Episode 292: A look at iOS5 and the iPhone 4S

iPhone 4S
As expected, the iPhone 4S includes Apple's own A5 chip which accounts for up to two times faster CPU performance than the previous iPhone. Graphics have also been given a boost with dual-core graphics up to seven times faster than the iPhone 4.A brand new camera system is arguably the biggest hardware upgrade to the device with a new five lens, 8-megapixel system with 60 per cent more pixels than the previous iPhone.After the antenna issues the iPhone 4 experienced, Apple has included a redesigned wireless system.

Notification Center
In past versions of iOS notifications would pop up, interrupting whatever you were doing, and wouldn't go away unless you told them to. With iOS 5 that's a thing of the past. The default is that they will briefly fold down from the top of the screen and then go away. If you miss an alert it will go to the Notification Center, which you can reach by swiping down from the top of the screen.
Notification Center comes with a number of pages by default including (obviously) notifications, weather, reminders, stocks and more.

Reminders
Reminders is a new application that is built right in to iOS 5. Prior to this the main ways to remind yourself about tasks that need doing were to use a dedicated application or to enter your to-do tasks into your Calendar application. Unfortunately that would invariably clutter your Calendar app up with trivial tasks that shouldn't really be listed alongside business meetings. To set an alert for a task just tap on it in your Reminders list. Here you can tell the app to remind you of your task at a particular time and date or when you arrive at or leave a particular location.

iMessage
Tap the iMessage icon to open it up, then tap the new message icon in the upper-right. If your contact is running iOS 5 then you'll see when they're responding as indicated by an ellipsis (...) sign. You can also tap the camera icon to add a photo either from your camera roll or a completely new picture. Another new feature is that you'll see the word Delivered under a message that has been successfully sent.

iPad Features
The iPad gets its own improvements in the form of multitouch gestures and AirPlay mirroring. The multitouch gestures are primarily used to make multitasking easier while iPad mirroring makes it easy for Apple TV owners to wirelessly stream content from the iPad to the big screen.

A complete How Do I series on using iOS 5