on Apple’s (currently available) top of the line model.

As you might imagine, the iPhone 6 Plus had no problems whatsoever, while the iPhone 4s, although a little rusty around the corners, did manage to launch and run the same apps without hiccups, save for the occasional and expected delay caused by the difference in processing power.

Unfortunately, even if I’ve enjoyed using iOS 9 while testing on both devices, since the first beta was released for developers, as well as in stable form, I did encounter a couple of issues that might make you wait for the release of iOS 9.1.

The Reminders widget will show up and disappear randomly on the Today View in the Notification Center. Removing it and adding it again doesn’t seem to fix the problem, although after some time, the widget will reappear on its own. From what I’ve been able to see, there are other widgets available from third-party apps that have the same behavior.

After opening the Settings app, its interface sometimes becomes unresponsive, not allowing you to scroll up and down and also displaying no search field on top. The good news is that, after waiting for two to four seconds, the Settings app gets back to normal.

Moreover, while typing using the iOS virtual keyboard in portrait mode, you are not able to move the cursor within a word if you’ve made any mistakes and you want to correct them. The only options available are to move it at the beginning or at the end of the word you want to fix and delete characters until you get to the point where you can start correcting it.

Although enabled in the first iOS 9 beta on iPhones, a feature that made it possible to transform the keyboard into a trackpad has been removed from the final release, but according to Apple’s website, it still is available in iOS 9 and it will be available on their iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models as a 3D Touch-only feature.

This means that, if you want to type faster on an iPhone 6 Plus or older, you will be forced to use the landscape mode keyboard. I imagine that if you have the auto-correct option enabled, and you’re writing in English, this shouldn’t be a problem, but on the other hand, we all know how “precise” the iOS auto-correction and prediction engine is.

Furthermore, at random times throughout the day, apps crash for no apparent reason and without any feedback or alert. It happened on at least three different occasions on the iPhone 6 Plus, with the Podcasts app stopping altogether.

Last but not least, I’ve also had apps freezing and having grayed out thumbnails in the app switcher, one of them being the already mentioned Settings app.

Settings grayed out in app switcher
Settings grayed out in app switcher

Fortunately, despite encountering the occasional bug or app freeze, the stable iOS 9 release fixed most if not all of the bugs I experienced while using the earlier Beta releases.

Apple SVP Craig Federighi: We’re excited to release the best version of iOS yet.

To mention the most important ones, the iPhone no longer gets hot after prolonged gaming sessions or watching YouTube videos for a couple of hours, and it does not crash anymore after more than 20 minutes in Low Battery Mode.

Furthermore, as Apple promised, the new iOS 9 user interface is smoother and, besides a few exceptions, apps are faster and more reliable than on iOS 8.

By the looks of it, and after testing iOS 9 both in beta and as a stable release, Apple seems to have kept its word on delivering “the best version of iOS yet.”

iOS 9 snapshots (109 Images)

The iOS 9 Home Screen
Notification Center Today tabSearching with Siri
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