For me the most vital app is the Messaging app for handling SMS/MMS. There is a new version, but ALL the basic flaws are still there (see this) and new have been added, along with new features.
ADD: There are bug fix versions too, see below.
Install
During install of Ios 9, almost all settings are preserved from 8.4.1 and a big ThumbsUp for that:
They do ask several questions on whether you are sure you do not want to turn on various stuff – off course put in usual salesman-fashion.
Despite these questions they still force Imessaging on during install. You’ll need to manually turn it back off in Settings.
(I got flat rate SMS/MMS so of course I do not want to pay data-charges to send these through NSA first)
But this is a tiny bug, and only an initial issue of lack of respect for the users choices. But with the Ios you should be happy that you even get a choice…
They brag that the installation is much much leaner:
This claim should be taken with a good pinch of salt, as it is actually over twice as big. They just obscured over 1.5GB of the update, by putting new versions of four of their bloatware apps out as app-updates. Three the day before and one the day after.
But you still cant avoid their bloat, or uninstall it. They believe to know what apps you want… And even added two more in Ios 9
General stability and stamina
After over a weeks usage Ios 9/9.0.1 seems no less stable than Ios 8.4.1 and much more stable than Ios 8.0 when that came out.
The Stamina also seems at least as good at 8.4.1, perhaps better. With limited usage (1h screen on a day) it has no problems lasting 4-5 days on a full charge.
Here is the current state with 11% left
Note that the above usage pattern only shows the last 1 and 7 days, and not the actual charge-period, but it can be seen that (almost) all usage was “on screen” and not background.
(Adding up the last 7 days gives 6½ hours on screen, so about the same limited pattern, roughly 1h/day on screen)
I have NO idea what “Photos” are doing active in the background, but just one minute so a tiny issue.
When interpreting the statistics, be aware that when one app calls another, it is accounted on the calling app. This is not a bug, but a choice. It could easily be argued that either of the apps should be ‘blamed’. As an example, look at the “Group Text” above, registered for “7 min on screen” actually the app it self was open more like 7 seconds, but launches the build in Messaging app and uses it to both edit the template-based message, and to actually send it afterwards. In the Kill app list, it also displays screen shot from “Messaging”, but with a header of “Group text”. Again this is not wrong but can be quite confusing at first, as you might see two instances of “Messaging” in the Kill app list.
With very light usage the last day it was down at 1% after over 138h (5¾ days) of standby with 5h of usage.
Shortly after it made a shutdown with no warning or notice.
Despite supplying power, it could not immediately be turned back on, but it then started by it self after a couple of minutes, and when I checked was at 5% and charging.
There is a tiny tiny bug, that the text at the bottom telling that the device has been plugged since the full charge, did NOT occur when it was plugged after complete depletion, but only after I unplugged and plugged it when on. So in principle you could repeatedly let the phone drain completely and plug it in, charge less than fully and unplug, and end up displaying extreme (but false) stamina.
Messaging
They have added avatars to the left side of the overview. Whether this change is good or bad is a matter of personal taste. Personally I would like to be able to turn it off, as I see no point in wasting the limited screen space. Others might see it as less boring interface. To each his own
versus 
(Sorry I got no screen dump from the same in Ios 8.x, so the left one is a random dump from an Iphone 5 I found on the net, thus the apparently more condensed look on the right one, but that is due to the different screen resolutions not the version)
As usual with Ios, they offer almost no settings to turn things like this on/off. They like to decide what you want. Like the famous colour-options of the old Ford…
ADD Finally in 9.1 they offer an OPTION to let the user decide to turn this off or on
(BTW despite having “Character Count” on, This is still IGNORED unless you turn MMS off as well! This is not a new bug though, but yet another old bug they never bothered to fix. It could make sense to stop counting and somehow signal if the message exceeds the ten SMS limit, and thus must be sent as an MMS.)
ADD This seems to be fixed in 9.0.1 – though the display of the length is fine for short sms displaying e.g. 23/160 (or /70 if unicode chars are included). But if you keep on typing (or pasting), they do NOT correctly reflect the way multi-sms works, limiting the number of available characters in each base-sms you are charged by the carrier (unless you got flat rate of course). So when you see “799/160” you might think that count as 5 sms, but it is actually 6… Thus making the counter less useful. (It ought to change to /153 when the nominator gets above 160 – or /67 and 70 when unicode chars are needed)
When you press “Edit” in the overview, a new function “Read all” has been added at the bottom
I see no action clicking it.
When selecting one (or more) message(s), the text is changed to an inactive and greyed out “Read”
When seen in conjunction with this page it might send read-receipts, if so it should be interpreted as “Read” in “Mark as read” and not like “Read it out”
In the message editor they have added a new totally crazy bug/feature: When you press Enter on the physical keyboard you wont get a new line, but send the message!!!
At the least it is still possible to get a new line with Alt+Enter as a workaround – and no, there are -as usual- no settings that turns this annoying Auto-send off!!
Had it been the other way round, so e.g. Alt+Enter sent the message, it could have been a nice addition.
Search for the user
The privacy intruding data indexing capabilities for NSA is now offered to the user also, on a screen left of the primary home screen
And NO you can not turn that off either….
But you can turn off which of the indexed data to display.
The first option seems to be a classic ‘Most used apps’, for those that find it too complicated to keep the apps they actually use in handy positions on the main home-screen.
This function can make sense on a large screen with many icons though (Think large Ibads), but since the main home-screen on a Ip6- has a maximum of 24 icons, it seems utterly superfluous here – But at least it is possible to turn that off.
The name-part “Suggestions” could be a warning that they might replace the apps really used with their attempt for similar functionality. E.g rather than NavFree og Here to show mAps. ???
Battery (Usage) info.
They have moved the “Battery Usage” up two levels from under “General/Usage” in “Settings” to its own primary setting “Battery”. They have added a new option, so the user can choose to suppress background activities to get increased stamina. As people are used to from other brands, this function will automatically ask to be activated when the remaining battery gets below 20% and again 10%, you get an OK/Cancel dialogue. I do not know whether it kicks in automatically if you do not answer the dialogue (e.g. while you sleep). You have the option to set it always on, if that suits your usage pattern. (But if you want the device to e.g. check mails in the background you would not turn this on)
Updated:
There is a strange issue in the battery usage, where it can ‘suddenly’ claim that you have to use the device “for a few minutes” before it can display statistics. Even after over two days standby, and over an hour of usage it can still claim so…
and when solved 
I have not pinpointed the exact circumstances, but currently my theory is that this really is not a bug (as i initially thought), just a very inaccurate and confusing text !!
I now believe that the issue is related to (very) light usage, and that statistic is only shown when the display has been on for at least half an hour the last day. (I’m not 100% sure these are the exact numbers, but all tests so far seems to match this theory)
Note that the background usage does not matter, I had the ‘radio’ streaming over half an hour this morning, (It does count as “Usage” though)
So the text
“Battery information will be available after using Iphone for a few minutes“
Could have been replaced (and still kept short) with something more accurate like:
“Battery usage by app will only be displayed when screen has been on for at least ½h the last day“
The issue seem to disappear once the screen on usage for the last day gets over the threshold. I assume (But am not sure) you need to also exit the “Battery” setting and re-enter it, to have the statistics displayed. (see a bit below on lag of live update)
This is NOT a new issue added in Ios 9, I saw it once shortly before upgrade 2015-09-15 on Ios 8.4.1 as well (see the old app title with “Usage” on top)
Where it had disappeared 2½ hour later.
Googling a bit, shows report of the same issue back in September 2014 on early Ios 8
ADD 2015-02-19
Also see the rather long dialogue with below, It seems that it not ONLY a lower limit on the usage the last day, but ALSO a lower limit on the usage the last week. And It MIGHT be needed to do a reset to bring it back – He has done a lot of testing, but we have not reached a clear conclusion (yet).
But is seems that the combination of ½h the last day, 2h the last week and a reset (hold both buttons for some five seconds), followed by a full charge is enough to get the info back – less might be needed…
Note the delay-issue below, so it might not be immediately even after you do the above. Also remember that a full charge might be needed after a reset to get any info at all.
A tiny bug on the update in Battery, can be seen in these two screen dumps:
Here the left image must lack update, as the usage the last 24h of course can not grow with 17 minutes in 2 minutes…
The bug seems to be that though the “Usage” and “Standby” fields are updated live, the statistics are not, you have to explicitly click “< Settings” (or kill the app) and re-enter “Battery”. But even doing that does not always fix it? There might be some delay of some sort involved?
ADD 2016-02-20
Inspired by the conversation with below, I tried to do some more tests, with a lot of screen dumps. I omitted the intermediate identical ones, below is a collage
I started by a full charge after a reset. I then watched some random TV for a few minutes to get some activity in. And that worked well. About an hour later I played Sudoko for about ten minutes. and then followed the Battery Info carefully to see when it would appear on the list, note that the usage for settings grows in jumps, and not just 1 min per minute. It took at the least 11 minutes from I stopped playing (or 20 min from start) to it appeared at 01:51. Note that in the mean time the usage for setting (that includes Battery Info, steadily grows, so info ARE being updated). But when you compare to the previous dump (within the same minute) in the third row, there are HUGE differences in the percentages?!?!?!? For the same number of minutes recorded on two activities, one percentages goes significantly UP (2% to 6%), and another DOWN (88% to 74%) – that does not make sense…
The phone was then idle until the next dump at 11:15, and here the percentages are again hugely different (note again the 3min step in the setting usage). Again one percentages goes UP (7% to 9%), and another further DOWN (74% to 62%), without any change in the minutes…
Note that the Spark usage -correctly- has aged out as now being to small an activity the last 24h to be included.
(Siti is there because the damn thing tends to launch when I try to take a screen dump…)
So the conclusion is that the Battery Info should be taken with a HUGE ‘pinch of salt’, unless it has displayed similar info steadily for about half an hour with low variations…
Add 2016-02-21
The next night I let it run out of the statistics (getting below the approximately ½h) and then used Battery Info and screen dumps a little on and off until it came back:
Note that both Backup and Siti has no SOT displayed, so this must indicate, that the limit for being included is at the least 1% of the battery consumption. There are no limit on the SOT as I’ve thought.
ADD: I noticed that a reasonable rule of thumb for the battery consumption under good network coverage is ROUGHLY 1% for 3h standby OR 10min screen on usage. (Of course it worse if you do something intense as navigation with satellite background images).
So this means it will last almost a fortnight at pure standby, with good 4G coverage – that is quite satisfying. 🙂
As with so many things you notice when they does not work, not when they do. But this is certainly better than it was when I got it with 8.0 – so they DO improve stuff…
PS
Given the rather limited number of devices supported, they COULD have taken the effort to adjust the text shown during update to the device I’m on:
Rather than telling me what good it does for larger versions of the Ibad…
PPS 20150924
A minor (35MB) bug fix release Ios 9.0.1 is already out…
It downloads quite quickly, but takes quite a long time to install for some reason.
Only the distorted frames in Photos have affected me though (once), and that was such a tiny bug I did not even bother posting it here.
A new tiny bug in 9.0.1 seems to be that “Update All” in App Store no longer always works (Updating each by “Update” manually works though)
Just noticed that they seems to have fixed the char-count bug too, as mentioned earlier.
PPPS 20151001
Now a 62Mb 9.0.2 as well.
The only of these bugs I have seen was the interrupted manual Icloud backup that aborted the backup when the progress bar was at about 95%. A retry did not take as long, so most got uploaded anyway.
As with 9.0.1 a quick download, but surprisingly slow install. (Not that is matters, just surprising)
PPPPS 20151021
Now a 246MB 9.1, bugfix that among other things after over a month fixed the lacking option for the contact-photos in Messaging.
PPPPPS 20151208
Now a 264MB 9.2, bugfix that offers a series of what for me (at first glance at least) seems uninteresting tweeks. (Hopefully just a few useful bugfixes too). Oh there is a fix on the hanging Icloud bAckup. Nice, but hardly a high priority bug….
Tweeking a lot of stuff I never use, and leave their attempt at fundamental (smart)phone functionality Messaging as flawed as usual.
Oh one good thing, in contrast to the previous bugfixes this update does not seem to mess with as many settings. 🙂 It is hard to find things to praise, so better to remember it when there are – no matter how small.
PPPPPPS 20160107
Since version 9.0 I have experienced spontaneous double-letters when typing on my BT-keyboard, and I thought it was because it was worn down (don’t expect much for £10). Today I tried two completely different types of detached keyboards I just bought, and found the same issue. I then tried two other specimens of my usual keyboard (yes I bought several), and they ALL have the same behaviour. I did NOT experience that on 8.x, so it is a new 9.x issue.
There is a well known issue also (just google) where keys are repeating as if you held the key down. That occurs less frequent, and does not seem to be related to the Ios version.
Since language selection is possible on the phone, and in some layouts some keys creates accents, I assume the keyboard send the native make and break codes, and let the device do the decoding. IF so, a break not received, could explain the multiple repetition, and the double-strokes could be real from the keyboard, but some filter removing very close repeats could have been removed or narrowed – but this is just guessing of course.
PPPP…S 20160321
A version 2.3 (300MB) now offered. primarily bugfixes , plus some functions for newer hardware.
a few interesting ones – in the order they appear on their bug-list.
- Fixes an issue that could cause the Messages input field to disappear behind the Shortcut Bar when connected to a hardware keyboard
- Fixes issues that could prevent Icloud bAckup from completing
- Fixes an issues where an inaccurate battery could be displayed
- Adresses an issues that could prevent the phone interface while receiving a call
Either their backup system is overloaded – or the incremental backup has been messed up…. Taking a new backup just a few seconds after a backup is completed, takes about 15 minutes(!)
There seems to be one or more extra tabs in “Battery Info”, Note the “Last Hour” / “Last ## Hours” header.
