Big new features for existing iPhones

Got an iPhone 4 or 3G S? No need to get too jealous of the iPhone 4S as you too can enjoy tons of new features available now as part of iOS 5 and iCloud.

Available as a software update to your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad right now, iOS 5 has plenty of useful additions for your device. Here’s a quick guide to the best of them:

Notification Center – Sounds boring, yet is surprisingly good. Instead of a notification of a new text, or your Smurfs telling you to harvest your crops, popping up in the middle of the screen, interrupting what you were doing, such alerts now simply rotate in at the top of the screen and then quickly go away again. Finished that level of Angry Birds and need to read that text? Simply swipe down from the top of the screen to see all your notifications.

iMessage – Your friend’s BlackBerry has just committed suicide. iMessage is essentially the popular BBM service for your iOS device, complete with message received notifications, pictures and everything else. However, it’s arguably even easier to use as you don’t need to give everyone your PIN, any text you send to another iPhone will automatically be sent as an iMessage, saving your text allowance.

Reminders – Don’t laugh, this is actually quite good. Not only can you make a to-do list but you can also get it to remind you to do this when you reach or leave a certain location. For example, you can be reminded to pick up a copy of Leeds Student when you next enter the union or to phone your housemate as you leave the Brotherton for home. Now you’ve got no excuse to forget…

Camera & Photos – Taking drunk photos just got that bit easier as you can now use your phone’s volume up button to take a picture instead of poking the screen wildly in your drunken state. Look a mess in a photo? Not to worry, as you can now do basic editing to your photos on your phone, so you can crop yourself out before you upload to Facebook.

Find My Friends – Facebook’s great for stalking people and seeing what they’ve already done, but what if you need to see where your friends are right now? Trying to meet-up in the city centre or finding out that your housemate is still at work has been difficult up to now, but with the Find My Friends app you can request to see people’s current location and view it on a map. Don’t get too keen though, they have to approve your request first and it can be on a temporary basis if they prefer to, so no spying on people who you’ll ‘just happen to bump into’…

iCloud – Perhaps the biggest and best new feature is iCloud. Ditch your old Hotmail and enjoy your e-mail, calendar and contacts all backed-up to the web and synced between your iOS devices as well as your Mac or PC. In addition, iCloud will automatically store all your purchased apps, iBooks as well as iTunes music and more. Not good enough? It will even back-up your device’s settings and app data, store your documents and find your device for you if it ever gets lost. Oh, and all your photos will be backed-up and downloaded to your computer too. All for free.

iOS 5 and iCloud are available now for free for newer iOS devices. To update your device, plug it in to iTunes and click the ‘Update’ button to download and install.

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