At the World Wide Developers Conference keynote, Apple announced its new mobile operating system – iOS 6. iOS 6 introduces 200 new features, according to Apple. Since this new OS is now officially announced, let’s compare iOS 6 with Android 4 and Windows Phone 7.5.
Some important updates and features that are coming with iOS 6 are improved virtual assistant software – Siri, integration with automotive manufacturers, ability to Facetime over cellular network, send a voicemail or message after declining a call, updates to Safari, guided access, deep facebook integration, passbook app and many more.
Some of these updates were long overdue, as they were already available on other mobile OS, for example, integration with Facebook and turn-by-turn navigation. Below is a comparison of new features of iOS 6, which is compared to other popular mobile OS – Android 4.0 and Windows Phone 7.5.
By looking at this comparison, you can get an idea if these services/features already exist on other platforms. If we go deeper, then we’ll know that some features are part of certain handsets only and does not apply to entire OS platform. For example, if we compare Siri and S-Voice with Google’s Voice Actions, then Siri and S-Voice can do much more, for example, schedule events, send text messages, get the latest weather information, launch apps and more. The point to be noted here is that S-Voice comes with Galaxy SIII handset only and is not a part of Android 4.0. This is not a problem with Apple’s iOS because the new iOS 6 supports many devices like iPhone 3GS and later, iPod Touch 4th generation and second and third generation of iPad.
For now we can say that Google’s Android OS is giving a tough competition to Apple and vice versa. Windows Phone and Blackberry still have a long way to be really called as real competitors.
