Wow, wow, wow, where do I begin? There is just so much to do and talk about. If you thought iOS 4 was brilliant, wait till you experience iOS 5. Apple upped the experience like crazy.
Today, I want to share with you my findings so far and any tips or tricks hidden in the OS. Starting off with, Notification Center!
iOS 5 Notification Center
This feature has been beautifully done by Apple. The design and matte finish of the background gives it a professional look and wonderful feel.
To access the notification center before customizing it to your taste, you swipe downwards from the top of the screen. Here you see a list of all your current notifications and additional info like weather and stocks. I personally like this format because it saves me a few taps and prevents me from closing an app just to check the weather (which I do a lot). To hide just swipe from the bottom back up. To rearrange or have more apps post their notifications to the center, head over to Settings to customize.
In Settings, you can order the notifications by time or manually. If you choose to arrange apps 
manually, you use the Edit function on the top right corner to arrange the order of the apps. Next, you can add or remove the apps you want visible in the notification center. Scrolling all the way down shows you apps that currently do not appear in the center. From the list, go ahead to add apps you like. (Note: the apps shown in the list are apps that you previously set to send you notifications when you installed them)
Another cool thing is you can further set the notification style for each app. Just tap on the app and you are taken to another screen where you set the alert style for the app. The screen shown below shows the settings for the phone app. The settings here enable you to specify the way you want to receive your notifications when they arrive before pulling down the center from the top of the screen.
Notification Center Settings
The Banner style sets your new notifications to appear as a small strip at the top of the screen for some secs before it disappears. The great thing about it is that, you can tap on the notification and be taken straight to the app without pressing the home button to access your springboard or multitasking center. The preview does not act like the pop up alert where you have to tap view or cancel to go back to the current app you were at. I find this really convenient especially when I’m say reading or typing out an email and I get a new notification. With the banner alert style, I can just ignore it till I’m ready to attend to it without making an extra move to disable the notification. The Alerts style acts like the regular pop up alert used in iOS 4.
In the 3rd section, you can specify if you also want the regular red notification on each app or if you want that off using the Badge App Icon setting, toggle the alert sound on or off and also indicate if you want the notification for that app visible on the lock screen.
Banner Alert Style
Notification on lock screen
For apps with short messages, you can read the full message and just hit the little (x) button in the right hand corner to clear the notification without going to the app and making the phone erase it for you.
At the end of the day, notification center gets an A.
Andriod users may say “been there done that” but nevertheless, its a wonderful addition to the iPhone.
A few things I wish were included in the notification center are:
- Replying from the lock screen. For instance, tapping a notification takes me to the app without sliding to unlock. I know, it sounds a bit odd at first because the lock screen is there for a reason but I’m sure you will find yourself wishing that at some point.
- Pulling down the notification center on the lock screen when there are no new message to view information like the weather or reminders or stocks.
Feel free to share your thoughts on this feature and anything new you have found while using the notification center.
