Apple has released IOS 5.1

By AnonyMouse, 7 March, 2012

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Apple has released IOS 5.1 as of this afternoon. I am in the process of upgrading as I am typing this posting. So when everyone get up to speed. Let us all know what you think. Post any new findings. What is new, what has been fixed, what is broken or anything you like to submit and talk about. So let the gate open and stampede commence! Apple has made iOS 5.1, the newest version of its mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, available for download, announcing the update at Wednesday's iPad event. The latest version of iOS features support for a Japanese version of Siri, a new slide-to-open camera option on the lock screen, and a potential fix for battery problems that plagued many iPhone owners upon iOS 5's initial release in October. Apple's first new version of iOS since November, iOS 5.1 is an update that Apple has been promising for several months, and which will supposedly address and fix the iPhone's much-noted battery issues. After iOS 5 was identified as the culprit for widely reported power problems on the new iPhone 4S back in October, Apple quickly issued iOS 5.0.1; that update, however, did not adequately solve battery issues for many users. Apple issued the following statement via email to HuffPost back in November: The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices. We continue to investigate a few remaining issues. iOS 5.1 is the result of that three-and-a-half month investigation. Aside from Japanese Siri and the camera button on the home screen -- users can now swipe up from home to open the camera app -- look for improved battery usage, as well as a fix to a well-publicized bug that was causing audio issues for some iPhone 4S owners, from the latest iOS update. The full list of new features, fixes and upgrades in iOS 5.1: Japanese language support for Siri (availability may be limited during initial rollout) Photos can now be deleted from Photo Stream Camera shortcut now always visible on Lock Screen for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch (4th generation) Camera face detection now highlights all detected faces Redesigned Camera app for iPad Genius Mixes and Genius playlists for iTunes Match subscribers Audio for TV shows and movies on iPad optimized to sound louder and clearer Podcast controls for playback speed and a 30 second rewind for iPad Updated AT&T network indicator Addresses bugs affecting battery life Fixes an issue that occasionally caused audio to drop for outgoing calls

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Comments

By kieran l on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

According to twitter, I've seen someone tweet about an issue where you get a SMS, and you get 2 slide to reply elements.

By AnonyMouse on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Don't forget that you can update to 5.1 using your existing 5.01 IOS by simply going to the Setting -> General -> Software Update. Once you have download the IOS remember the actual installation takes quite some time. So your phone will reboot to begin installing the new IOS. This is very quiet for about 15 minutes. So be very patient and do not interuppt this process. You might think nothing is going on but it will eventually come out of it and then hear you voice over come for a moent. Once more it reboot and then it is now ready.

By AnonyMouse on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Lord behold. Two things popped out to me already. Hold on to your shorts on this. Navigon appears to be working just great for me now! No more lagging! Also, just about any of the Music Players the songs, artist, and albums are now readable!

By Scottsdale on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Just to check we're all om the same page - do you mean that the albums/artists/songs are spoken when third party apps tap into the iPod library? That's huge for me! Shame it'll take a while for a jailbreak to appear.

By AnonyMouse on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Yes, that is correct. Using Third party music players are now working in reading the labels for the artist, songs, and albums. Yes, I agree that is huge! Other news are the iBook, Find my Friends, and Find my Phone have all been updated to take advantage of the new IPad Retina display. So far all of the apps that I've had horrible lagging issues appeared to be an Apple problem and have been fixed. So Navigon and Snackr are now appear to be working just great.

By Austin Seraphin on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I've noticed some weird dock behavior. To reproduce: 1. Unlock your iDevice. 2. Touch any of the dock icons. 3. Sometimes, it will activate the first dock icon as if double tapping it. Very strange. I have also had the double "Slide to reply" and "Slide to view" buttons bug.

By Allison Hartley on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I can confirm the doc bug. I unlocked my phone, touched the phone app, and instead of being merely selected, it was opened as though I had double tapped.

Not sure if anyone else had this issues in 5.00 or 5.01 but I had the hardest time with the Copy and Paste function. This feature appears to be working for me just great now. Also, that pesty bug where voice over would randomly place me somewhere on the screen where I didn't want to be. I no longer have this issue either. I can go from page to page with no problem. So no more having to get the attention with the triple finger on the top of the page.

After, using it quite a bit tonight. The response on the keyboard seems a lot more snappier. I used to have certain lag when typing on the virtural keyboard. Works a lot better for me. As for that Doc issue. Yes, it does happen to me rarely but I've had that happen to me one or twice but most of the time it did not do that. So it wasn't like I could do this regularly.

By mehgcap on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Unfortunatley, that bug where speech un-mutes itself when you change the rotor setting is still with us. The backspace and enter keys still don't work properly on apex bt units either. That said, the whole thing feels faster with vo, and I'm hopeful that my battery will be a bit better now.

By Darrell Hilliker on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I can't confirm this dock icon double-tap issue on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1. What devices are you all using?

You said you have noticed the copy/paste feature is fixed; can you please explain how one copies/pastes using VoiceOver? Thank you very much!

By Robin Christopherson on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Everything generally seems fine after the update but wo things of note; firstly I turned back on the automatic time zone detection after updating to 5.1 to see if this was fixed but I still get the same behaviour as before (i.e. the location services icon is permanently on with this feature selected) so I turned it back off again. I'll just have to remember to turn it on whenever I get off a plane for a minute so that the clock can adjust and then turn it off again. The other issue is that several times now on unlocking the phone it goes straight into the phone app (specifically the dialpad screen). This is regardless of where I was when I locked it.

By AnonyMouse on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
That is an very unusal issue that you have with the Location Service being on all the time. Are you sure that the Time Zone is causing that issue? Mine turned out to be my WeatherRadio app which leaves the service on all the time but it does not drain the battery as you think it would. Were you able to identify the source by going in the Location Service within the Settings to identify this? This is a first I have heard of this. Bummer! I can't seem to reproduce what people are talking about the unlocking the phone and going straight in to the phone. I had it do it once but I can't seem to do it again. Everytime I unlock it it works just fine. Can you be more specific in how exactly you are doing this? Do you double tap on the screen and where?

By Travis Roth on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Hi, Has anyone tried the Verizon iPhone with the new iOS 5.1 and braille displays, especially the BrailleConnect? Ever since the iOS 4.3 on Verizon experience I am pretty paranoid about this. Thanks for any news!

Hi Roth. most of the braille display issues present in iOS 4.33 were fixed in 5.0. I'm also unable to duplicate the doc issue. I'm running my Refreshabraille 18, and notice nothing different from iOS 5.01, other than the fact that VoiceOver no longer seems to lose focus like it once did. Someone on a mailing list said that the Apex thumb keys are not working properly, though I haven't had the time to test it with the Apex my agency has. Battery life has indeed improved. Typically, my iPhone with bluetooth on in this environment drains to about 50% after 6 hours. Today, I still had 72% battery remaining after 6 hours and my upgrade to 5.1.

By Jose Lomeli on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I really don't like the new camera feature when the iPod/iPhone is locked! You know the take picture button! It totally beats the purpose of security.! To reproduce this issue! 1. Lock your iPhone/iPod! 2. unlock it! 3. After that slide to unlock or double tap! thing swipe to the right! 4. Double tap on the take picture button! 5. It brings up the camera app! 6. Hit the home key! and it will be on the home screen! I think this beats security purpose!

By Jose Lomeli on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Another issue I was having was when I unlock my iPod it would bring up the Messages app! And it would put me on the fields to write a iMessage or a text message and it would do this several times! Huge bugs in my opinion!

By Darrell Hilliker on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I don't view this as a security issue unless it circumvents the passkey lock system. I haven't seen any reports of that. Locking your screen, in and of itself, provides no security at all.

By Stephen Guerra on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I have found a solution which requires you to replace the dns settings on your wireless network with 8.8.8.8., 8.8.4 and renew the lease and then the ios 5.1 update will take place. When finished, the article says to forget wireless network and then locate to update to your original wireless network but it is working, see article here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3786800?start=0&tstart=0

By Scott Davert on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
I don't like the take a picture icon on the unlock screen either, though it's great for the sighted populis who take a lot of photos. I now have to break the habbit of using space with dots 4-5-6 to slide to unlock with braille devices. A minor inconvenience to me, but to a slower braille reader who can not use speech, this could prove to be an issue. Double tapping the lower right hand corner of the screen will still unlock the screen at least.

By Jakob Rosin on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

hi! the camera "take picture" button isn't a security bug. If your phone unlocks with passcode (wich my phone does) after opening the camera from the lock screen and pressing home, it asks me to enter the passcode. If I don't it won't allow me to do anything except view pictures or videos I just took with the phone locked.

By Jakob Rosin on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

That's weird. after unlocking, it places me on my home screen as usual. in the messages app, both to and message text fields are accessible (no matter if it is i message or usual text).

By Austin Seraphin on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Ok I have gotten some to confirm the problem where it activates the first item in the dock. A lot of other people do not seem to have this problem. I also found out something else. At first I thought it just happened when pressing anything in the dock, but last night I touched a folder on my home screen and it did the same thing, opened the first item in my dock. Not good.

By Zsolt Torma on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Hi, I can use my iPhone with iOS 5.1 with Focus 40 Blue. Steps to connect the display: Pairing: 1. Reboot the iDevice (I'll explain why later) 2. Go to Settings/General/Accessibility/VoiceOver 3. Select Braille 4. If the iDevice finds your display, pair it with the device. The code is 0000 You have to reboot the iDevice before you can pair the display with the device, because without rebooting, the iDevice will not find your display. This is a bug, i Think. If you want to use the display, first, you have to lock the screen. Next, you can turn on the display and unlock the screen. If you use your phone (for example, read an e-mail message) and turn on the display, it will not be recognized even it is paired with the iDevice. This is a bug too, but perhaps the same as the above-mentioned. But if your display is turned on and you unlock the iDevice, the display will be recognized. You have to unlock the device and you can continue your work.

By Big Davy on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Also experienced the doc bug where the Phone Button is activated after unlocking phone although this only happened after unlocking the phone from when I had music playing. Seems to be fine at all other times.

By John Farina on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Hi folks, I have been trying to check for updates on both my iphone 4 and ipad 1. I have received a notification that an error occurred when checking for the update. I am assuming I can check for and update the software via iclowd? Thanks.

Hi, No it is an option but I had thought I could do it with iclowd so that was the first attempts I have made. I will try through itunes later today after work and listen to the podcast, perhaps while I am working at some Brailling today. Boaring job so I'll need a deversion smile.

By daz on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

hi all. well i will say that i think that the ios5.1 update is somewhat snappier. navigon certainly has no lag issues anymore which i'm very glad to read. which makes me wonder just how much of the previous issue was down to apple more so than navigon? touch wood, haven't yet had the phone issue pop up although i bet when i write this i'll get it lol. not sure what else to report at this moment. i haven't noticed any real new features with vo although if anybody has i'd like to read about them.

By Alisa on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

I have been getting a strange SMS message all day today since I upgraded to 5.1 sometime in the early am hours this morning. They say the owner is unaware that any messages are being sent and that isn't totally true. If you happen to have your mail preview turned on you can see the message. Normally, when the preview pops up on your screen you can grab it. This message does not allow you to do that. It drove me crazy today going through all the mailboxes I have on my phone and I could never find it. Finally tonight i started researching on the internet problems with the update and found that their is in fact an SMS hack. I can not however find anything on the message title itself which says U S Secretary State. How The iPhone SMS Hack Works All that is required to infect an iPhone is the iPhone's phone number. With only the phone number Miller can exploit the way that the iPhone handles memory for SMS messages. By sending hundreds of control SMS messages to the iPhone phone number (these type of messages are not seen by the victim) the attacker can takeover your iPhone. Only one SMS message will be seen by the victim but by the time they see this, their phone will have already been taken over (or owned). What Happens After Being Infected? Once the attacker has gained access to your phone by exploiting the memory vulnerability, the attacker can steal your data from your phone, send text messages and even make calls from your iPhone. They can even have a virus spread the attack from your iPhone to everyone in your address book of your phone so any friends you have in your address book which has an iPhone, will also be infected. Am I Infected with iPhone SMS Virus? If your phone suddenly begins calling people on its own, sends text messages without you doing so and you see an odd SMS message then chances are you have been infected by the iPhone SMS hack. The only way to remove it would be to fully wipe your device and reload the firmware. The text message which actually initiates the memory corruption will contain a square box or (non-recognizable alphanumeric character).

By AnonyMouse on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
That is very interesting! This reminds me so much of a virus we had about 3 years ago in 2009. What is amazing is that this particular virus you are talking about is exactly the same one you are describing here. I certainly hope there isn't a new strain of it going around. That was a nasty virus back then. I have not heard of anything new like this but thank you for the heads up! Here is the article that was around back then: http://techfragments.com/news/982/Software/Apple_iPhone_Virus_Spreads_By_SMS_Messages.html

By Sheri w-j on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Am I the only one who is pining for a start up sound? I'd take just a quiet little ding, or a tweet or even a demure burp. Is there some reason Apple isn't including this?

By Michael Hansen on Thursday, March 22, 2012 - 01:13

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
I got the chance to try out VoiceOver on a friend's iPhone 3GS, and we both agree that VoiceOver is definitely more responsive. Bravo Apple!

I updated my iPhone 4 late last night over the air. The update went smoothly and I lost none of my data! I think updating without having to mess with iTunes will be very nice!! I have had a few problems though that no one else seems to have. The first is that when my phone is locked and I press the home button to get to where I can unlock it, nothing happens. I have to press the home button several times before the phone decides to respond. The second is that when I unlock my phone VoiceOver is almost always focused on the page adjuster instead of my first folder the way it should be. Is anyone else having these problems?

By Lukas on Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 01:13

Hi all, I am happy to have finally registered here! Hope to eventually become an active contributor. For now, I have already found many of the shared tips and app recommendations extremely useful! The only app I have found utterly dissatisfying so far is the Aurify game which does not work at all on my iPhone 4S with iOS 5.1 that was purchased at the very beginning of March or perhaps the very end of February. :-D Still being a relative newbie to the world of iPhone and iOS, I can in deed confirm the following problems with the 5.1 update, some of which I think persist since version 5.01 that my phone was originally shipped with, and others seem to be newly introduced bugs. Some of those that have already been mentioned here don't seem to occur to me though. Before updating, I only had my phone for just a few days and was struggling with many other issues that I eventually found to be my own lack of knowledge and/or experience, so I can't remember issues that were actual bugs in the software and have been resolved in this update any more. Here goes: 1. Voiceover occasionally stops speaking for a minute or a few but still keeps playing its sounds. Eventually, speech is always resumed after some time. This has happened so rarely and irregularly to me that I couldn't discover a pattern in this behaviour yet, if there is any in deed. 2. I have attempted to connect a friend's 32-cell Bluetooth Baum Super Vario 2 to the phone a few times. It never found anything at all and always kept hanging in the Bluetooth settings dialog for an infinite amount of time (once I even let it wait for ten minutes or more), the latest piece of information displayed being that it was searching for available devices. Note: The others I keep experiencing regularly, probably every day and sometimes even several times a day: 3. The dock bug (after unlocking the phone, focus is immediately placed in the dial tap of the phone app). I suspect that this happens only if I attempt to touch something rather quickly after double-tapping the unlock button though. 4. Sometimes after I lock the screen, it gets immediately unlocked again. In these cases, focus is placed on the current time which is the first element of the unlock screen that appears once the home button is pressed. I suspect that this happens after I press the home button to get to the home screen from an open app and then press the lock/power button quickly, before the home screen can actually appear (or perhaps before Voiceover can start reading the first icon). 5. If I have an unread message and see the notification about it on the unlock screen, sometimes Voiceover reads both the "reply" button belonging to the unread message and the "unlock" button as "reply". Again, this seems rather irregular to me, although not so rare. 6. I have Voiceover set to read new notifications even while the phone is locked. If it reads a notification about a new incoming message this way, it always reads it once more about a minute since it finished reading it the first time, in exactly the same way. 7. This is not probably a real bug but I still find it pretty annoying: There seems to be some conflict between the general audio playback volume setting and the one that belongs to Voiceover, if there are in deed two separate volume settings at all. If I use an app that renders its own audio, make a phone call, turn off an alarm and so on, usually the volume gets messed up so that Voiceover or the other audio is either played incredibly quiet or way too loud. Is there anything I can do to sort this out somehow? 8. I would also love to have a brief startup alert of some kind. To me, this is a quite serious accessibility inconvenience. I love the Symbian phones because they always vibrate when you turn then on. 9. I have noticed that if my phone's battery gets completely depleted during usage so that it turns off on me, and I later connect it to the computer, it takes about 5 or 10 minutes or so before the phone actually starts up. I don't think that this is a bug, probably just a precaution to improve battery life and management or something like that, but do you know if this has been discussed before and if Apple has provided an official explanation for this behaviour? Or has it just always been there since the very first release of iOS and/or model of iPhone, is it something so common and well known that it has never been actually talked about? :-D Other than that, I find the system, device and the entire experience absolutely awesome, amazing, wonderful! :-D I would just like to ask one more question: What's the best way to officially report issues to Apple for investigation and to keep track of any possible progress and/or further discussion on them? Thanks in advance for any answers. Hope these relatively small but still unpleasant issues get addressed soon! :-) Happy idevicing, Lukas

By Clare Page on Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 01:13

Hi! I installed IOS 5.1 on my iPhone 4S the day after this update was released, and the installation went smoothly over the air: since this kind of update installation has existed since IOS 5 and I've only had my iPhone since October 2011, I have never done any IOS updates with iTunes. I am mostly satisfied with this new update, although, like many others, I experienced the "dock bug" mentioned above, where an app on the dock opens when you double-tap at the bottom of the screen to unlock the i-device, and in my case that was Safari until I moved that off the dock because I don't use it a lot: however, when I started sliding to unlock my iPhone instead of double-tapping, this "dock bug" didn't occur, and, even though VoiceOver focuses on the Phone app when I do this, it doesn't open it. I've never had any problems with speech cutting out since I've had IOS 5.1, nor any strange happenings with SMS text messages: also, even though sliding my finger across the screen to unlock my phone seems to land me on the Take Picture button before the phone unlocks, that has never yet led to me accidentally taking a photo.

By VRein on Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 01:13

As I posted in another forum, I am having the speech issue that many voiceover users are mentioning. I might be in safari or mail or a third party app like ap mobile and the issue occurs randomly but daily and multiple times throughout. speech is completely dead, but the clicks and gestures for voiceover are still working and it takes anywhere from 3-5 minutes for the speech to return. If I touch the screen during that no speech period, the no-speech seems to reset and I have to wait another 3-5 minutes. I've had 4 iphone 4s over the past 6 months and it has happened on all of them. Evn on my old iphone 4, it occurred as soon as I installed ios 5.0 and it has continued to ios 5.1. I seem to be able to reproduce it when voiceover is reading something like a paragraph on a webpage and I flick to the right before it has a chance to finish what it is saying. This seems to make it happen every single time.