Ios 6 should i

The iPhone 6S will turn six years old this September, an eternity in phone years. Six years is an awfully long life span for a mobile device, and certainly puts the 6S in the running for the longest supported phone to date. On the Android side, Samsung has made recent moves to improve its device longevity by offering four years of security support for some of its phones. But six years of OS updates and security support puts the 6S in an entirely different league. That might not necessarily be the case, though — both Ars Technica and Macworld found no significant impact on performance running iOS 14 on the 6S.

What may be a bigger issue, as both testers noted, is that the 6S shows its age with poor battery life. Not a bad deal for a six-year-old device. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Sounds like a basic enough feature fans of other mobile platforms have enjoyed this functionality for years , but until now the only option for attaching files has been to begin the composition process directly from the picture or movie itself. If you wanted to use multiple images or you forgot to add a picture until halfway through your email , tough luck.

That long-awaited feature is finally offered in the form of a long-press on the body of the email. Additionally, you can also now use the same gesture to add quote lines. Apple's also thrown in a so-called VIP list -- a priority inbox that lets you whitelist emails from people more important than your garden-variety spammer or daily deals site.

This feature should please anyone used to receiving dozens or even hundreds of emails during the workday -- without a way to prioritize your correspondence, urgent messages from bosses or significant others may get easily lost in the chaos thus leaving you with some extra chaos to deal with later. The VIP list is as simple to set up as you can imagine: upon going into the VIP list, you're given an option to add or delete contacts from it.

Execution itself was great, although we noticed emails from non-VIP contacts were showing up in the box because somebody who was on the list was involved in the email thread.

Basically, iOS automatically assumes that the conversation is important to you since a VIP was a part of the same series of messages. It almost seems a bit Google Now-esque with Apple playing the "smart computer" card, but we didn't mind too much. Another sorely needed feature in iOS email is the ability to create signatures for each individual email account directly from the phone. There have been plenty of workarounds for specific email domains in the past, but we appreciate seeing it supported natively and universally -- no matter which type of email account you have.

Fortunately there's plenty more to enjoy with the Mail app in iOS 6, such as:. The Notification Center largely has the same look and feel, complete with the love-it-or-hate-it grey background and tiny buttons for clearing out notifications. It's also still void of any third-party widgets, which is something we've been begging for since last year. The improvements Apple has made are certainly welcome, though relatively minor: the "Tap to Post" button; calendar items now show ending times and dates; notification statuses are synced across iOS devices; and individual mail accounts now have customizable notifications.

Additionally, message previews can be toggled on and off for alerts now. Though the Notification Center continues to improve, there are still a few features on our list that need to be touched upon. For instance, we'd prefer to have direct access to the Center from the lock screen, a "clear all" button for all notifications, more gesture support and broader widget options an Airplane Mode toggle button would be absolutely divine, and we'd love to see what kinds of stuff third-party devs can think of.

Another area of iOS that has received a major facelift is the App Store. While the user interface has been the subject of a few minor alterations here and there since the marketplace's birth, this year's adjustment may very well be the most distinguished yet.

The most polarizing change will be Apple's switch to a card-style search interface. Likely, we're seeing the fruits of the company's acquisition of Chomp , as it certainly should credit the former app search service with some of its inspiration.

With iOS 6, conducting an app search will reward you with a webOS-esque card layout. Each card displays the name, rating, app icon and screenshot of each given app. On the iPad you'll be presented with a four-card view, but iPhone users will get one at a time and will need to swipe right-to-left to check out more results. A search for "internet radio," for instance, yields a total of results. We can't imagine swiping our index finger across the screen that many times to look through every possible option.

We don't even want to swipe the screen six times in a row. Most people wouldn't search through that many apps to find what they need anyway, but this won't bode well for less popular apps near the end of the chain. Now for the good news: hitting the "download" button on an app won't kick you out to the Springboard anymore. Instead, you'll stay on the same app page and can view your download status directly from there, or you can immediately go back to searching for more apps to buy.

If you're installing an application that you've purchased or downloaded previously, you will no longer be prompted to enter your password. On a final note, all recently downloaded apps get placed on the Springboard with a fresh "new" ribbon across the icon's upper-right corner.

The label remains until the first time you launch it. A few other changes have been made to the App Store, including:. Got a bunch of pictures from that wild and crazy family reunion that you just can't wait to use to blackmail your cousins? Shared Photo Streams lets you show off those embarrassing snapshots before you even get home. Here's how it works: pick out the best of the bunch, throw it into its own Photo Stream album and it gets uploaded to the cloud and becomes available as its own unique URL.

From there you can make the album public or simply share the link on Twitter, Facebook or via email or messaging. Also, the shared photos can be commented on and liked in a manner similar to Facebook. The best part? Photo streams don't count against your iCloud storage. The changes to the camera app are few but pleasant. Only one actual feature has been added: a panorama mode is now offered on the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPod touch fifth generation.

To access it, hit the options button on the top of the viewfinder and it's listed right below the HDR toggle. There's not much here that needs explaining, to be honest -- your shots span roughly degrees, and the images, capable of churning out pictures up to 28 megapixels in size, turn out incredibly smooth. When taking the images, you're given warnings if you need to slow down, and an arrow goes up or down with your movements, letting you know that you need to adjust your position to get a better shot.

We grabbed an iPhone 4S with iOS 5. The iPhone with iOS 6 consistently captured more realistic color, while the device equipped with 5. Take a look below to see galleries of images taken by both phones and compare them for yourself.

Ah, the Game Center. Ever since it came into the public eye with iOS 4, it's grown by leaps and bounds, and is now being integrated into OS X in a manner similar to iCloud. Naturally, as games, the ecosystem and Apple's support structure continue to improve, so should the Center itself. In its third year of life, the Game Center will now offer challenges, the ability to find friends via Facebook and cross-platform turn-based as well as real-time gaming between iOS and OS X.

There's a reason we see videos of educational and usability features in every iOS keynote: these things are incredibly important to Apple, and indeed, new functionality has been added with every major upgrade to ensure iOS appeals to as many people as possible.

With Guided Access making its debut, iOS 6 is no different. There are a few things Guided Access can do: it can disable the home button when you're in an app, preventing the user from wandering to another program. You can even turn off touch or motion control to whatever part of the screen you see fit. The single-app mode can be useful to parents and teachers who enjoy the educational quality of iOS apps but want to make sure kids and students don't sneak in a game or two of Temple Run.

That's what we would've done if we had iPads at that age, anyway. The option to disable touch is great if there's a button you don't want your kids pressing, for iPads installed at kiosks or even for presenters who don't want to accidentally press the wrong buttons. We admit, we haven't tried to count all of the some-odd features in ioS 6 -- Apple doesn't officially list each one, and it hasn't even clarified what counts as a feature.

But of the plethora of improvements and enhancements we already know about, we've yet to cover the vast majority of them in this review. In this section we'll discuss many of the miscellaneous features that may not have warranted a section of their own, but still may be of interest. Music : The app has a new, streamlined interface and an extra equalizer mode Late Night.

In what must be one of the smallest feature additions, the reflection on the metallic slider knob in the Now Playing screen actually changes as you tilt your phone from side to side. It's not going to make or break your decision to buy an iPhone 5, natch, but it's a small easter egg that will capture your attention for a solid 20 seconds. YouTube : Apple dropped support for a stock YouTube app, but Google has already pushed out a separate app of its own that you can download from the App Store.

Contacts : You can now search all available fields and add custom SMS alert vibrations for each individual contact. In other words, all of your typing shortcuts and preferences can be backed up via the cloud and restored along with everything else. Clock : Rather than having to go through a vigorous workaround routine to crank out custom ringtones just for your alarm, you can now go through the music app to decide which song to wake up to.

Additionally, a clock app has now been added to the iPad, and the clock icon has slightly changed. Weather : You'll enjoy a cleaner user interface within the weather app. And yes, the weather icon still shows a bright and sunny 73 degrees, in case you're curious.

Settings : This may be listed in the miscellaneous category, but let there be no doubt: the fact that the Bluetooth setting has now moved to the top of the general settings menu, chopping off an extra two steps to the process is a welcome change.

We may be a little too excited over such a small UI change, but it's been a long time coming -- and we use Bluetooth way too much. Status Bar : The color of the bar on the top of the screen will now reflect that seen in the top-most banner in third-party apps.

So far, this is evidenced in only a few programs, such as the settings menu. We imagine this will be a more prevalent occurrence as developers continue to update their apps to be compatible with iOS 6. Spotlight : When searching for an app, the results listed below now display the name of the folder in which that particular app can be found, in case you want to revisit it at a later date without going through the Spotlight feature.

And finally, a few more enhancements, just for good measure:. Let's face it: if you're an existing iOS developer, you've likely been using all four beta releases of iOS 6, and you probably already know of the various APIs and other tools that Apple has provided. But we believe that a brief listing of the latest dev opportunities are important to the everyday iPhone or iPad user; it gives you an idea of the direction iOS apps are heading and what developers are possibly working on right now.

Though Apple says it has added features, a significant proportion can't be seen until you begin digging deep for them. But at this stage in the mobile game, what's left for the tech giant to do but continue scratching off items from a dwindling list of missing features? If you're a longtime fan of iOS, you'll find yourself in the middle of a mental debate. There is a familiar-looking icon to access transit directions, but it just provides suggestions for third-party apps instead of giving actual transit information, much to the dismay of the urban dweller.

Fortunately, the walking directions are still present and accounted for, as are the standard, hybrid, and satellite views. Apple also added new 3D flyover views for major metropolitan areas. Available on the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPad 2, new iPad, and fifth-generation iPod touch, the flyover maps give you a birds-eye view of the buildings in a city. In practice, the voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation works quite well.

In driving around a suburban town in New York, Maps was able to quickly find my location and provide directions for wherever I needed. When presented with a challenge, such as veering off of its guided course, Maps was able to seamlessly reroute us and get us back on track. Apple does have some work to do concerning its map data, however, as the navigation prompted me to perform circuitous U-turns numerous times in places that I could have easily made a left hand turn.

On another occasion, the app directed me to make a left hand turn at an intersection where it was recently made illegal to do so, indicating that some of the mapping data may not be all that fresh. Additionally, when the voice guided navigation is active, it is not possible to interact with the map, meaning you can't pan around to peek ahead at what might be coming up.

In New York City, downtown San Francisco, and major cities in Europe, Maps had trouble pin-pointing my location and orienting us properly using the compass. Where the older system was reliable enough to tell us where the nearest subway station was without issue, the new version failed on numerous occasions. Maps is also far poorer outside of the US — cities like London, Beijing, and Tokyo are virtually blank, and street data is missing for many cities.

It's prompted a lot of complaining from users already, and Apple's promised rapid improvements. If you're heavily dependent on iOS 5 maps and you live outside of the US, you might do well to wait on an upgrade to iOS 6.

All that said, the first version of every maps app feels a little incomplete until crowd-sourced data can start filling in the gaps. One assumes that over time, Apple will be able to gather more mapping information and add transit directions.

This time around, Siri's been extended to the third-generation iPad and fifth-generation iPod touch, and is available in a number of new locales. Siri's also gained new powers and performance improvements over the version available in iOS 5. Though still technically considered a "beta," Siri in iOS 6 is faster, more responsive, and has more personality than ever before.

Siri now includes the ability to directly display sports scores and standings, provide movie listing information including showtimes, reviews, and trailers, make restaurant reservations through OpenTable, post updates to Facebook and Twitter, and launch third-party apps.

The new sports integration is great for solving barroom arguments, and the movie listings are more convenient and useful than the generic web searches that Siri used to perform. The most useful new item might be the ability to launch third-party apps, which performed flawlessly in my tests. Say "Siri, open Sparrow," and the Sparrow app comes swinging to the front.

No matter how many times I tried, Siri was able to open the app that I had specified in either one or two steps. On the new iPad, Siri launches in a small, iPhone-sized window next to the home button, where its results also appear.

Creating and sharing a stream is pretty straight forward: you just add a new stream to the photo streams tab in the Photos app, add other users' email addresses, and then you can add photos that you want to share from your photo roll. Push notifications are available for when others like or comment on a photo, though it is not possible to like or comment photos in the webview.

The stream is automatically updated for everyone when new photos are added to it, so everyone can see the updated photos immediately. Essentially, Shared Photo Streams are super private social networks for people that you really trust with your photos. There is nothing stopping a person that has access to the stream from saving a photo and sharing wherever or with whomever they please.

Additionally, I would love to see Apple take the feature further than it already has. As it stands now, only the person that created the stream can add photos to it, but it would be great if it was possible to add contributors with the ability to add photos of their own.

I can see this as being an easy solution for users that want to share photos with other family members with minimal hassle, but it would make much more sense if it were integrated into Facebook. The camera in iOS 6 received a couple small updates. You simply sweep the iPhone horizontally to gather your shot and iOS stitches an image of up to 28 megapixels together. It is also remarkably fast at processing the panoramic image once the capture is complete.

Unfortunately, it will take some time for retailers and service providers to support Passbook, which means that for a while, it will be yet another unused app on the screens of many iPhone owners. Apple has partnered with some retailers already, such as Target, Walgreens, United, Ticketmaster, Fandango, and more, but at the time of this writing, the support for Passbook was still pretty thin. Walgreens does support Passbook, and it was pretty straightforward to add my loyalty card to my Passbook from the Walgreens iOS app.

From there, I was prompted to select my preferred store from a list of options near me locally. Once I had loaded the card, Passbook used a push notification to remind me to use the loyalty card when I arrived at the selected Walgreens location.

Opening the notification launched the card immediately for scanning by the cashier. Unfortunately, the location-based notifications only work for the store that I pre-selected, and Passbook won't prompt me to use my card in a different Walgreens location. Still, having the barcode for the loyalty card easily accessible keeps another plastic card out of my wallet and off of my keychain. The card worked the same in Passbook as it does in the Starbucks app, providing users with a quick way to pay at the counter and then an updated balance of funds remaining.

Unfortunately, Starbucks has yet to update its iOS app to support Passbook, so we were not able to test it in time for publication of this review. Email in iOS 6 received a relatively minor set of feature improvements.

The most front-facing of them is a new integrated "VIP" folder, which collects all the emails from contacts you designate as VIPs. Once you've flagged some users as VIPs a setting that exists independently from your "Favorites" within the Contacts app , everything you've received from those users in any email account will be collected there.

Mail will also put a small star next to messages from your VIP contacts in every folder instead of the standard circle. The best part about VIP is that you can also create custom notification settings for the VIP folder independently of your other email settings, ensuring that you never miss those messages. Finally, there's a "Flagged" mailbox that collects all of your flagged messages from across your accounts. Apple's also introduced a popular user interface tweak in mail: pull to refresh.