Having recently installed the latest version of Apple’s operating system, iOS 5, onto my Apple iPad 2 and working down the list of 200+ new features I thought it might be useful to list down some of the more useful features that have appeared.

Split Keyboard

The split keyboard view is really useful. If you find the on-screen keyboard too big to use comfortably just press and hold the keyboard icon on the right hand side of the iPad on-screen keyboard and select “Split”. The Keyboard will now split into a left hand and right hand side with much smaller buttons.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Talking of the on-screen keyboard you can now setup shortcut phrases for the keyboard. Head into Settings, General, then Keyboard, and towards the bottom of the list head towards the section titled “Shortcuts”. One is already set up for you, but you can add your own.

Four Finger Salute

You can now quickly switch between open applications by swiping left or right with four fingers placed on the screen. Swiping up with four fingers also brings up the app bar. On a similar note use five fingers and quickly draw them together to minimise a running app.

Photos into Albums

Photos in a the camera roll can now be organised into folders. For this head into Photos, then tap on the  top right action button.  Tap all the images you want to include then tap “Add To…” on the menu and choose “Add to New Album” and give the album a name.

Save Attachments in Mail

Ok, this isn’t an iOS 5 tip but someone asked me how they can save attachments on the iPad so I thought I would include it here.  On the iPad, without installing extra apps, you can really only save images to Photos. To save an image tap the image to open it, then tap and hold the image then select “Save Image” which will place the image in your Camera Roll (which seems like an odd place to put it!). For PDF’s you can open the attachment then tap the action button at the top and choose to open the attachment in iBooks which will place it in a collected titled PDFs. For Office based documents you will need to get hold of one of the matching Apple apps such as Pages (unless you know of any others that will do the job – get in touch).

Music Controls From The Lock Screen

If you have an iPhone you might lucky enough to be able to double-tap the home button on the lock screen to take snaps. On the iPad you can’t do that (not yet anyway) but by double-tapping the home button you can access the media controls to change the volume, play/pause, and skip tracks.

Sync Over Wi-Fi

You can now sync with iTunes over a wireless network on the iPad. You need to plug the iPad in using a USB cable, the first time, then choose “Sync with this iPad over Wi-Fi” from the device screen. Then, on the iPad itself, tap Settings, General,  iTunes Wi-Fi Sync,  and you can tap on “Sync Now” to kick off a manual sync (obviously the iTunes computer has to be switched on!).

I’ll add more things as I find them, if you have a useful tip for the iPad after installing iOS 5 then let me know and I’ll include it here.