iOS5 will be released to the public today and with it comes iMessage which is free text messages for everyone!! Plus many many more incredible features. It’s amazing but if you want to keep your jailbreak do not update.
To be honest I’ve been on iOS5 for months now as a developer but forbidden to talk about it under a Non Disclosure Act from Apple.
As it is officially launched today that NDA will lift and I can disclose just how cool it is. Im no longer Jailbroken because it gives me everything I want out of the box, plus with no Jailbreak it doesn’t crash or hang and the battery life is amazing.
My top 3 favourite additions -

iMessage – your iPhone knows if the person you are sending a message is on an iOS device that’s running iOS5 (that includes iPads and iPod touches) and if they are online via wifi or 3G it will send your message over the internet for free! You can see when it’s delivered, read (if you turn that feature on) and you can see when someone is typing a reply. Plus images and videos can be sent too all for free!!

Twitter – You can share anything from anywhere directly to Twitter as its built in to iOS. That includes photos, websites, map locations and videos.

Reminders – Ok I didn’t see the point of this at the beginning as I use my calendar religiously. However today I set a reminder to go off automatically when my phone knew I was at work, and it did! I then had a reminder to stop at the doctors after I had picked my son up from school and sure as hell as I drove out of the village my phone went off an reminded me to go to the doctors. This all worked from it knowing my location and amazed me. I now have a clever list of reminders that i can’t believe I never had in my life before.

Other cool new features -

Double tap home on the lock screen to see a button that opens your camera without unlocking your phone.

Edit photos right from the photos app and create and manage your own folders.

Notification center keeps all your push messages in one convenient screen you can pull down from the top at any moment. Finally say goodbye to those hideous popup messages and relish in the beauty of notification center. Plus get a text when your phone is locked, let them list up on your lockscreen but then open a specific one by sliding the actual notification to unlock straight to that app!

iCloud – Games, Apps, iTunes, Emails, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders plus much more now store their data in the cloud. This means you can access them from any device and keep everything in sync everywhere. Games are already using this for save files which means you can carry on where you left off on any one of your devices.

There’s much much more I haven’t covered but I don’t have the time right now. As soon as I do I will continue this write-up. For now what are you waiting for, press the upgrade button and enjoy iOS5!!