Australian Review: iOS8 – Game Changer

Battery
Whenever a new update to iOS comes out, the big question is always "what will it do to my battery life?". In the past, updates have decimated the battery of particular devices due to freak glitches that weren't caught in testing. Initial impressions suggest battery life isn't overly affected by iOS8, at least on the two devices I tested – it seems to drain just at roughly similar speeds on both the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini.

Ars Technica have run detailed battery tests and suggests that some devices will receive slightly more battery life, whereas others will have a slightly reduced battery life. The iPhone 4S and iPad Mini both get an extra 20 or so minutes of battery life, whereas most other devices tested will lose between 1 to 16 minutes of charge.

While iOS8 hasn't introduced any fancy battery saving technology, it has a feature that lets you monitor exactly how much battery each app is using, which is certainly a welcome addition. This can be found by navigating to Settings, selecting the General tab, tapping Usage and then Battery Usage. After a couple of seconds, this will provide detailed percentage for each app.

Final Thoughts
iOS8 is a step in the right direction for Apple; it feels fresh and offers much more than the superficial new look of iOS7. iOS8 will change the iPhone experience for the better, and it will be great to see how developers make use of extensibility and widgets to improve the Apple ecosystem.

At the same time, those on an older device such as the iPad mini, iPad 2 or iPhone 4s should think about waiting til the first or second iOS8 updates are released. The loss in performance comes close to cancelling out the benefits of the new operating system, especially at the moment when not all apps support iOS8's new functionality.

As with the bigger screen iPhones, iOS8 demonstrates Apple's new-found willingness to break their own status quo. While iOS8 doesn't offer Android levels of flexibility, it is much less of a "one-size-fits-all" experience where you’re expected to play by Apple's rules. And most importantly, Apple have refined and built upon the intuitive experience that iOS8 provides without sacrificing user-friendliness.

iOS8 doesn't do much that we haven't seen before, but all of its new functionality has been implemented in Apple's trademark intuitive way.