iOS 6 review

iOS 6 release date is here and it's a big upgrade. The interface has been given a minor makeover with improved accessibility features.

Google's apps have been given the boot, so there's no YouTube and no Google Maps; Apple's written its own navigation and mapping app with considerable help from TomTom; Siri's been improved and finally works properly in the UK; the phone app's been tweaked, Safari and Mail updated and FaceTime brought to 3G.

It's much more social than before, with shared Photo Streams and Facebook baked into the OS like the word Blackpool in a stick of rock, and there are a host of other improvements to make your iOS device that little bit friendlier.

At least, that's the case on newer Apple kit. iOS 6 works on all iPhones from the 3GS onwards, the iPad 2 and new iPad, and the fourth and fifth generation iPod touches.

However, the older the kit the less of iOS 6 you actually get. Some of the big features - Siri, turn-by-turn navigation, panoramic photos and FaceTime over 3G - aren't available for the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.

The 3GS doesn't even get the offline reading list feature, and Siri's not available for the iPad 2.

Is it worth the upgrade? We've installed iOS across multiple iOS devices: an iPhone 4, an iPhone 4S, an iPad 2 and a new iPad (that latter one courtesy of Vodafone) to find out.

As we discovered, even when you don't get all the new features, there are still enough improvements to make the jump worthwhile.

iOS 6: Phone and FaceTime

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