iOS 6 review

iOS 6 release date is here and it's a big upgrade. The interface has been given a minor makeover with improved accessibility features.

Google's apps have been given the boot, so there's no YouTube and no Google Maps; Apple's written its own navigation and mapping app with considerable help from TomTom; Siri's been improved and finally works properly in the UK; the phone app's been tweaked, Safari and Mail updated and FaceTime brought to 3G.

It's much more social than before, with shared Photo Streams and Facebook baked into the OS like the word Blackpool in a stick of rock, and there are a host of other improvements to make your iOS device that little bit friendlier.

At least, that's the case on newer Apple kit. iOS 6 works on all iPhones from the 3GS onwards, the iPad 2 and new iPad, and the fourth and fifth generation iPod touches.

However, the older the kit the less of iOS 6 you actually get. Some of the big features - Siri, turn-by-turn navigation, panoramic photos and FaceTime over 3G - aren't available for the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.

The 3GS doesn't even get the offline reading list feature, and Siri's not available for the iPad 2.

Is it worth the upgrade? We've installed iOS across multiple iOS devices: an iPhone 4, an iPhone 4S, an iPad 2 and a new iPad (that latter one courtesy of Vodafone) to find out.

As we discovered, even when you don't get all the new features, there are still enough improvements to make the jump worthwhile.

iOS 6: Phone and FaceTime

iOS's Phone app has some welcome improvements. When a call comes in you can now swipe up to access more options than just Answer and Decline: you can reply with a pre-defined or custom iMessage or SMS, or set a reminder to call the person back.

Such reminders can be time-based or location-based, so for example you can set a reminder that kicks in when you get home.

The Phone app also gets a new Do Not Disturb feature, which you can schedule for specific times (although we'd have liked a quick access icon in the lock screen or notification area. Come to think of it, location-based activation would have been useful too).

This enables you to silence all calls and alerts, or to ring only when specific people call, and you can also specify whether repeated attempts to call you should override the Do Not Disturb settings.

Those without iPhones (Or with them, but not on iOS 6) had some hearty lolz as the clock struck midnight at the dawn of 2013 though, as the Do Not Disturb feature refused to disengage, although thankfully most people didn't have to get up for work anyway so could simply swear at the celebratory message beepings before rolling back over.

The thing was it lasted seven days. Apple's response? "Do Not Disturb scheduling feature will resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013. Before this date, you should manually turn the Do Not Disturb feature on or off."

While it looks like the issue is put to bed, a number of users are now understandably wary of the feature going forward.

FaceTime's been given a boost too: you can finally use it over 3G, provided you have the right hardware (iPhone 4S yes, iPhone 4 no) and the right calling plan: Vodafone says some of its cheaper calling plans won't include FaceTime over 3G, although Orange, T-Mobile and Everything Everywhere don't differentiate between FaceTime and Facebook. Three hasn't published its policy yet.