I've been using iOS 5 for a little over a day now and spent much of that time trying to discover many of the new features we've all heard about and found a few we haven't. Overall the new operating system is a marked improvement over iOS 4.

iOS 5 is really a coming of age version. The original iOS layed the foundations that shook up the mobile world. iOS 2 was a huge change, allowing apps and the app store. No one could have predicted just how big the app business would be. Since then, iOS 3 and 4 brought improvements to the way we used our iPhones, but finally iOS 5 does what 4 should have, it turns our phones into the powerhouse system we've been waiting for.

Apple have done a great job here, there is no question on that. As with all iOS releases there are new features, some which are obvious and promoted heavily on apple.com, others haven't been so publicised but are either very cool or very useful (or both!). In this first look I will highlight some of the features that I feel are important.

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Notification centre

This is a key feature that really should have been in iOS 4 if not iOS 3. The old way of doing notifications for everything from calendar reminders to text messages really became annoying. Having a huge bubble pop up that you had to press some button on to dismiss was crude at best. Watching videos or playing games saw frequent interruptions from people texting.

Well no more, finally notifications can be set as a discreet banner that shows up at the top of the screen for a few seconds, then just as discretely disappears. It won't interrupt your film, and it won't pause your game either. For anyone using iOS for a while, this is more than just a welcome change... it was a necessity.

Apple didn't stop there however, as they implemented a notification centre that you can access by swiping a finger from the top of the screen downwards. This notification centre contains recent notification you haven't yet actioned, like new emails, twitter messages, missed calls, voicemail, texts, calendar reminders etc. Everything is there in one place and always accessible. The lock screen also shows proper notifications, each of which allow you to slide the icon across and the system takes you straight to the new email or text. Notifications are no longer an annoyance, but instead a tool you can work with in harmony.

Safari Reader

The usefulness of a feature like Safari Reader cannot be overstated on a small screen device. Reader takes the text and images from a web article such as a review, and displays it as a document for easier reading. An added bonus is that where an article goes over multiple pages, Reader also pre-loads those too, so you can read the whole article without having to click a button like "next page". It's a feature that is useful on a desktop computer, particularly handy on a tablet and frankly essential on a smartphone. If you're still unconvinced just give it a try on this article and you'll get the general idea.

Custom alert tones

iOS 5 now allows you to add custom alert tones as well as purchase new ones. Previously this was restricted to ring tones only, but the newly added ability to have custom alerts for text messages etc is a welcome addition and long overdue.

Custom vibration

This new feature is in effect an extension of custom alert tones. Where normally you would have to have the ringer active to tell who's contacting you without looking, now you can choose from a number of pre-set vibrations for different contacts. That's not all however, Apple have gone one further and provided a vibration alert composer in the accessibility settings. Composing is a simple case of tapping the screen however you want to achieve the desired result.

Home sharing

For anyone who has more than one computer in their home and uses iTunes, chances are you may have already used Home Sharing to listen to your music library on a second computer. Now you can do this with your iOS 5 enabled iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. If you have an iPod dock speaker system, simply plug in your iPod Touch, enable home sharing and pick what you want to listen to from your entire music collection.

Reminders

Before iOS 5, many of us were left in need of a decent reminders application. Thankfully iOS 5 addresses this issues with a well thought out and competent reminder app. But it simply wouldn't be Apple without going a step further. We are all used to setting day / date reminders for our to do lists, where Apple has exceeded this is the creation of location based reminders. Need to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home from work? Simple, set a reminder to trigger as you leave work and location services take care of the rest.

In short, Apple has made iOS 5 a significant release with a large number of improvements and new features. Some of them are long overdue but all of them are welcome.