So I’ve been using iOS 7 since beta 1…and wow, what a difference just a few weeks makes.  Beta 1 was…rough, to say the least.  Lots of problems which I spelled out in an earlier post.  With beta 2 I didn’t really see that many differences.  For me, beta 3 was where I really saw some improvements.  Much more stable, and I saw many improvements in functionality which in my opinion where sorely missing.  And now that I’ve been using beta 4 for just over a day I can safely say, I’m incredibly happy with how iOS 7 is shaping up to be.

With the 4th beta, Apple has made some improvements to problems which many pointed out shortly after the first beta was released.  Notably, they’ve made changes to the lock screen.  With the new lock screen in iOS 7 Apple had brought a new “Slide to Unlock” feature where you needed to slide the entire lockscreen to the right in order to unlock the device.  But the lockscreen before this 4th beta was confusing, because there was no direction as to which direction you should slide the screen in order to unlock it.  To make things worse there was an arrow at the bottom of the screen directing you to slide the screen up for the control panel and another arrow at the top of the screen pointing down for accessing the notification panel.  With this latest update Apple finally removed those other arrows and changed them to horizontal lines, and provided direction on how to actually unlock the screen.

They have also improved the functionality of the notification center by allowing you to swipe left to right for the different notification options.  They also improved the stability of the OS with other bug fixes and refinements but these items I mentioned above are the biggest updates I’ve noticed.

BGR is reporting that we should expect two more beta releases before seeing a “Gold Master” in early September.  I’d be happy to hear of your experiences with the beta so far.  Tell me about them in the comments below.