iOS 5 Compatibility Report (huge, tons of tested titles!)

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by Menneisyys, Jun 8, 2011.

  1. Menneisyys

    Menneisyys Well-Known Member

    Dec 12, 2008
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    #1 Menneisyys, Jun 8, 2011
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2011
    (Posting here as the official Apple forums are down so I can't share my thoughts, warnings etc. with anyone there.)

    First and foremost, the current iOS5 beta1 on the iPad2 is far-far mor reliable than 4.2 beta1 was on the iPad1 back in September, 2010. That is, if you are afraid of installing it because of your bad experience with (early) 4.2 beta builds, just go on and install.

    HOWEVER! This only applies to the Wi-Fi iPad2 (it's the only iOS device I've installed iOS5 on). I can't speak for the iPhone / iPod Touches / 3G iPad2 models / iPad1 at all.

    Also, make sure you thoroughly read my report. While compatibility with existing titles seems to be 99%, if you play iPhone game titles, the lack of antialisation will COMPLETELY ruin your experience. (Yes, I know what I speak about and yes, this build of iOS5 does lack antialiasing – don't tell me my eyes are bad.)

    So far, I like the most:

    - the iBooks dictionary is accessible anywhere where the standard copy/paste control is accessible. (Also works with the officially available iBooks.) Then, just tap the new menu item „Define” to look up the word. It's, apart from not having the spoken version of the word (it does have the standard English spelling and pronunciation help, though), vastly superior to the scriptlet-based, commercial solution (Tap-Dictionary; http://itunes.apple.com/app/tap-dictionary/id420174330?mt=8 ) so far available for any UIWebView-based, scriptlet-capable apps (Web browsers, mainly). The only downside is that it can only search for English language words, while the service can look up in any language.

    - iTunes syncing in the background, while you can go on doing your work in the foreground, with almost no speed impact. (At least on the quick iPad2) This is a KILLER feature and ALONE makes it worth upgrading to iOS5!

    - in MP4 files, embedded subtitles are rendered with bigger chars (no need to use third party movie players any more)

    Third party app / game compatibility report


    I've tested it with almost all video players (DOTORI PLAYER By JUNG DISK 1.3.4; BUZZ Player HD by BUGUN Software 1.8; Movie Player – Plays any Video! By Dominic Rodemer; ATK Player By Khoa Tran Anh 2.0; Azul Media Player - Video player for your iPad By Gplex 2.0; AVPlayerHD By EPLAYWORKS.Co.Ltd 1.422; eXPlayer HD By Zhigang Chen 1.3; GoodPlayer By Hustmobile 2.1; Sub Video Player for iPad By Noteloop 1.0 (=Remux MKV Player); OPlayer HD By olimsoft 1.0.16; VLC (AppStore); yxplayer By mobilesoft.kr 1.2.5; CineXPlayer – The best way to enjoy your Xvid movies By NXP Software B.V. 1.6.1), Operation Wow HD, Orions2 (games), Sygic Aura / iGo Primo / Navigon Navigator (nav apps; tested with European maps), GoodReader (the best e-book / PDF reader / annotator), and 360 Browser / Atomic Web / Opera Mini / iCab Mobile (Web browsers). Of them, it was only with iCab Mobile that it immediately crashed upon trying to load any Web page (including the default iCab homepage); no problems encountered with the other browsers so far.

    Speaking of video players, hardware MP4 decoding doesn't work in one (excellent) third party video player app (AVPlayerHD By EPLAYWORKS.Co.Ltd 1.422); with it, you need to switch to software decoding. The other video player apps are not affected and I haven't noticed any video playback speed degradation with any of them, compared to 4.3.3 on the same iPad2 (I've tested with tons of video formats - just working on a major roundup of video players -, about half of them high-res).

    Problems

    Brightness


    While Apple state it'll be easier to decrease the brightness level in third party apps (just like in iBooks), this should be made system-wide. While my iOS5 iPad2 is a tad darker (when the brightness knob is completely on the left) than my iOS 4.3.3 iPad1, sometimes even darker rendition would be preferable.

    Still glitchy scrolling in UIWebView-based apps

    The same ugly stuttering while scrolling as before – nothing seem to be changed. This almost completely ruins the experience of any third-party Web browser (except for Opera Mini, which isn't UIWebView-based).

    No anti-aliasing in 2x iPhone emulation mode! (Gamers attention!)

    This is a MAJOR problem and makes iPhone titles pretty much useless; with games, unplayable. Tested with Orions2, Tiny Wings, Angry Birds, Real Soccer 2011 (some of them having Retina support, some others don't) – all pixelizated. Speaking of Retina, Apple still doesn't seem to want to support Retina screen emulation. It's probably the only reason I'm still jailbreaking my iPad 1...

    No audio resume

    If you sync in the background while the active app plays music, playback may not resume (e.g., Orions 2). This isn't a problem of OS5, though, and will surely be addressed by game devs.

    Crashes resulting from memory shortage

    While I certainly welcome the new memory / reference handling / counting model (pretty much the same as automatic garbage collection on OS X), the BIGGEST problem with iOS, that is, the immediate app crash upon running out of memory, hasn't been addressed. This should be the FIRST thing Apple takes a look at!

    Needless to say, UIWebView still seems to use a LOT of memory – no changes there either, unfortunately.
     
  2. Menneisyys

    Menneisyys Well-Known Member

    Dec 12, 2008
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    Regarding battery life, I haven't noticed any excessive power consumption (at least in my iPad 2). In the morning, it was at 99% - the battery level I've left it off in the night.

    Again, note that the situation may be different on non-WiFi iPad 2 platforms.
     
  3. triggywiggy

    triggywiggy Well-Known Member

    Jan 24, 2010
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    Freelance writer, Student, Casually employed in re
    Perth, Western Australia
    So do you have to be a developer to download IOS5 now?
     
  4. Menneisyys

    Menneisyys Well-Known Member

    Dec 12, 2008
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    Yes.
     
  5. backtothis

    backtothis im in ur base killin ur d00dz
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold Patreon Bronze

    Jul 13, 2009
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    college student (junior)
    Houston/Austin, TX
    The one for consumers doesn't come out until fall.
     
  6. SirAwesome

    SirAwesome Well-Known Member

    May 20, 2010
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    How'd IMNS get it. I doubt he will ever reveal his sources though :D
     
  7. injuwarrior

    injuwarrior Well-Known Member

    Apr 18, 2011
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    USA
    Moderator by day, developer by night? Nah, seems more like moderator all the time. Touch Arcade Moderator Perk Package?
     
  8. smjjames

    smjjames Well-Known Member

    May 19, 2011
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    Well, they'd better get anti-aliasing capability in there.... hopefully.....
     
  9. Menneisyys

    Menneisyys Well-Known Member

    Dec 12, 2008
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    I too hope it's just a bug / oversight and not a deliberate downgrade to force people to purchase native iPad games by completely ruining the looks of emulated iPhone titles... Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a downgrade - after all, Apple has done several similar downgrades (e.g., removing the almost unlimited voice recording capabilities during the 2.x -> 3.0 upgrade from the iPhone 3G).
     
  10. Menneisyys

    Menneisyys Well-Known Member

    Dec 12, 2008
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    Safari

    Other goodies of Safari in iOS5:

    * now, it has better auto form filling. So far, while it did save the password, it wouldn't fill out the EduRoam (a European academic network with daily, password-based authorization) forms. I needed to use iCab for that in order not to have to tap / do anything. Now, it's fixed - whenever, at first Internet access at work each day, I'm returned to the EduRoam login page, the input form is nicely filled-in by Safari. The pre-iOS5 version wasn't capable of this - actually, I in no way could make it fill this form. This was one of the reasons of why I used to stick to iCab, which, among other things, automatically filled out this form.

    * I especially like the lack of the title bar, which, before iOS5, unnecessarily took up a lot of valuable screen estate. Remember: the title is always visible as the name of the tab. If it's not long enough to display the title, you can either add the current page as a favorite to see the title in its entirety (or being able to scroll the text) or use my dedicated title printer scriptlet (see http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1006692 ). Apple, please, do not listen to people that (may) demand it back – it's not needed as it's really-really easy to quickly(!) get the full(!) title of the current page. With my scriptlet, for example, it only takes one(!) tap (assuming the scriptlet is put on the bookmark bar and it's visible all the time – that is, enable Safari / Always Show Bookmarks Bar in the system-level settings).

    * I love the background tab opening (enabled by default) – so far, opening many links on a page necessitated a LOT of additional taps to always switch to the original page. This was one of the major reasons of my preferring alternative browsers (e.g., iCab) supporting background tab opening. Now, this belongs to the past - with the other goodies and advantages of Safari, now it's my preferred Web browser and it's only in some special cases (e.g., need for a download manager, in which e.g. iCab and some other browsers are unbeatable) that I switch to a third-party app.

    Note that at least with Opera Mini, some people dislike the default background link opening (see e.g. http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=1002092 ). Unlike with Opera Mini, where it cannot be deactivated, you can do this in iOS5's Safari (disable the system-level Settings / Open New Tabs in Background)

    * now, in-page text search is done the way I've always hoped for: not only „next”, but also „previous” is implemented! Great!

    * back/forward history is also implemented by long-tapping the arrows – excellent!

    * It's not killed when it's backgrounded, unlike with all other browsers (except for Opera Mini) if you open more than one tab in them and/or open a somewhat large page. The worst you can experiment is killing the content of, first, other tabs and, in memory critical situations, the current tab itself - this only means they need to be reloaded. This is way more user-friendly than how the third-party browsers are (mis?)treated, allowed memory-wise, even on 521M RAM-equipped models, where these third-party apps are granted equally little memory than on previous (256M) but also multitasking-capable models. (BTW, the latter should also be fixed by Apple. On 512+ RAM devices, backgrounded / suspended apps should be allowed considerably more RAM than in older machines, particularly when there's plenty of free memory still.)

    BTW, speaking of memory usage of Web browsers, did I say I'm not very happy with the vast amount of memory UIWebView uses? Well, I say it once again. It is one of the major problems of the platform. You could take a look at how memory-friendly Opera Mini is. While it's capable of rendering with almost the same fidelity (styles, images etc.), it uses orders of magnitude less memory for the same Web page. E.g., a (standard) page that takes about 20-30 Mbytes on a high-res (960*640 / 1024*768) iOS device when kept in memory, only takes 100-200 kbytes or even less(!) in Opera Mini.

    All in all – while I certainly disliked the awkward (no background tab opening; it took many taps to switch pages; no dynamic title displaying in Thumbnail mode etc) pre-iOS5 Safari, now, it has become my number one favorite browser. I only use alternative browsers in some specific situations:

    * I need a download manager (not supported by Safari) – iCab, Atomic etc.

    * I must keep as much tabs / webpages open as possible without them (or the entire Web browser) being killed, not even during resuming from backgrounded state OR I absolutely need to minimize data usage (e.g., while roaming) – then, I use Opera Mini instead.
     

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