More Updates

I was lucky that I was not plagued by the reported battery drain issues of the iOS 5. Some of the issue was apparently addressed by the iOS 5.0.1 patch. But apparently not all. Rumors has it, the next iteration, iOS 5.0.2 would be released soon. Hopefully, this would not seed any new problems with my iPhone. At least, the update process would be a lot more straight forward. Over the air update was not only convenient, it also meant a leaner, smaller software download. A godsend.

5.0.1 Update

One of the major advantage of iOS 5 was not the notification. That was nice, but we could see that one coming a mile away. I felt the major improvement was the updates. Previously, eve a small update meant downloading the software via iTunes which would take ages as the file would typically be around 700MB. That would jam the bandwidth for around 3 or so hours on my connection. Then, there was always the risk of the connection being interrupted halfway. Nightmare.

With iOS 5, the update would be direct. Instead of 700 MB, the latest update was less than 10% of that. I did that through the fast connection at the office. After the program was downloaded, a gentle message popped up to tell us that the device would be restarted. In under 5 minutes, I was done. For both the iPhone and the iPad. Great stuff.

Has the update made any difference? I think it did. I noticed that the battery drainage was slower. I would still have more than 50% juice on my way out of the office. And this was after heavy use with push email and everything. The night before the update was announced, I suffered the first episode of battery drainage. Inexplicably, my phone just ran out of power in the middle of the night. It was around 60% before I went to sleep. I woke up at 5 for the loo, and the phone was already dead. Luckily there were no call from the hospital that night ......

Migrating to iCloud

So, I had to wait overnight - until Friday afternoon, before I was able to migrate to iCloud. Any differences? Well, the choice to be able to upload photos straight from the phone onto the cloud as soon as they were taken was rather promising. I have to update my iPhoto for that first. So that would have to wait. All the other syncing seemed to be working so far, even though I synced my calendars using Google. Never trusted MobileMe for that before.

So, I clicked for the iPhoto update. 375MB! Oh no! Luckily the broadband at work was up for it …..

As for the rest, I played around with iMessage. Not bad. It worked for both text and photos. The notification system was a boon, almost as good as on my Galaxy SII. The system, especially autocorrection was rather sluggish at times, making blogging and entering large amount of text rather stop-start. Maybe the whole OS was optimised the the upcoming iPhone 4S.

The Update

So, the update was complete and after restoring the apps and all the rest, the process took nearly 45 minutes. No hitches this time.

It was rather tedious as initially the OS was reset, followed by reloading of all the installed apps. So far, the updates went well. All the apps were in working order.

Next, migration to iCloud.

The Download

Talking about bad timing, I woke up for nature's call at 4.30 am this morning. After doing the business, I realised that iOS 5 was being released this morning. So I quickly looked for it.

Before long, I was already started downloading. The 770Mb file would take about 3 hours. So I went back to bed. The file was finally downloaded just after 7am. Unfortunately it was time to head for work.

I persevered and synced the phone. Five minutes later, an error message. Apparently it was recommended that you reload the iTunes before the update. Well, I rushed to work instead then. The update would have to wait.