WWDC 2011: iOS 5 Brings New Mail, PC Free Features, Game Center & iMessage

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We have just showed you six new iOS 5 features, the new Notification Center, the Newstand, better Twitter integration, the new mobile Safari, the Reminders app and the Camera updates. It’s now time for the last four of the 10 most important iOS 5 features presented at WWDC 2011 which are the new Mail and Game Center apps, PC-Free wireless syncing and an Apple-own mobile messaging system called iMessage.

The Mail application found inside iOS has also received some important updates in iOS 5. These are:

• Indentation control
• Rich text formatting
• Draggable addresses
• Search entire messages
• Flag messages
• S/MIME
• Dictionary support (just like in Mac OS X available to all apps)

One interesting feature is keyboard splitting which lets you move around the virtual keyboard on the screen while also splitting it in two independent parts.

While the new Mail features are interesting we’re certainly a lot more happier to hear that Apple is finally going PC Free when it comes to iOS devices. That means no more cables, or not that many cables anyway. That means you’ll be able to setup your iPhone without the need of tethering it to a computer, which is a great feature. Software updates will also be available over the air, so no need to plug in your iDevice to your computer anymore to update to the latest iOS version. And the updates are “Delta updates OTA” which means your iDevice will only download the updated files, a measure meant to help you better deal with your capped data plan.

Moving on to Game Center, an important part of Apple’s iOS environment, considering that there are 50 million Game Center users (compared with the current 30 million Xbox Live users), iOS 5 will have some new gaming-oriented features for you too:

• Purchase and download games from Game Center
• Achievement points
• Friend discovery
• Friends of friends support
• Game discovery
• Turn-based games support right inside Game Center

Last but not least we have iMessage, Apple’s own chatting device, that’s probably based to some extent on the already popular BlackBerry Messenger, although Apple will probably never admit to that. Especially since it’s also very similar to Apple’s own iPhone messaging application, although iMessage doesn’t require an SMS plan to work. iMessage will help you converse with iOS users. iMessage will apparently not be compatible with other messaging apps, and it will work only on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Besides chatting it comes with photo and video sharing support and group messaging, in case group chats are needed. Here are some other iMessage features you should also be aware of:

• Delivery receipts
• Read receipts
• Typing indication
• Pushed to all devices
• 3G & Wi-Fi support

What do you say, folks? What are your favorite iOS 5 features so far?