iOS7 is live — can be downloaded OTA now

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

While I agree with you 100% on the colors & fonts of the Notes app (ugh!) I have to stick up for one awesome Notes feature. With absolutely zero effort, any note I write on my iPhone, iPad or MacBook Air is available to me on the other devices.

Yes, other apps have cloud drivers as well. I use SugarSync, Google Drive, and MS Skydrive. But nothing syncs with as low of an effort as the built-into-all-Apple-devices Notes app.

I very much disagree, and one reason for that is already included in the particular wording of your praise: "all-Apple-devices".

Please take a look at Nebulous Notes, Penforhire. It not only syncs faster than Apple's native Notes app, but it's a lot more versatile, because it's cross-platform. It's Dropbox-based, so any note I make in Nebulous Notes, I can instantly pick up on either my MacBook or my Windows desktop machine, and I can pick it up and continue editing it there with the text editor of my choice (EditPlus for me), not being restricted (once again) to Apple's Notes app, which is just as lame on the desktop as it is in iOS. And let's not even mention the superior, professional editing tools offered by Nebulous Notes and EditPlus, as opposed to Apple's Notes, which is the absolutely barrest bare-bones plain-vanilla text editor one can possibly imagine -- but at least until iOS 6, it looked good. Starting from iOS 7, it's not just feature-poor, but also unspeakably ugly. Please note that just because Nebulous Notes and EditPlus offer superior, professional text-editing tools, this does not make them in any way cluttered compared to the Notes app; they are perfectly light-weight editors in which, if you so desire, you can even turn off the display of all toolbars so that (similarly to the native Notes app) only the editing window remains.

Originally Posted by jswinden

Reminders and Calendar also sync effortlessly.

I find both Reminders and Calendar by Apple useless (which is not surprising), and again: there are much better iOS apps accomplishing the same things that also sync effortlessly. For me, this is Toodledo for tasks, and Calendars 5 for calendars. And yes, colour coding of various calendar events does matter: the Calendars 5 app does not only show a coloured dot next to the event title, but colours the entire event field in the colour you specify, making your calendar views that much clearer. Apple's Calendar, in its typically dumb way, displays all calendar events in the same dull grey colour... I guess no bad software design choice by Apple should surprise anyone any longer; but iOS 7 is definitely a new low. I admire Apple as a ground-breaking hardware company, but their software almost universally sucks. iOS used to be the bright spot among Apple's software offerings, but the hideous make-up of iOS 7 now makes it easy to forget about the good things iOS offers to the users.

[holymadness]

This test took longer to run than I thought it would, but here you have it, iPhone 5 battery life on iOS 7:



I'm happy to report that claims of 43% drops in battery life are overblown.

Not only did I beat the Ars reviewer's time of 444 minutes (7:24), but I got the same battery life I did under iOS 6. I have never in my life seen an iPhone 5 get 11 hours of battery life. I once got close to 10, under very conservative conditions at the very beginning of its life, but on average it's been around 8. I'm not sure what sort of test Ars was running, but it doesn't reflect actual use very faithfully.

I just used the phone as I normally do during the day. A mix of Twitter, web browsing, Tapatalk, texting, reading RSS feeds, and various other apps. I let the device regulate screen brightness by itself.

Now, there's a caveat to this. As I mentioned, I noticed worse than normal battery drain after installing iOS 7 last night. As a test, this morning I turned off Parallax backgrounds (Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion [switch to 'on']). That seems to have made all the difference. I still expect Apple to optimize battery life in subsequent updates, but for now it may be best to switch that feature off if you want an extra 30-60 minutes of battery life a day.

Originally Posted by Faterson

I very much disagree, and one reason for that is already included in the particular wording of your praise: "all-Apple-devices".

Please take a look at Nebulous Notes, Penforhire. It not only syncs faster than Apple's native Notes app, but it's a lot more versatile, because it's cross-platform. It's Dropbox-based, so any note I make in Nebulous Notes, I can instantly pick up on either my MacBook or my Windows desktop machine, and I can pick it up and continue editing it there with the text editor of my choice (EditPlus for me), not being restricted (once again) to Apple's Notes app, which is just as lame on the desktop as it is in iOS. And let's not even mention the superior, professional editing tools offered by Nebulous Notes and EditPlus, as opposed to Apple's Notes, which is the absolutely barrest bare-bones plain-vanilla text editor one can possibly imagine -- but at least until iOS 6, it looked good. Starting from iOS 7, it's not just feature-poor, but also unspeakably ugly. Please note that just because Nebulous Notes and EditPlus offer superior, professional text-editing tools, this does not make them in any way cluttered compared to the Notes app; they are perfectly light-weight editors in which, if you so desire, you can even turn off the display of all toolbars so that (similarly to the native Notes app) only the editing window remains.



I find both Reminders and Calendar by Apple useless (which is not surprising), and again: there are much better iOS apps accomplishing the same things that also sync effortlessly. For me, this is Toodledo for tasks, and Calendars 5 for calendars. And yes, colour coding of various calendar events does matter: the Calendars 5 app does not only show a coloured dot next to the event title, but colours the entire event field in the colour you specify, making your calendar views that much clearer. Apple's Calendar, in its typically dumb way, displays all calendar events in the same dull grey colour... I guess no bad software design choice by Apple should surprise anyone any longer; but iOS 7 is definitely a new low. I admire Apple as a ground-breaking hardware company, but their software almost universally sucks. iOS used to be the bright spot among Apple's software offerings, but the hideous make-up of iOS 7 now makes it easy to forget about the good things iOS offers to the users.

Notes, Reminders, and Calendar all work fine for me. Not interested in 3rd party apps.

Originally Posted by holymadness

This test took longer to run than I thought it would, but here you have it, iPhone 5 battery life on iOS 7:



I'm happy to report that claims of 43% drops in battery life are overblown.

Not only did I beat the Ars reviewer's time of 444 minutes (7:24), but I got the same battery life I did under iOS 6. I have never in my life seen an iPhone 5 get 11 hours of battery life. I once got close to 10, under very conservative conditions at the very beginning of its life, but on average it's been around 8. I'm not sure what sort of test Ars was running, but it doesn't reflect actual use very faithfully.

I just used the phone as I normally do during the day. A mix of Twitter, web browsing, twitter, texting, reading RSS feeds, and various other apps. I let the device regulate screen brightness by itself.

Now, there's a caveat to this. As I mentioned, I noticed worse than normal battery drain after installing iOS 7 last night. As a test, this morning before using my phone I turned off Parallax backgrounds (Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion [switch to 'on']). That seems to have made all the difference. I still expect Apple to optimize battery life in subsequent updates, but for now it may be best to switch that feature off if you want an extra 30-60 minutes of battery life a day.

I went ahead and updated my iPhone 5 this afternoon after hearing much the same thing from a few friends who had already installed it on theirs. I watched my iPad for a day it seemed to be using about the same battery as it did on 6. So far so good.

[MeSue]

I can't even judge battery life until the flood of app updates slows down. It has been almost nonstop app updates for me. But I do keep a ton of apps on my iThings.... Many never opened. My name is Sue and I'm an app-hoarder.

[Faterson]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Notes, Reminders, and Calendar all work fine for me. Not interested in 3rd party apps.

Absolutely... For users who only need bare-bones vanilla functionality, in the style of 2007 iPhone when no 3rd-party apps and no App Store existed, even the primitive Apple apps will do (and that includes iBooks). We were discussing optimal apps with Penforhire, though -- and Apple's default apps are the opposite of optimal.

[meeera]

I'm meh on the new iPhone interface, and I reckon I'll get used to it fine (especially with a tweak or two from the Accessibility menu). But the Podcasts management is a disaster. We're forced to use the Podcasts app now (previously, deleting it meant podcasts went back into Music). And worse, the new iTunes is a clusterflop. All old podcasts are now showing up in List view, going back years and years, and they're undeleteable, forcing me to now use the "My Podcasts" view, which I hate. Ugh.

Yep, this artsy-fartsy stuff will take some getting used to! But I found that the interface is a lot more tolerable with a good Wallpaper to drown it out and text set to bold! I like the new functionality though. But I liked the look of iOS 6 much better.

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by meeera

I'm meh on the new iPhone interface, and I reckon I'll get used to it fine (especially with a tweak or two from the Accessibility menu). But the Podcasts management is a disaster. We're forced to use the Podcasts app now (previously, deleting it meant podcasts went back into Music). And worse, the new iTunes is a clusterflop. All old podcasts are now showing up in List view, going back years and years, and they're undeleteable, forcing me to now use the "My Podcasts" view, which I hate. Ugh.

I can suggest Downcast and Instacast, two worthy alternatives to the default app (I use the former).

[meeera]

Thanks, but I prefer to manage my podcasts in iTunes, then sync. I often listen to them from iTunes, using the phone only for listening outside of home.

I tried a variety of highly-rated phone-based podcast apps a while ago, and couldn't get along with any of them, unfortunately. I also have a whole lot of podcasts saved in iTunes and don't really want to have to fiddle around re-downloading them all (if they're even still available).

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by holymadness

This test took longer to run than I thought it would, but here you have it, iPhone 5 battery life on iOS 7:



I'm happy to report that claims of 43% drops in battery life are overblown.

Not only did I beat the Ars reviewer's time of 444 minutes (7:24), but I got the same battery life I did under iOS 6. I have never in my life seen an iPhone 5 get 11 hours of battery life. I once got close to 10, under very conservative conditions at the very beginning of its life, but on average it's been around 8. I'm not sure what sort of test Ars was running, but it doesn't reflect actual use very faithfully.

I just used the phone as I normally do during the day. A mix of Twitter, web browsing, twitter, texting, reading RSS feeds, and various other apps. I let the device regulate screen brightness by itself.

Now, there's a caveat to this. As I mentioned, I noticed worse than normal battery drain after installing iOS 7 last night. As a test, this morning before using my phone I turned off Parallax backgrounds (Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion [switch to 'on']). That seems to have made all the difference. I still expect Apple to optimize battery life in subsequent updates, but for now it may be best to switch that feature off if you want an extra 30-60 minutes of battery life a day.

Well...

That's not my case.

I usually end my day with 40% or more and by 3pm CST my cellphone had about 20% battery. It was so bad that I actually had to turn it off so I can use it for an important phone call that I had to make by 5pm, few hours laters.

By 6pm it was dead!

I am re-charging it right now but I am really disappointed. One of the reason why I bought my iPhone 5 few months ago, after having a Galaxy SII, it because wanted better battery life. I'm on call all the time and battery life is key for me.

[holymadness]

Downcast (http://www.downcastapp.com) has an OS X app, too, but perhaps that wouldn't meet all your needs.

[holymadness]

Originally Posted by jocampo

Well...

That's not my case.

I usually end my day with 40% or more and by 3pm CST my cellphone had about 20% battery. It was so bad that I actually had to turn it off so I can use it for an important phone call that I had to make by 5pm, few hours laters.

By 6pm it was dead!

I am re-charging it right now but I am really disappointed. One of the reason why I bought my iPhone 5 few months ago, after having a Galaxy SII, it because wanted better battery life. I'm on call all the time and battery life is key for me.

As I mentioned, I think battery life improves when parallax backgrounds are turned off. You can also go into Settings > General > Background App Refresh and check if you have a ton of apps loading data. These can be checked on or off.

Another thing that can help battery life is performing a recalibration once every few months: drain the phone completely until it shuts itself off, then plug it in and let it charge to 100% uninterrupted.

Beyond that, you can flash your device (restoring without backup) but this is a bit of a pain.

Lastly, since you bought your phone less than a year ago it's still under warranty. If you can demonstrate that you're getting battery life that's consistently worse than what you were promised, you can take it back to the Apple store and ask for a replacement.

Originally Posted by jocampo

Well...

That's not my case.

I usually end my day with 40% or more and by 3pm CST my cellphone had about 20% battery. It was so bad that I actually had to turn it off so I can use it for an important phone call that I had to make by 5pm, few hours laters.

By 6pm it was dead!

I am re-charging it right now but I am really disappointed. One of the reason why I bought my iPhone 5 few months ago, after having a Galaxy SII, it because wanted better battery life. I'm on call all the time and battery life is key for me.

Double check your settings. There were some reports of settings being changed by the update. You might also want to go into Settings --> Notifications to turn off notifications you don't need or want.

[Faterson]

I had not intended to upgrade to iOS 7 so soon, but when both iPad and iPhone indicated the download would only take 9 minutes, I said, "What the hell," and upgraded anyway. Among the most strikingly ugly iOS 7 features is that it converted my iPad 3 dock into a nauseating, huge patch of mustard, unceremoniously plomping the app icons (including Marvin as my default e-reader) inside the mustard; see the attached screenshot. It's so ugly it makes me want to scream; and spotting any of the new default iOS 7 apps' "flat" icons on any of the home screens is like a jab in the eye, compared to the elegance of the former, iOS 6-style icons. (The only exception: I prefer the new Contacts app icon over the former one.) iOS 7 is not just ugly compared to the previous iOS versions -- but it also appears to be distinctly slower; I'm not impressed by any of the "jerky" animations: gone is the previous iOS fluidity that was so typical of iDevices, and that distinguished it from Android (where "jerkiness" is a hallmark, especially on cheaper Android devices).