Features

Pocket Gamer's guide to Apple's iOS 4.0 - Part 1

New look, plate spinning, and everything in its place

Pocket Gamer's guide to Apple's iOS 4.0 - Part 1
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If you’re locked into a contract that will see you sail, 3GS or 3G in hand, right past the iPhone 4’s release, take heart. iOS 4 is now out just in time to make your handset feel brand new again.

So once you’ve plugged in your iPhone or iPod touch, launched iTunes, and upgraded your device’s software, what can you expect?

Regular readers will already know the basics from our WWDC coverage, but here we’ll go into more detail, exploring the biggest changes, which of them work well, which could be better, and what you’re missing out on if you only have a 3G.

Makeover

Not the biggest change of the batch, but the first that you’ll notice once your phone reboots after the update.

Gone are the flat app buttons and grey gradient dock bar at the bottom, replaced by first party icons that seem to have been polished to a gleaming shine, and a reflective surface on which your four most used icons reside.

Additionally, the image you selected for your lock screen wallpaper now resides proudly behind your apps (unless you have a 3G), making everything seem more vibrant and colourful.

The image you select for your background will have to be chosen carefully, though, as it can all a look somewhat busy on screen.

Other more subtle changes, like the way the icons zoom outward and back when you open or close an app, and the ability to view your Photo Roll in landscape or YouTube videos in portrait, also add to the experience.

The former is an excellent addition, but, annoyingly, videos start defaulted to landscape no matter what orientation you watched your last one in.

Multitasking and fast switching (3GS only)

The option to customise the home button has fallen by the wayside, so when you double tap hoping for your iPod controls you’ll see the new Multitasking drawer instead.

Raising up from the bottom, and listing all of the apps you currently have running, the feature is a lot like to the PC’s Alt + Tab, or Mac’s Apple + Tab, fast switching, and lines up your open apps in order of last viewed.

Whilst you can switch between any you like, apps that have been enabled for Multitasking will remain in the state you left them and continue uninterrupted, with no loading, until you flick back.

Games will simply unpause, searched train times will await you, and Skype calls won’t leave you unable to access your phones other features.

If an app doesn’t have this feature built in, the fast switching still provides a more convenient way to go back to it than searching through your pages.

Flicking between a YouTube video and a Facebook conversation without ever losing your place in either is curiously liberating, despite such things being taken for granted on a ‘proper’ computer.

You can close running apps by pressing and holding the icon in the fast switching menu, and then clicking the minus icon when they begin to gyrate – it’s all very similar to the process of deleting an app from the main pages.

Orientation lock and repositioned iPod controls

You can scroll through several pages of running apps using the multitasking menu, but if you swipe it to the left you’ll find an iPod app button - the simplified controls that used to pop up when you double tapped the home button.

Whilst this feels a little more clunky than before, and perhaps
just a touch hidden away, the multitasking menu is great compensation. On the far left of this array, is a button to lock your orientation in portrait, preventing emails, texts, photos etc. from tilting as you do.

It should also be noted that double tapping home when the phone is locked still brings up the iPod controls for when you’re on the move.

Folders

OCD sufferers and cataloguers alike will be elated with the ability to tidy away all those unruly apps into neat, arranged piles. If you’re anything like me, you started distributing apps across your pages with good intentions, but rapidly lapsed and ended up with a mess of unrelated software.

Creating a folder is as simple as dragging and dropping one icon onto another, and voila you have a folder. Cleverly, the iPhone will suggest a name for you based on the contents, but you can quickly rename it if desired.

Each folder can contain 12 apps (of which nine are displayed in miniaturised form when unopened), and can even be placed in your dock.

The downside to this system is that you can’t begin a folder with a single app, which isn’t a huge problem, but it does restrict your ability to keep things in order.

More annoyingly, there's no way to empty a folder of everything, other than individually dragging each app out again, switching between the open and closed folder.

Hopefully these niggles will be addressed in future, but overall the system is a good one. In fact, the biggest problem we faced was trying to categorise our games in genres – should Flight Control go in ‘Line Drawing’, ‘Score Attack’, or ‘Misc’..? Nightmare.

Digital Zoom and Video Focussing (3GS only)

The zoom is an odd inclusion, given the already low quality of the iPhone’s camera. However, if you’re a big fan of blurry, pixellated images, then you’ll find it a very powerful tool for getting results.

Video focussing works a little better, though again the low quality image doesn’t lend itself to maverick camera work.
We’re sure both of these features will be much better on the iPhone 4.

Quick internet or Wikipedia search

When using the search function (to the left of your home screen), you can now tap the new ‘Search Web’ or ‘Search Wikipedia’ buttons should you want more than just local results.

They won’t be displayed in the window (Safari will open instead) but it’s a great feature.

Search with Yahoo or Bing

And while we’re on the subject of searching, you can also now elect to conduct web searches using Yahoo or Bing, should the world’s largest and most effective search engine prove inadequate for your needs.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Pocket Gamer's guide to iOS 4.
Ben Maxwell
Ben Maxwell
Ben is an eager young games journalist who, when touring with his band, happily replaces sex, drugs, and rock & roll with Advance Wars, Drop7, rock, and Rolando...