iOS 5

The latest version of iOS 5 has finally been announced, and it has a bundle of new features — more than 200, by Apple’s count.

Several of the new features were poached from the best of Apple’s own app store, including reading queue apps like Instapaper, group messaging apps like GroupMe and photo editing apps. Jailbreak apps such as LockInfo, have also been hard done by. There’s also a lot of integration with Apple’s new cloud service iCloud.

Lots of new features, here are a few of most interesting! 

Notification Center

With iOS 5, Apple has essentially added a personalized news feed to all of its devices. The feed, which Apple calls the “Notification Center,” can be customized to display things like the current weather, a stock ticker, new emails, texts and friend requests. The feed can be accessed by swiping the top of the screen. You’ll be able to view it while the device is lock mode, much as iOS 4 displays the time and push notifications while locked. It looks suspiciously familiar to the Android notifications...

News Stand

The rise of newspaper and magazine apps for the iPad -- not to mention Apple's subscription offerings -- has given birth to Newsstand, a one stop shop for keeping track of all those types of publications. When iOS 5 launches in the fall, there will be a new section of the App Store for newspapers and magazines with subscriptions. A very nice drop down folder like experience.

Reminders

Reminders is a native To-Do app for the iPad and iPhone to be packaged with iOS 5. It looks pretty handy, although I'm all the third party developers of similar applications won't be too happy.

Safari

Apple’s mobile web browser now includes a feature that mimics the capabilities of popular reading queue app Instapaper. Its “Reading List” lets you save articles you want to read later. iCloud pushes these articles to all of your iOS devices, much as Instapaper’s separate desktop and mobile apps allow you to read articles that you save on the go. Tabbed browsing is another new feature included. The split keyboard for iPad looks great, very user friendly.

iMessage

iMessage is BBM (BlackBerry Messaging) for Apple products. Like BlackBerry’s once distinguishing feature, it allows you to send unlimited instant messages to other users and to see whether recipients have read them or are typing a response. The new feature allows group messaging as well as photo, video, location and contact sharing. It’s expected to put a dent into the thriving group messaging app startups. The advantage that those apps still have is the ability to instant message phones with multiple operating systems. For now, Apple’s messages can only be sent to others who are using iOS, on iPhones and iPads.

And More...

Also included in the update; deeper twitter integration, PC free (Your i-device is no longer dependent on your laptop), better camera functionality and Wi-Fi syncing.

iOS 5 is expected to be out some time later this year, I can't wait!