Apple is going to unveil the next major version of it’s mobile operating system iOS on Monday. iOS 6 will be available for developers right after the WWDC keynote and for general public in the fall. iOS 6 is expected to bring major changes, new features, and big upgrades for existing features of iOS. Most of all, it is rumored that Apple is going to ravamp the stock apps for iOS, that haven’t changed much since the operating system and the original iPhone was announced 5 years ago. Here in this post we have discussed what Apple should and might unveil tomorrow at it’s big event. Read on for more.
Improved Mail.app
Since the introduction of the original iPhone back in 2007, the stock mail app hasn’t changed much. Apple has added a few enhancements to the app, but they are not enough compared to the new third party Sparrow app. In iOS 6 we think Apple should announce major changes to the mail app of iOS for both iPhone and iPad and replace the outdated version with something more feature-filled app that also has a better looking UI.
Improved Music.app
If you compare Music.app found in iOS 1.0 (iPhone OS 1.0) with the one found on iOS 5, you will merely find any difference. This is one of the most used stock app on iOS devices but it seems Apple has been neglecting it ever since. So we think this time Apple should revamp the music app with a whole new UI and new features.
Improved Photos.app
Just like other two apps mentioned above, the stock photo app is just as it was back in 2007 or in later versions of iOS after its birth. Apple added photo editing features to the app but they are not sufficient and very useful. The app itself looks outdated too, and i think Apple should make it more like the iPhoto app for iOS it released a few months ago. Also Apple should add a feature to photo.app that would allow users to add filters to their photos. There’s no shortage of apps that allow users to add instagram like to photos and Facebook has launched it’s own version of Instagram a few weeks ago that allows users to add filters to their photos from photos.app. What we want now is being able to add filters to our photos from iOS’s photos.app without downloading any third party application. We hope we could get that functionality in iOS 6.
Also: The stock calendar app, Youtube app, notes app, contacts app, weather app. and others also need to be revamped – and we hope to see changes brought to these apps in this update.
Group Facetime
Facetime is a great way to video chat with friends and the quality it provides is far better than many other similar third party services available. But the only feature the Facetime app is lacking right now is the ability to handle group chat. As Facetime is now available for both iOS and Mac users, Apple could raise the bar and allow users to Facetime with up to 3 other users. Fring has been doing this on mobile devices from long time now and Google+ hangouts are another example of how Group Facetime chats could make video calling a lot more fun and useful.
Safari Extensions and Unibar Safari with improved performance
You might know that in the early betas of Safari 5.2 for OS X Apple has merged the address and search bar. It is expected that Apple will also introduce this to Mobile Safari. If included it will make mobile Safari better in usability and serve users with quick searches and suggestions. Also Apple can include Safari extensions to give users an opportunity to add new features and customizations to Safari for iOS and boost the functionality of the Safari browser of the post PC era.
Mission Control and improved app switcher
iOS’s app switcher isn’t the best multitasking solution out there, and the mission control of OS X is simply awesome. Now what we would like to see is an improved way of switching between apps in iOS 6, and OS X like mission control. The image above by designer Joost Van Der Lee shows nicely how new Mission Control and App Switcher could look like. (source)
Improvements for Notification Center
Notifications Center is a great feature and the good thing about it is you can add widgets to it. Cydia tweaks have shown us some awesome tweaks to get more out of it and have really boost it’s capablity. NCSettings is a simple tweak that puts all the useful shortcuts for Wi-Fi, Brightness, Volume, Bluetooth, 3G, VPN, Location etc. to your Notification Center. So Apple can add more widgets for the ease of users in the coming update and make Notification Center even more useful.
Dynamic Badges
Another cool feature Apple could add to iOS 6 is that it could make badges dynamic. What dynamic badges could do is pretty amazing, as designer Joost Van Der Lee has shown in his concept in the image above, whenever a user pulls the icon of an app that is displaying a notification badge, it will expand and show the top three or four messages from that app. This way user can see the notifications without even opening the application.
Revamped Lock Screen
Similar to most of the stock apps iOS’ lockscreen hasn’t got any big changes since the release of iOS. It just shows the digital clock, date, slide to unlock and quick camera button. But Apple can utilize it to do more awesome things, for example weather widgets, quick reply for messages, and more customizable widgets can be added to the lock screen in iOS 6. We hope Apple does something about it.
New Silver UI
The nav bars found in iOS are of blue chrome since it was first release, but this time it is expected that Apple will renew this UI elements. We have seen some hints of it in the leaked shots of Apple’s Maps.app which is expected to replace Google Maps. So we hope that all the navigation bars of the iOS will be given a silvery shade replacing the bluish one.
Support for iPhone 3GS
Yes you read it right, we really think that Apple should announce support iPhone 3GS in iOS 6 update. Last year there were talks of Apple dropping iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3rd Generation from the list of iOS 5 compatibility but that didn’t happen and we hope that Apple continues to support his widely popular and cheaper device this time too. Also worth noting here is that Apple is still selling the device alongside iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 so there are bright chances of iOS 6 supporting iPhone 3GS. iPhone 3GS users, just hope for the best.
Jawad Hadi contributed to this post. You can find more of his posts here.
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