The update to iOS 7 has not been smooth sailing for all.
Many users onTwitter, as well as on Apple'ssupport siteare reporting issues when attempting to install the update, which went out earlier today.
Affected users are reporting that the downloads will stop, with a warning error pop-up that says the "software update failed." Others are saying they cannot connect to theiTunesStore to update apps.
The likely culprit is that Apple's servers, which are pushing out the update over the air as well as through iTunes, are being hit by many users attempting to get the download. Nonetheless, according toApple's services page, all its various services are up and running.
Worth noting is that the update is larger than most Apple has put out in the past. It can range in the mid-600MB range for older iPhone andiPadusers, and go up to 935MB for users on Apple's fourth-generation iPad. Users also need to have lots of free space available for the downloaded update to install, which can top 3GB in some cases.
CNET has reached out to Apple for comment, and we'll update this post when we know more.
Update at 12:23 p.m. PT:In addition to the issues surroundingiOS 7installation and app updates, some users are alsoreportingissues with Apple's activation servers. It's unclear how widespread this is.
In the biggest change to Apple's smartphones and tablets, the system has been rebuilt with a totally different design, created by Brit Sir Jonathan Ive and his team
iPad iOS 7
Apple's iOS 7 operating software foriPhone, iPad and iPod touch becomes available to download tomorrow - bringing a whole new look to the company's mobile devices.
In the biggest change to Apple's smartphones and tablets, the system has been rebuilt with a totally different design, created by Brit Sir Jonathan Ive and his team.
Anyone else can download iOS 7 to their device, but before you do, here are 10 things you need to know about iOS 7.
Apple Launch
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1.iOS 7 is FREE. You don't need to pay a penny to get it but you may find you need to wait a while in a download queue if you try to access it as soon as it goes live, along with a few million others desperately doing the same.
You can update it directly from your device, there's no need to connect it to a computer.
But it won't work on some older Apple products such as an iPhone 3G, 3GS or the original iPad and it is only compatible with the fifth generation of iPod touch devices onwards.
People walk under an iOS7 sign at the 2013 Apple WWDC at the Moscone Center
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2.The design and layout of iOS 7 is a dramatic departure from what Apple fans have been used to.
It uses a new colour palette, has a flatter look and different fonts, which are meant to give it a 'cleaner' look.
There are also lots of translucent effects and on the 5C, the colour of the device you buy will dictate the colour of the wallpaper and icons.
Jony Ive, says of his creation: "True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation - it's about bringing order to complexity."
New Apple iOS 7 features are displayed on screen during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference
Reuters
3.The new iOS system has been created to take advantage of the 64-bit processor in the latest iPhone 5S.
This provides more power for applications and games. But some older apps may not be able to match up to this and also some older devices may not work so well with any updated apps.
To counter this, it's been reported that Apple is to introduce a pop-up pointing users to older versions of apps that would work better with their specific device.
Apple Launch
4.Not updating to iOS 7 right now though, could be a good move.
As well as saving yourself time waiting in a download queue, you could prevent issues with security, compatibility with apps and features not working.
As with previous releases of iOS and any other new software, there can be problems on day one. These are then solved with an update a couple of weeks later.
Often it pays not to jump in with two feet to be among the first who has it, and to wait until the first updated release has ironed out all the issues.
Or until at least wait until you know whether there are problems and what they may be.
Apple Launch
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5.iOS 7 is offering 200+ changes to the operating system according to Apple but while many of these will just be minor tweaks, some are much more major and noticeable.
For a start Notification Center can now be accessed with a swipe down even when the phone is locked.
The Control Center can also be opened with a swipe up from the bottom of the screen and contains icons for some of the most-used features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, display brightness, calculator, camera and even a torch.
There is also a new Today feature showing a summary of items such as weather, traffic, meetings and events
Apple.com
6.In a bid to prevent iPhones and iPads being stolen, Apple has introduced an extra security feature alongside the new fingerprint reader in the iPhone 5S.
While not everyone will have the luxury of that, they will be able to prevent muggers from turning off the Find My iPhone feature.
In iOS 7 it comes with an Activation Lock, requiring your Apple ID and password before you can turn it off, erase data or re-activate a device after it has been remotely erased.
CEO Tim Cook speaks during an Apple event in San Francisco
Reuters
7.If you've not yet been sold on Siri then iOS 7 at least gives you a few more reasons to try out the virtual personal assistant hiding inside your device.
For a start it comes with new softer voices - both male and female - and allows you to use your voice to look through Twitter, Wikipedia and the Bing search engine.
Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice president of internet software and services, displays the new iTunes interface
Reuters
8.Additions to the camera in iOS 7 do not include the Burst and Slo Mo modes, which are only found on the iPhone 5S for now.
But you do get new real-time photo effects and a square camera option to add to video, photo and panorama. It's also easier to switch between all four.
Your pictures are all displayed for more intuitively and better organised in the Photos app, showing them based on the time they were taken and the location they were taken at.
There's also a new way to share files and content between iOS 7 devices using AirDrop and a Wi-Fi network, a system already familiar to Mac owners.
Apple Launch the iOS7
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9.Safari web browsing has been improved with a redesigned interfaced for full-screen surfing along with a new smart search field to better recommend options.
And in a big departure that could be one of the most popular, there are new ringtones, alarms, alerts and system sounds so you can try and separate yourself from the millions of others using the same tones.
Apple Launch
Reuters
10.iTunes Radio is one of the biggest additions.
It's a free Internet radio service with more than 200 stations but for now will only be available in America.
Popular Apps Near Me in the App Store also now gives you the opportunity to find apps based on your location.
The new iOS 7 iPhone software not only has a new look, but Apple successfully addresses many long-standing issues.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Your iPhone is about to get a giant makeover: Apple is pushing out iOS 7 to iPhone users on Wednesday.
The new iPhone operating system is the most substantial update in the software's history. Apple not only added new features and functionality, but the company radically reinvented the six-year old operating system's appearance.
For the most part,Apple(AAPL,Fortune 500)succeeded in making iOS easier on the eyes and simpler to use. Apple trimmed the fat where necessary and added some meat to areas that were lacking.
New look:The most noticeable difference in iOS 7 is the design. Gone are the core apps that look like real-life objects. In their place is a far more modern, streamlined, flatter digital aesthetic.
Apple didn't eliminate depth and texture altogether, but it redefined how it uses those effects. For instance, Apple made some menus and features appear translucent, like a frosted sheet of glass. That not only provides a stylish touch, but it produces a layered effect to help visualize how different parts of an app are linked, and how they are separate.
iPhones 5C and 5S good enough for Apple
You'll notice this everywhere from the home screen icons to the design of the lock screen to the screen that shows up when you receive a call. But the way you use those elements is more or less the same as before.
And there are still touches of the old version of iOS throughout the new iOS 7. For example, the Messages app still uses speech bubbles, and the camera app still uses an on-screen shutter button. But the look of those features has been spruced up as well.
There was a time when Apple had to demonstrate how its flat, glass screen could replace many self-contained gadgets people already owned. So everything had a glassy, textured layer applied to it. The calendar had to look like a paper calendar. The compass had to look like something you'd see in a 16th-century Spanish galleon.
Now that the vast majority of us understand our smartphones, Apple has been able to ditch those visual analogs and become truer to its sleek, modern hardware.
New features:Perhaps the most useful addition to iOS 7 is Control Center. It's your metaphorical junk drawer full of settings, media playback controls, and shortcuts to utility apps, like the clock, camera and calculator. You can now also toggle the LED on and off from control center, functioning as a de facto flashlight. And it's easily accessible: just swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
Control Center isn't a revelation: Having quick access to Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is something that's long been on Android. But it's a welcome addition -- and frankly should have already been added to iOS a long time ago.
Siri's functionality has been expanded some. It can now be used to search for Wikipedia and Twitter. That's nice, but it's still noGoogle(GOOG,Fortune 500)Now, which can tell you to leave home earlier than usual because there's an accident on the freeway.
The new weather app in iOS 7 is more informative than ever, and the App Store can automatically update your apps.
The Photo app has mostly been changed for the better by automatically arranging your photos according to time and place. But the new shared photo streams addition felt incomplete. It allows multiple people to share and comment on photos -- think of it as a remixed version of group MMS. But with so many people already using Apple's iMessage to share photos, it's unclear why people are supposed to use the new feature.
The Notification Center in iOS 7 now has three separate sub-pages, making it feel more bloated and confusing than its previous iteration. For example, if you don't use a calendar, one of the sub-pages is just a completely empty screen.
Question marks:Apple overhauled multitasking in iOS 7, giving apps the ability to fully run in the background. That means apps like Twitter and Facebook will be able to automatically update their feeds without you having to open the app. Apple even promises that iOS 7 will learn which apps you use the most, when you use them, and will make sure they're always updated at that time. But it will be hard to tell how well this feature will work until app makers begin to support it.
Airdrop is Apple's file sharing protocol, allowing iPhone users to share photos, contacts and things like passbook cards with one another. In theory, it is a wonderfully simple way to transfer files. But you can't use it with the Mac version of Airdrop. And the main appeal of Airdrop seems to be photos -- which is confusing since that's what shared photostreams are for. Until there is a critical mass of people running iOS 7, it's hard to gauge how useful Airdrop will be.
Bottom line:Despite a few hiccups in execution, Apple has successfully re-thought iOS for the better.
The biggest achievement of iOS 7 is Apple's willingness to acknowledge that it's immensely successful hardware had gone a bit stale. Apple had the awareness and courage to make some major changes without doing anything so drastic that it risked alienating its user base.
IOS 7 isn't perfect, but it's still as worthy a mobile OS as Google's Android. IOS 7 lays down the foundation for the next five or so years that will allow Apple to keep the iPhone feeling modern and progressive.
Look out Samsung Galaxy Note II, there's a new kid on the block, at least if you're a Verizon Wireless customer, and that's the HTC Droid DNA. Variously rumored as the HTC DLX and Butterfly J overseas, the HTC Droid DNA is one of our top smartphones for 2012. It has a slim and elegant design and it's relatively narrow, which makes holding this 5" Android smartphone easier than you might think. It trounces the Note II and every other smartphone on the market with its 1920 x 1080 Super LCD 3 display. That's 440ppi pixel density; significantly higher than the iPhone 5's Retina display and the lovely Nokia Lumia 920 332ppi display. Colors are more balanced and natural compared to Samsung's Super AMOLED HD display and letters and images look painted on the screen, much like the HTC One X and iPhone 5. Gorilla Glass protects the curved glass display.
Performance and Horsepower
But it doesn't stop there; this 5 ounce phone runs on a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU. The "Pro" is important, it indicates that this is the quad core variant of the S4 previously found on the speedy LG Optimus G and Nexus 4. The HTC DNA, running Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean with the HTC Sense UI absolutely flies. It feels noticeably faster than other high end Android phones, despite pushing all those extra pixels. It has 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of storage. That's a sore point for us: we'd really like to see more than 16 gigs of storage since there's no microSD card slot. Of that 16 gigs, our phone had 11 gigs available after installing a few apps (none of which were particularly large).
The HTC DNA has no trouble playing 1080p MPEG4 high quality video or playing today's cutting edge 3D games. Since this isn't a Tegra CPU, you won't get the special effects like water reflections and splashes in TegraZone games, but we can live with that.
More Specs at a Glance
The phone has a 2020 mAh battery, dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a GPS and NFC that's not compatible with Google Wallet. As you'd expect from HTC, it has Beats audio that kicks in when you plug in headphones and there's a 2.5v audio preamp inside. The DNA has 3G EV-DO Rev. A and 4G LTE on Verizon and it's a world phone than can handle GSM/HSPA roaming abroad. The Droid DNA has a wide angle front 2.1MP camera and an excellent rear 8MP camera with BSI, fast f/2.0 lens and 28mm wide angle lens.
The Droid DNA has a sealed unibody design with a soft touch charcoal black back. It’s a stunner and feels great in hand, though it doesn’t look quite as interesting as the polycarbonate unibody design of the One X. At 0.38” it’s extremely slim for a big phone and we love the metallic red stripes on the side along with the red rear camera lens ring and top power button. The DNA makes the shiny plastic Note II and Galaxy S III look a little cheap: HTC has always been good at premium materials. Where does the Note II pull ahead? For those of you who enjoy the Wacom digital pen, you won’t find that here. You also won’t get the Note II’s neato side-by-side app view or the ability to play video in a floating window on top of any app.
Unlike the HTC One X and One X+, the camera lens is flush so the phone doesn’t wobble when resting on its back on a desk or table. The perforated red metal side strips might look like incredibly thin speaker grilles, but the speaker is actually located on the back near the bottom where you’ll find it on most phones.
The red metal power button sits on the top edge, and while it looks very nice, it’s also hard to press because it’s nearly flush with the casing and has little travel. The same is true of the volume controls on the upper right side. The 3.5mm audio jack, micro SIM card slot (requires the included tool or a paperclip to open) and two mic holes live up top. The micro USB port and another mic hole live on the bottom edge.
HTC Droid DNA Video Review
Voice and Data
Call quality is excellent for incoming calls with full audio and good volume, but we found outgoing volume to be average with some occasional digitization of voice. It’s nothing to worry about, but the DNA doesn’t stand out above the crowd of solid smartphones on the market for outgoing voice quality.
Data speeds on Verizon’s LTE 4G network are par for the course, which is to say very good, though Verizon trails AT&T for LTE speeds at the moment in our area. The HTC Droid DNA manages the same speeds as the Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX HD and Galaxy S III according to the Speedtest.net app (13Mbps down and 5.7Mbps up).
This is a world phone that also works on GSM and HSPA+ networks for you world travelers. Our review unit actually worked with an AT&T SIM card (Verizon usually turns off compatibility with US GSM carriers). This may be because we have a pre-release phone, so no promises it will work for you. We suspect it’s a pre-release issue because after using an AT&T SIM card and enjoying HSPA+ data on AT&T’s network, we had to hard reset the phone (wipe it out and start fresh) to get it to register on Verizon’s network again.
Display and Sound
This is undeniably one of the best mobile displays on the planet. At a mind-boggling 440 ppi, you won’t find anything sharper than this, not even the 264ppi iPad with Retina Display. The full 1080p means you can watch full HD movies without scaling—on a phone. Wow. The fused glass on the Super LCD3 display makes images look painted on, much like the HTC One X and iPhone 5. Viewing angles are very wide and colors are rich and more natural than on Super AMOLED displays. The display’s sides have a subtle curve (again like the One X and also like the Nokia Lumia 920) and it looks cool. We haven’t had any problems with dust getting stuck in the crevices where the glass meets the phone’s body. The display has good brightness, but it’s not particularly gifted at fighting bright sunlight (the Nokia Lumia 920 and iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 get that honor). Glare and reflections are relatively well controlled on the gloss Gorilla Glass 2 display.
The Droid DNA has a 2.5v audio pre-amp and Beats audio, but that magic shines through headphones rather than the rear speaker. That’s not to say the speaker isn’t fairly loud and full for a phone, but it doesn’t raise the bar either. Sound through the headset jack is top notch with a decent set of headphones: audio is not only crazy loud (be nice to your ears and avoid max volume), but it’s rich and full. This isn’t the mindlessly heavy Beats audio of old, but something more balanced and pleasing for a wide variety of music. Yes, bass is still more than ample, but the clarity of trebles and the faint whispers of background tracks like a brush on cymbals suddenly become clear and present.
Camera
HTC puts excellent cameras into their high end smartphones, and their Android camera app is top notch for offering myriad shooting options, including HDR and the ability to capture photos while simultaneously shooting video. The rear camera can shoot 1080p video at 30fps, though in low light the frame rate may drop. The rear camera has a BSI sensor and a fast f/2.0 lens to further improve low light photography. Indeed, the 8 megapixel camera with LED flash can take some compelling night shots of street scenes and moody bars, though we noted more noise than with the supremely impressive Lumia 920. That said, the DNA’s night sky blacks look black rather than noisy gray, and that makes for a very striking evening capture.
As with other recent HTC unibody phones, the battery is sealed inside, so you can’t swap in a spare as needed on the road. As a consolation, the 2020 mAh Lithium Ion Polymer battery has good stamina despite the big high res display and 4G LTE. Chalk that up to excellent power management and the Qualcomm S4 Pro’s power frugalness. Like most powerful, big screen smartphones, you’ll likely have to charge the phone nightly with moderate use (some calling, web, push email, music and 30 minutes of video playback), but we routinely ran the phone from 8am to 10pm without running out of power.
Conclusion
After two weeks using the HTC Droid DNA, I can safely say it’s one of my top smartphone picks for 2012 and early 2013. This is not only a fast phone with the latest quad core Qualcomm S4 CPU, but it has a class-leading 1080p display that’s a feast for the eyes. At 5”, you might think this is an unwieldy phone, but it’s much more hand-friendly than the Samsung Galaxy Note II, and not that much bigger than 4.7 and 4.8” Android smartphones like the HTC One X+ and Samsung Galaxy SIII. The design is elegant, the build quality is excellent and it’s a pleasure to hold and use. As long as you can live with the 16 gigs of storage, I highly recommend the DNA.
(Credit: CNET)
