iOS 6 must have features

I wrote this article some time ago, but I decided it was time to come back to it, as there's still some time before Apple announces the next iOS.


I'll just jump right into the most needed features. As I mentioned before, Apple either implements most of this stuff or iOS will look dated.

Notification Center Widgets*

This is a must have, let developers do stuff for the notifications center, and let the users select what they want to have in there, a quick way to access brightness, favorite apps, and wifi settings (check out the concept video) is very necessary.


A must have in the Notification Center is a quick way to turn the flash light on and off. *

Fullscreen Safari*

This has been a feature for the jailbreak community that's been available for quite some time now, include it on iOS for crying out loud, pixels are way too important on the iPhone screen.

I don't care for the menu they use on the Cydia version, but at least you get full screen, until the iPhone doesn't come in 4.0" display, this is neccesary.

Sharing. Make iOS social.**

Share to anywhere, Facebook, Google+, whatever, allow developers to work this out. Twitter is a great start, but people share content in many sites now, and it's what I believe makes the Internet what it is. This could be a widget also, just merge it with everything, specially Safari.

Custom Ringtones and SMS tones*

For crying out loud, let me choose whatever song I want for whoever I want. It's just beyond annoying that 90% of people have the same ringtones, not to mention SMS tones.

Status Bar Icons*

Having a notification screen and a popup are OK, but icons are also needed IMO. There's a chance it will look crowded, but since many just want notifications because of text messages, facebook, twitter and stuff, I think status bar icons would work well.

WebOS made it look great, even with many icons, they just show a "+", so it doesn't look crowded at all.

Other things

• Allow me to take action on notifications from the notifications center, stuff like reply to messages.**
• Contacts Photos*: show pictures on the contacts list, both phone and contacts app. At the very least, show pictures in the favorite contacts tab.
• Add option to kill ALL apps running*.
• Brightness on FastApp switcher*: There's volume there, why can't I have brightness there too? There IS enough room.
• Any orientation homescreen. It's kind of stupid to app switch when in landscape mode on the iPhone.*
• True/Improved Multi Tasking, I hate that when I turn off my screen, usually the app dies with it, let it finish what it's doing. They need to either extend the multi task stuff*
• Bluetooth mouse connectivity: it would be great to use, when in "laptop mode" a mouse, and a keyboard, the bluetooth keyboard functionality is available, but you can only use a mouse if you jailbreak your device (not that there's anything wrong with that), and this really should be a native iOS feature. A Magic Mouse would actually work perfectly with the iPad.*

* Already available with jailbreak

** Kind of available with jailbreak, but only for BiteSMS in case of messages and not so much for social sharing as I think it should be.

Ok so that's my thoughts on what the next release should have, I'm positive some will agree with me, and I'm more than certain Apple will keep on "taking" ideas from the jailbreak community, but my point is that they should do it faster, releasing drops of features might not be the best way to go on the mobile market, which has, for many years, moved by trends.

My original post about this was a tweet that I decided to expand a little :)


Update: I can't believe this didn't cross my mind. An improved Keyboard!