One of the best new features in iOS 5 is iMessage. This nifty little service subverts the traditional SMS text messaging system, allowing you to send free* text/picture messages to other iOS 5 users via the data channel (*free, presuming you don’t exceed your data cap, that is).

iMessage is very subtly implemented into the existing Messages app. You won’t even notice it until you attempt to send a text message to a contact with an iPhone, and the message suddenly goes blue. Apple automatically detects when the recipient is using iOS 5 and diverts the message via the data channel rather than your network’s SMS channel.

As PC Pro’s Paul Ockenden has argued repeatedly in his Real World Computing column, SMS messages are only a few bytes of data anyway, and it’s amazing that the mobile networks have got away with charging separately for them for so long. However, if you’re on a monthly contract, chances are you’ll have several hundred – or even thousands – of inclusive SMS messages anyway, so the cost benefit of iMessage is likely to be slim.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of iMessage is that it allows you to send text messages even when you’ve got no mobile reception. In my house, for example, there are rooms where I can’t get a reliable phone signal, but the iPhone is constantly connected to the Wi-Fi network, so I can send and receive messages (admittedly, only to/from other iPhone users) without having to dangle near an upstairs window. Alternatively, if you’re abroad, you can hook up to the free hotel lobby Wi-Fi and exchange text messages without paying extortionate roaming text tariffs.

Back to SMS

What happens, you may wonder, if the inverse is true: you’ve got mobile reception but no data, such as when you’re abroad and out of Wi-Fi range, and have turned data roaming off to avoid horrendous roaming charges. Do messages sent from iPhone contacts not get through, because there’s no data channel available?

The answer is no. If you send a message to a fellow iMessage user who has their data switched off, the phone attempts to send it via the data channel at first, but if it can’t get through after five minutes or so, the message turns green and is sent via the traditional SMS channel instead.

This could mean that you’re charged for sending an SMS message that you thought you were sending for “free” via iMessage – there’s no prompt to ask whether you want to send via SMS, it just does it automatically – but the amounts involved here are so tiny that we don’t think it’s a serious problem.

The other small advantage of sending texts via iMessage is you get an instant messaging-style speech bubble on the screen when the other person is typing a message to you, so you know when you’re about to get an incoming message.

iPad messaging

iMessage also works on the iPad, allowing you to send text messages even from devices without a 3G SIM. Synchronisation is a little patchy in our experience with a Wi-Fi only iPad using the same iTunes account as an iPhone 4S.

Messages sent from the iPad are synchronised to the phone, but not the other way round, unless you’re replying to the same thread. So you can start a conversation on the iPad and pick up where you left off on the phone, but not necessarily the other way round.

Full iMessage synchronisation between iPad and iPhone is apparently possible between 3G versions of the tablet, but we haven’t been able to test that.

IMRG has been running a quarterly index since the first quarter of 2010. The index tracks a range of critical performance indicators across some of the biggest names in online retail including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Matalan. In its first index, covering Feb-April 2010, mobile visits stood at 1.4% of the total, but by the Aug-Oct 2011 quarter they’d quintupled to 7%, with some retailers seeing figures as high as 12%. Whilst mobile users, on average, don’t spend as much (making up less than 4% of total sales) the trend in both traffic and contribution to turnover is heavily upwards.

Oddly, the survey doesn’t reveal the breakdown of devices and platforms but it’s not a huge stretch to suggest the rise is, at least, in part fuelled by the popularity of the iPhone and the iPad. Looking at my own figures, I see around 50% of my shop traffic coming from iOS devices, split roughly 50/50 between iPhone and iPad, with users of the latter tending to spend more.

I’d be the first to admit that percentage increases are only of limited interest – after all a 100% increase in “not a lot” is still “not a lot” as Steve Balmer would admit – but 7% of turnover is already significant. There’s no sign of a slow-down yet so it’s reasonable to predict the average might rise to 20% or so within the next year. As an online service provider or shopkeeper, now’s the time to work out how best to get these visitors to buy. At the moment, the figures suggest the conversion rate for mobile devices is much lower than for laptop and desktop users- equalising those figures is a challenge for 2012.

We may have griped about the problems we had upgrading our iPhones to iOS 5, but at least those old handsets are being upgraded to Apple’s latest OS. A new piece of research published in the US suggests the majority of Android handset owners are being left behind by the ever-evolving Google operating system.

The research, by Michael DeGusta from TheUnderstatement.com, tracked every Android handset released in the US before July 2010, and then recorded how many of them had been updated to the latest version of the OS. The results were startling.

Only three of the 18 handsets had been updated to the latest version of Android.   Ten of the 18 were at least two major versions behind, and 11 of them had stopped getting any support updates less than a year after their release.

By the end of an 18-24 month mobile phone contract, the vast majority of Android handset owners will be left with a phone that has none of the latest features, and which poses a potential security risk

Amazingly, seven out of the 18 handsets had never run the latest version Android, having shipped with an outdated version of the OS and never caught up.

By the end of an 18-24 month mobile phone contract, the vast majority of Android handset owners will be left with a phone that has none of the latest features, and which poses a potential security risk because crucial OS patches are not being applied.

Compare and contrast that to Apple, which included the two-and-a-half-year-old iPhone 3GS in this month’s iOS update, and Microsoft, which has today confirmed that it’s delivered the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango update to “100% of eligible phones around the world, regardless of carrier”.

Apple, of course, updates handsets directly, while Microsoft tests updates with handset manufacturers and carriers, before pushing them out itself via Microsoft Update. Android updates, on the other hand, pass from Google to the phone manufacturer to the mobile network – and those extra links in the chain appear to be the problem.

As DeGusta states: “There’s no incentive for smartphone manufacturers to update the OS because manufacturers don’t make any money after the hardware sale, they want you to buy another phone as soon as possible.”

“Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one.”

Android owners can, of course, root their phone to upgrade to the latest version of the OS themselves. But should Android owners really have to turn into low-grade hackers and risk invalidating their warranty just to get their hands on the latest software and features? No wonder Google bought Motorola…

That’s the kind of feature you expect to find on paid-for software such as Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop Elements, but there’s an app that’ll do the same thing for free on Android and iOS devices – TouchRetouch. Here’s how it’s worked its magic on one of my holiday snaps, with a couple of inconveniently-placed tourists removed from in front of this Cretan ruin:

Here’s the after picture, with those tourists in front of the ruin removed:

If you look closely then you’ll see it’s not perfect – the area of modification is just about evident. Still, it’s extremely impressive for a free app. There’s a paid version available, too, for a mere 62p. Upgrading allows you to output at the same image resolution as the original photo – both of the pics in this post are at 648 x 388 – alongside a Clone Stamp tool for advanced retouching.

Here’s another before and after shot, this time from last week’s LITS. It’s members of the PC Pro team recording our live podcast, and I don’t like the look of that lectern to the right of the stage.

See? Gone:

Once again, it’s not perfect – there’s some pixellation where the app has struggled with the glow of the lamp that was behind the lectern. But even so, for a free app – that’s pretty impressive, right?

Fast forward, and I spot my first iPad: on the Tube, its user oblivious to the envious gawping of fellow travellers. For me, it had a similar effect, heralding the arrival of another exciting, innovative type of product.

That’s not the only parallel between netbooks and tablets but, as far as I can see, others aren’t nearly so positive. The netbook’s story has been a sad one: that initial flurry of excitement withered by staid products, precious little evolution and a stagnant market.

Look beneath the iPad – which is still a premium product – and the tablet market could suffer from many of the same problems.

The signs are already there: the market is flooded with a host of shoddy, near-identical products from established tech brands, no-name newcomers and bandwagon-riding outsiders, and innovation is hard to find.

Look under the hood of almost every tablet and you’ll find similar components, with cheaper models boasting obsolete hardware that’s not good enough to run Angry Birds, let alone the more demanding software currently being churned out by eager developers. Uninspiring design dominates the exterior, with cheap iPhone and iPad ripoffs dominating the market.

Almost all of them run Android and, in almost all cases, they disappoint the user with a litany of problems: build quality is often poor, screens are grainy or, even worse, made with unresponsive resistive technology. Plenty don’t have access to the Android Market, instead using an awful third-party store or making do without any legitimate way to install new software.

It’s a familiar story for those who’ve followed the netbook market: shoddy build quality and screens were found across dozens of devices, and a lack of hardware innovation meant they were also of limited use – and soon overshadowed by low-powered laptops.

There’s still hope for tablets. Apple’s forging its own wildly successful path but, away from iOS, only a handful of manufacturers, such as Sony and Samsung, are forging ahead with innovative products. Microsoft, meanwhile, is placing plenty of stock in Windows 8.

Will that be enough to help tablets avoid the same fate of netbooks? It’s still a growing market – tablets have just overtaken netbook sales for the first time – but there’s a big chance it could head in the wrong direction if more people buy, and are disappointed by, sub-standard products. Perhaps Sony exec Mike Abary was right back in 2008: a “race to the bottom” might seem tempting but, in the long run, it does more harm than good.

Here at PC Pro, we try and do things so that you don’t have to. That’s why we’ve spent a good part of the weekend installing iOS on as many different Apple devices as we could lay our hands on. Although judging by the comments on our Twitter feed and earlier story about iOS 5 problems, many of you haven’t hung around to find out how we got on…

Our experience should help guide people who have yet to click the magic button in iTunes. And even if you’ve already downloaded iOS 5 onto your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, some of the problems and workarounds we’ve discovered will still be of interest.

Here’s what we’ve found:

INSTALLATION TIMES AND ISSUES

David Bayon’s iPhone 4 – David Bayon’s iPhone 4 was the first to get the iOS 5 treatment on the night of release. The download was quick, the upgrade process itself worked first time and the phone was up and running in iOS 5 in little more than an hour. However, as he was switching to a new Mac, he expectedly lost all of his music and apps – or almost all of them. For some reason the upgrader decided to keep 35 seemingly randomly selected apps on the phone; the rest had to be re-downloaded. That process added an extra hour to the total upgrade time, and that’s without restoring the music collection

The office iPad 2 – The office iPad 2 was upgraded on Friday morning, once the crush of Thursday night’s launch had died down a little. The whole update process took a little over an hour, and (despite a barrage of error messages) worked flawlessly. However, it should be noted that we changed the PC that the iPad was synched with shortly before the upgrade, and despite iTunes assuring us that a full backup had been taken, all of our apps and settings were lost during the upgrade.

Barry Collins’ iPad 2 – Our second attempt at installing iOS 5 was on Barry’s personal iPad 2. The whole process took just over two hours, more than double the time it took on the office iPad. This is partly due to an enforced iTunes upgrade, partly due to the use of a slower home broadband connection, and largely because the iOS 5 download stalled three quarters of the way through on the first attempt, forcing us to start from scratch. Someone at Apple should be fired for not including a decent download manager in iTunes. However, the whole process went smoothly and every single one of the dozen or so apps was restored with their data intact.

Barry Collins’ iPhone 3GS – The iPhone 3GS is the oldest iPhone hardware supported by iOS 5, and given that iOS 4 had certainly handicapped the performance of the 3GS, we weren’t overly optimistic about this. As with the iPad 2, the whole process took about two hours and the entire OS had to be downloaded afresh, as there are obvious differences between the tablet and smartphone OS. The upgrade went relatively smoothly, but although iTunes claimed it had restored all of the 82 apps on the 3GS, 30 or so were not reinstalled. That meant we had to manually re-download a number of apps, and lost all the settings and data (see problem apps below). However, the iPhone 3GS was definitely running much more smoothly after the iOS 5 upgrade, with none of the stutter that used to occur on the lock screen or when swishing between home screens. Battery life, however, is another issue, as you’ll see below…

PROBLEM APPS

Although the base OS largely appears to be working fine on all our devices (see battery issues below), there are a few apps that seem to be struggling with iOS 5.

The Facebook app – which was only recently updated – appears to be extremely slow and crash-prone on smartphones, with many people reporting that the app frequently crashes whenever you attempt to do post a comment or photo or during other basic task.

The excellent TomTom app was booted off Barry’s iPhone 3GS during the update to iOS 5. Although the app itself works fine when reinstalled, users are unable to restore paid-for services such as HD Traffic updates, which are critical to many users. Many people are reporting the issue on TomTom’s forums, and the company claims a fix is on the way, although it really should have dealt with the issue during the extended beta period – during which many people reported the problem.

Google Voice, which isn’t available in the UK anyway, has reportedly been pulled from the App Store because of crashes.

BATTERY DRAIN ISSUES

The most worrying issue with iOS 5 are the reports of rapid battery drain. Indeed, Barry’s iPhone 3GS went from 60% charged to empty in less than three hours yesterday, with the phone getting unusually warm in the process. Many other users are reporting similar issues on Twitter and tech forums, and it’s not confined to the ageing 3GS: owners of iPhone 4 and even the new 4S have reported poor battery life, not to mention iPad users.

It’s not clear what’s causing the batteries to deplete so quickly. The OS X Daily website has a list of the chief suspects, including Bluetooth, faulty location services and the new notifications menu.

On Barry’s iPhone 3GS, a faulty calendar entry had lodged itself in the new notifications centre,  which refused to shut and caused the notifications screen to flicker rapidly. Once calendar notifications had been switched off, the battery drain appeared to return to normal, but we can’t say for certain if this was the culprit.

Others have suggested that Apple’s new Find Friends app could be the guilty party, with frequent requests from friends to verify your location causing the power-sapping GPS chip to kick-in frequently.

We’ve only seen this problem on one of our four devices we’ve upgraded to iOS 5, but it’s certainly one that Apple must quickly get to grips with.

Poor old Tim Cook didn’t get off to brightest start as Apple CEO. He let other people do much of the talking, and his big moment brought us what is little more than a hardware refresh of the hugely successful iPhone 4. But while I’ll freely admit to leaving work last night feeling like Cook personally owes me two hours of my life back, some of the gleeful venom being spat in Apple’s direction makes no sense.

So I’m going to play devil’s advocate and ask you this: if the iPhone 4S has let you down in some deeply personal way, what exactly were you expecting yesterday evening?

The Samsung Galaxy S II tops our A-List these days, but the iPhone 4 is still the second best phone out there – a full 14 months after its launch. It has a faultless high-resolution screen, a design that remains more stylish than anything HTC has produced, and an app catalogue Android can only dream of. Plus – and this really does need to be emphasised – it’s none the worse off for still being single-core. Having owned one for a year I’d argue a second core isn’t particularly necessary given the efficiency of iOS.

But it’s getting one. And faster graphics, putting it on a par with the iPad 2. And an 8-megapixel camera. And voice recognition.

Perhaps the people still speculating that there simply must be an iPhone 5 round the corner could tell me what else they think Apple can add right now. A bigger or sharper screen? Size maybe, but the resolution will be difficult to raise without borking a lot of apps. 4G support? Useless in the UK right now. A 3D gimmick? I’m not even going to answer that one.

The simple truth is that, yes, the iPhone 4S is a mere update, but it’s about as good as Apple can make it with current technology. If any other manufacturer had produced a phone like this, we’d say it’s very good and carry on with our lives. No, Cook shouldn’t have wasted two hours of our time to unveil it, but if some people are disappointed with what they got, just imagine the furore had Apple given in to the pressure and called this thing the iPhone 5.

Apple and Samsung’s recent spat over patents and design has made plenty of headlines, but a new arrival in the PC Pro Labs has reminded us that some devices take more “inspiration” from the iPhone than others.

Pictured above and below is Apple’s iPhone 4, sat atop of Pierre Cardin’s 7in tablet. Need I say any more.

So, what do you think – will Apple attack this rival with the sort of vigour that’s normally reserved for Samsung, or will the lawyers let this one go?

There are many things to admire about Apple (and its products), but its attitude isn’t one of them.

When customers discovered reception issues with the iPhone 4, did the company hold its hands up and immediately apologise? No, we were “holding the phone the wrong way” and offered a conciliatory piece of rubber.

When researchers discovered that the iPhone had been tracking your location and leaving that highly sensitive data unencrypted on your PC, did Apple show even an iota of regret? No, it waited several days before issuing a confrontational Q&A that claimed we weren’t smart enough to understand the “complex technical issues” involved.

Apple is displaying arrogance bordering on contempt for its customers, and here’s why.

We’re not tracking you

“The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.”

That is, at best, a distortion of the truth. Yes, the iPhone may only be plotting the location of Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G cell towers, but that’s often more than enough to build up an accurate picture of your whereabouts.

Yes, cell towers can be “located more than one hundred miles away”, but only if you live in the Mojave Desert. If you work in, say, the PC Pro office here in central London, there are 18 base stations within a 500m radius, as you can see from the map generated by Ofcom’s Sitefinder (below).

In fact, when we first entered our postcode, we were asked to zoom in because there were too many cell stations to display on the map.  In short, there are more than enough cell stations in major cities to pinpoint your location to the exact street.

“Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.”

Well, that depends on your definition of tracking. As our technical editor Darien Graham-Smith pointed out in a Twitter discussion on this topic, “unless your phone goes for long bike rides on its own, the data that tracks your phone also tracks you”.

And this 2009 Apple patent application certainly suggests that creating a searchable “location history database” on smartphones was very much Apple’s intention.

Too complex for you

The most breathtaking part of Apple’s Q&A comes in question two, where the company answers the question: why is everyone so concerned about this?

“Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date.”

This, as PC Pro’s Real World Computing expert Paul Ockenden pointed out, smacks of the “Andrew Lansley defence”: there’s nothing wrong with the policy, you just don’t get it.

And what’s all this about “very complex technical issues” that are “hard to communicate in a soundbite”? That’s a bit rich from the company that sprinkles soundbites like confetti in keynote speeches, describing its iPad as “magical” without revealing even the most basic of specs – like how much memory the tablet has.

Give us as much technical detail as you like, Apple: we can handle it. If we get stuck, we can even pick up the phone and ask your press officers, in the unlikely event they’ll ever answer a question.

Apple does itself no favours with this relentless inability to admit when it’s wrong. Leaving an unencrypted batch of location data on people’s phones and PCs is bad, bordering on reckless. A simple sorry would have done.

The Championship Manager series has long been the poor relation of Sports Interactive’s Football Manager on the PC – but within the limited scope of the iPhone, CM still delivers an enjoyable commuter-sized romp. It wisely dispenses with the complexity of its PC brethren: there are no in-depth training routines, pan-European scouting missions, or pages of player stats to pore over. You largely pick your team (only two subs, remember), tweak your formation and do your best to persuade Newcastle to sell you a youthful Paul Gascoigne.

Match sequences are blissfully short – only two or three minutes per game – although the 2D overhead match engine is erratic. Players seem to dribble into goal-scoring positions, only to deliver a suicidal 50-yard pass back into their own box, for example, and the frequency of long-range banana shots is a lot higher than we recall witnessing on The Match with Elton Welsby.

But let none of this temper the sheer, unalloyed joy of managing the Cottee/McAvennie partnership; of recreating the legendary Arsenal back-four by plucking Winterburn, Dixon et al from the near-obscurity of Wimbledon and Stoke; of harking back to an era when Kerry Dixon was considered lethal.

Eidos further ramps up the nostalgia by interspersing authentic news reel of Prince Andrew’s wedding or the news of A-ha splitting up into the game. In short, it’s a wonderful blast of old-school football, delivered at a price (£1.79) cheaper than  a Commodore 64 bargain bucket title. And for those who like their football with a longer vintage, there’s a 1970s version too.

Want more iPhone apps? Try our 73 best iPhone Apps feature or our previous iPhone Apps of the Week.