After a challenging upgrade to iOS7 which consisted of multiple iTunes reinstalls, waiting for the download for close to half hour when it told me 5 minutes remaining and a brief period where I thought I might not get my phone to even boot back up, I finally got to play with the new OS about 9:00pm on Wednesday night. Now that I’ve had over a full day to play I thought I’d write about my initial thoughts with iOS7.

SMOOTH OPERATOR

I happen to have a colleague at my day job who also bought an iPhone 4S around the same time that I did and one thing we’ve both been noticing over the last while is that our phones seem to have been ‘hanging’ more lately. On separate occasions we’ve both shared examples of trying to load (or even close) an app just to have to put the whole phone down and wait for it to start functioning again. While we both would like to squeeze another 6-12 months out of our devices with the amount of trouble we’ve been having we both thought an upgrade was going to be needed very soon. Well I’m happy to report that contrary to my prior experiences with being on the tail-end of a device supported on a major iOS upgrade – Apple was right (at least so far) when they said iOS7 should operate smoother for older phones. The truth is I almost instantly noticed that the phone felt less glitchy. While GonnaGeeek contributor Chris Ferrell told me that he thought the longer animations slowed things down, I’m guessing that this extra half second transition gives the older phones just that little bit of extra time to process the user’s request, and therefore it doesn’t look to hang like it did before. Sure, you might be a bit irritated if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like animated transitions and just wants your phone to flip instantly from page to page, but for me I’d rather have a smooth-feel even if it means using these animated tactics.

CONTROL PANEL

Since the initial announcement of iOS7 one of the things I was most excited for was the Control Panel. I’ve mentioned many times that the ability to easily toggle services is one thing that I really like about Android. How does it compare to my Android experiences? It falls short. It’s great to be able to turn on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and Airplane Mode from a single area, but Android’s version seems to work better. For example, when I turn Wi-Fi on from my Nexus 7, it takes me to the page that shows the Wi-Fi networks near me – with iOS it doesn’t and it just connects me back to the network I was previously on. Now, with that said, one of the things that actually really surprised me (I must have missed it in the announcement) was simple – a flashlight button. Even since before the iPhone had a flash, flashlight apps have been huge (who remembers using their display as a light?). It have to admit I had a huge sense of joy (and I mean stupidly huge) deleting my flashlight app from my phone – bye bye ad driving flashing light apps. When the flashlight is turned on user can lock their phone which is especially great if they’re using their iPhone as a flashlight in an awkward space.

MESSAGES

One thing that used to irritate the heck out of me was that Messages on the iPhone didn’t always show the time stamp. It seemed pretty random of when iOS did and did not display the time of a message – I’m happy to report users can now toggle all times. By simply swiping to the left it’s possible to show the time on any message but keep in mind once you let go the time hides itself again.

A further change to messages is that there is finally a way to search SMS and iMessages. This search feature can be accessed by simply pulling down in the conversation view of Messages…

The bad news is that my experiences so far has been hit and miss. When the search finds a result the user is supposed to be able to click on the conversation and be pulled back to the message that contained the search term. I’ve found that while often this works properly there have been several occasions were I’ve been taken to the most recent message with that particular contact. I’m hoping that this is a bug that many people will have and that it can be fixed with a minor revision, but who knows.

BYE BYE MR or MRS ANNOYING

Whether it’s a consistent midnight drunk dial or just an ongoing feud with a family member, I’m happy to report that Apple has finally added support to block a phone number directly from your iPhone.

This has been a feature from even the early BlackBerry days so it’s always been a bit surprising to me that Apple has never supported this. I’ve actually known people who have never bought an iPhone for this specific reason. There are lots of reasons people might want to block numbers without having to call their provider and with a phone as advance as an iPhone it was getting to be a bit ridiculous that there wasn’t this option prior to iOs7.

Adding a number to the blocked list is as simple as selecting a person from your contacts and boom, no more phone calls, messages of FaceTime requests from that person.

SNOOZE

I’m notorious for using my calendar. The reality is that without having a calendar on my phone I’d forget half of the things that I had to do when I got home from work. While iOS created reminders a couple years back, I’ve kept using the calendar function instead finding that the alternative was significantly less stable. My first calendar event notification after upgrading to iOS7 happened when I was in the middle of getting my son ready for bed. As you can imagine I was pretty happy to see there is now a snooze option now on calendar event notifications. I’ve already used this several times in the last 24 hours – great addition Apple.

THE OVER ALL EXPERIENCE

The final aspect of iOS7 that I want to applaud is something more subjective than what I’ve mentioned so far – the overall experience of the phone. When I first saw the announcement of iOS7, to me it felt like Apple was simply adding a control panel and changing the icon theme of iOS. iOS7 is actually a completely different experience than the previous versions and it’s a great demonstration that there are new minds driving the Apple ship now. While there is still an obvious iOS history present in iOS7 (such as the general navigation tree of settings), to me it’s apparent that Apple is starting to listen to consumer requests and beginning to implement them into iOS. The vibe of the phone is now closer to that of Windows Phone than ever before and because of this it makes the iExperience finally feel fresh again. I found myself a couple times thinking that if I do ever switch to an Android phone that I’ll probably have to look into some alternate themes to get away from the antiquated embossed/bubble feel that is slowly fading away.

As mentioned in a prior article one thing that I needed to keep my interest in Apple was simple: hope. Does iOS7 give me hope? The truthful answer is yes, but only a bit. I was really skeptical about iOS7 and after the terrible event that was the iPhone 5C/5S announcement I was pretty much ready to turn my back on Apple and deal with some of the ‘quirks’ of Android. After playing with iOS7 for a day I’ve seen enough feature implementations (some of which I haven’t mentioned – ie. multiple photos attached to a single email) that appeases a certain side of me. The issue that I have is that there is still an obvious level of restriction still present within iOS7 (ie. there’s a maximum photo attachment of 5). I was really, REALLY hoping that Apple would at the last minute flip a switch that would allow users to set a default app for web browing, but sadly we’re still stuck with Safari. I’ll admit Safari has been reworked and it does solve a lot of the reasons why I changed to Chrome on my phone, but I use Chrome on my desktop and the bookmark sync is enough reason alone for me to keep using it on my iPhone.

Overall I do recommend upgrading to iOS7 as my experiences thus far have been mostly positive (but remember, make sure you are backed up properly) but keep in mind I’ve only been using it for a day so I’m sure my problems-list will expand over the next while. Although iOS7 is definitely better than what I thought it would be, it may not be enough to keep my feet firmly planet in the Apple ecosystem – I’m still on the fence.