iOS 5.0.1 Beta Fixes Battery Woes, Enables iPad Gestures

Apple's iOS 5.0.1 beta – seeded to developers yesterday – not only promises to address the iOS 5 battery life issues many owners have experienced, but also fixes some of the more vocally complained about problems for the iPad and iPad 2. Original iPad owners discovered that the full release of iOS 5 removed the gesture support present in the beta version, something which has now been added back in with iOS 5.0.1, MacRumors reports.

Meanwhile, 9 to 5 Mac reports, the much discussed security flaw on the iPad 2 affecting the official Smart Covers has been addressed. Users found that, with either a Smart Cover or indeed a simple magnet, along with some button presses in a specific combination, the iPad 2 lock could be bypassed and access granted to whatever app was active when the tablet was last secured.

That loophole is no longer present, along with some bugfixes for Documents in the Cloud and improved dictation support for Australian users trying to get Siri to figure out what exactly they're saying. No word on when, exactly, the public release will be, but if Apple runs to previous form it should only be a matter of a week or so before it's pushed out to owners.

For those iOS 5 users still struggling with the battery bug, we found that turning off the Setting Time Zone option was a workaround, at least until Apple pushes the general version of v5.0.1 out the door.

[via Pocket-lint]