So I Just Installed iOS 5 Beta On My iPad….

After the initial excitement from WWDC, I felt compelled to install iOS 5 on both my iDevices. It’s in beta, so bugs are bound to arise. However, seeing all the new features (notifications, email enhancements, Safari improvements, etc) made it worth it for me.

After working with my iPad for about a week in iOS 5, I’ve both enjoyed and been annoyed with the beta version.

New Features

The absolute best part of iOS 5 has to be the notification system. Notifications now display on your lock screen and by dragging the icon from left to right, you’ll be taken directly to the app.

You can always access the list of notifications by pulling the notification bar in a downward direction with your finger. This can be done at anytime, regardless of the application you are in. Just tap the notification to go directly to the app.

Reminders are also a cool addition. It’s a simple, yet attractive app that is a suitable replacement for the many todo apps.

The enhancements to Mail are also notable. By swiping, you can quickly hide or reveal the Inbox Pane. When typing an email message, you can long press on any text to reveal some nice additions in Bold, Italics, Underline, Define and Quote Level. This appears inline with Copy and Paste.

The new Keyboard feature is also a pretty useful modification. By simply using two fingers, you can split the keyboard to simplify typing. To get back to the full keyboard, a simple pinch will do the trick.

Safari also got a nice overhaul. My favorite addition is the new tabbed browsing, but another addition a Reading List to build a quick repository of articles to access and view at a later time. The Reader feature hasn’t yet been added, but it will remove ads and clutter and let you focus on the content.

Twitter has also been integrated in the iOS 5 operating system. I love the look and feel of the new tweet box. By accessing your settings, you can sign into your Twitter account and it saves your account (true single sign-on). You can tweet just about anything from YouTube videos, to pages you browse in Safari, Photos, etc.

An upcoming feature will be syncing your device wirelessly, but I don’t believe it’s currently in the beta version as I haven’t yet been able to get this feature to work.

While there are countless other changes and features, the ones mentioned above were some of the most notable in my opinion.

Annoyances

I’ve experienced some performance issues with many of the apps, most notably Evernote. For example, I’m unable to view the majority of my notes in this application. Crashes also seem to come more frequently.

The iPod App has been replaced with Music. The redesign of this app is great, however it seems Apple forgot one very important aspect…ratings. Unfortunately there is currently no way to rate or view your ratings for songs on your iPad. Ratings do exist in the iPhone iOS 5 beta, but not currently on the iPad.

With the install of the beta version, the battery life has taken a hit. Of course this is to be expected with a beta version.

If you decide to install iOS 5, you’ll absolutely enjoy some of the new features such as the Notification System and others I mentioned. However, expect some major performance issues with Apps and an excessive amount of crashes. It’s definitely beta, so don’t be surprised if you run into some additional bugs.