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Custom ringtones are great for knowing who is calling, but those of us who leave our phones on vibrate get left out of that party. One of the less advertised features of iOS 5 is the ability to assign custom vibration patterns to individual callers.

To enable this feature, open the Settings App and select “General” and then scroll down to “Accessibility.” Scroll down a bit in the Accessibility settings and turn on “Custom Vibrations.”

This enables the feature, but to actually use it you not need to open the Contacts app to customize the vibrations for each contact for whom you wish to use a custom vibration.

Select a contact, and then tap “Edit” on the upper right corner of the screen. You’ll notice that there is a new “Vibration” setting for your contact. You’ll see several built-in variations, but the ability to create your own pattern right on the phone (Morse code, anyone?) is the ultimate in customization. You can also turn off vibrations entirely for specific contacts if you wish (great for people you want to avoid).

After setting a vibration, tap “Done” once to exit the vibration settings and a second time to save the updated contact.

Congratulations, you now will be able to tell by the pattern in your pocket who is calling you, even when the phone’s audio ringer is off. Amaze your friends with your new ability to see who is calling without looking or listening to your phone.

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In Notification Center, tapping on notifications launches the app they’re associated with. Your first instinct might be to clear out all notifications associated with each app to keep your Center clear. Don’t. Just leave one for each app, and then you can use the Notification Center as a quick launcher for those programs.

To save time, go to Notifications in Settings and optimize your Notification Center. You can do this by choosing the order in which notifications appear, how many recent notifications to display from each, and whether or not they appear in Notification Center at all. Experiment and find the combination that works best for you.

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In a statement, the company said:

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.

Sprint has admitted to receiving data from CarrierIQ’s software, but it denies using it to track its customers, as has AT&T, which says it uses the information for network management. Verizon, on the other hand, has denied using the software, as has Google on any of the Android phones it makes.

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If you’re not familiar with iChat, it’s Apple’s multiprotocol IM client that comes preinstalled on every new OS X computer. Users can enter AIM, me.com, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber account credentials to use those services, and they can sign in to more than one account at a time. Like Mail for OS X, it’s a flexible tool that can centralize much of a user’s IM-based communication needs.

Code discovered by developer John Heaton (via TUAW) in the most recent iOS update includes mentions to those services that iChat works with out of the box. Of course, Apple doesn’t yet let you sign in to IM services from AIM or Jabber natively on iOS devices, though there are a wealth of third-party options that do in the App Store.

Still, if Messages continues to grow into something that allows access to multiple IM services in one central location, in addition to text messaging and iMessage services, that will expand its usefulness quite a bit. Of course, I’m still hoping iMessage makes it to the desktop first, but this would be a nice small feature update for iOS sometime down the road.

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Here’s the statement in full:

The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices. We continue to investigate a few remaining issues.

So Apple appears to be saying that the leftover problems are being seen by a smaller percentage of the originally affected group, according to its information. That’s likely the case, but users who are still experiencing poor battery life, or who are seeing it for the first time since the update, likely won’t take much comfort from the statement. At least Apple was quick to respond, which should mean we’ll once again see it move swiftly to quash remaining bugs missed by the 5.0.1 update.

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Far from cries of relief, the Apple Discussions site has been flooded since the update with stories of how the software fix hasn’t actually fixed anything at all. Users complain that battery issues remain, and some who say they have never experienced any battery problems before the 5.0.1 update now see problems post-installation.

Many users (five pages’ worth of new complaints on one thread alone) are expressing a similar suspicion that maybe the battery issue is not really related to software at all but may be endemic to the iPhone 4S itself. Others claim that the 5.0.1 update has introduced new problems, like microphone failures, Wi-Fi signal loss and cellular network inconsistencies. Some of the issues I reported that weren’t addressed specifically by the update’s release notes appear to also remain in play, judging by reports from other users and personal experience since the update.

The update isn’t all bad; the introduction of multitouch gestures for the original iPad works well and is a welcome addition. And the first over-the-air iOS update went very smoothly, downloading and installing within just a few minutes, compared to the rather time-consuming and complicated process of updating via iTunes. But it does seem like it was rushed out the door without making sure it addressed the problem at the fore of most users’ minds.

I haven’t had any significant battery problems with iOS 5 and nothing seems to have changed in that regard, but the flood of disappointed feedback from users is undeniable. What about you? Has the update fixed your device, left it unchanged or made things worse?

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The update, which Apple said last week would be coming soon, is supposed to fix “bugs affecting battery life,” but that’s not all. Original iPad owners that download the update will get multitasking gestures, Documents in the Cloud gets some bug fixes, and Australians’ accent should be better understood via an update to the dictation feature in iOS.

The iOS 5 update can be downloaded to the third- and fourth-generation iPod touch, all iPad models, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

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The mute bug

Now that the talk around the battery problems has died down at the Apple Support discussion forums, the new star of the show is a flaw with outgoing calls that sees them often automatically muted. It doesn’t seem to be limited to any one carrier, so the problem seems to be something specifically with the 4S’s hardware or software. I’ve also experienced this myself, though only a couple of times near the beginning of my time with the device. Still, I don’t often make outgoing calls without a headset, so I may just not have noticed since then.

While users wait for an official fix, you can get voice working again by turning speakerphone on and off, or by using a headset to call as I mentioned I usually do anyways. This hasn’t been acknowledged by Apple in any official documentation yet, but it does seem like the kind of thing that could be addressed in a future update, so you may want to pause before scheduling an appointment to make a return.

The 3G or network data drop

Another common complaint at Apple’s support discussions is that the iPhone 4S drops network data connections seemingly at random. Besides being well represented on Apple’s forum, it’s also something I’ve heard of a lot personally from other 4S owners I know. The problem isn’t something that totally disables your device; often data just drops from 3G to EDGE and eventually goes back to normal after a few hours. But sometimes, data can be dropped altogether, which means you won’t know about new voicemail, or get push emails, and measures like turning Airplane Mode on and off are often required to get a connection back.

I’ve seen this on my own iPhone 4S, too, and as mentioned, it’s hard to identify a cause. It seems to happen most frequently when I get or make a call, but not exclusively during those activities. Also, just opening Safari and browsing can sometimes re-establish a connection if you’ve only dropped 3G but still have EDGE.

Again, this one hasn’t been officially acknowledged by Apple, but if it’s happening to you, it’s probably not worth exchanging your device just yet. The problem seems widespread enough, based on the discussion threads related to it, that a replacement will just display the same issue, so waiting to see if a forthcoming software update is the least inconvenient option.

The Siri volume bug

Siri has a nasty habit of maxing out the volume just after use. You’ll notice if you activate Siri, and then press the home screen button to cancel your request, then lock the device. After a short time, the volume goes back to wherever you set it, but for a little while, the volume is ear-splitting, and this applies system-wide. There are many threads in the Apple Support Communities about this issue.

Mostly minor, but majorly irritating

All the bugs listed here are actually quite small, which is why a lot of users report not having returned their devices as a result of encountering them. I, too, have run across each but have yet to ascribe it to hardware fault, since each seems pretty likely to be a software problem. It’s troubling, however, to see no mention of these apparently common problems in any of the information circulating about Apple’s upcoming bug-busting iOS 5.0.1 release. Hopefully they’re filed under the category of “general bug fixes” and do arrive with that update. Otherwise, Apple will have to tackle them head-on sooner or later.

Anyone else seeing these or other persistent problems?

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