After watching beta releases of iOS 5.1 head out to developers over the past several months, it’s finally looking like Apple’s preparing for a public release, likely to coincide with the launch of the iPad 3. While nothing’s definite just yet, some signs suggest that the release could happen early next month. Today some images from what’s supposedly a pre-GM version of iOS 5.1 have been released, claiming to confirm some last-minute feature additions.

There’s already been talk that Siri was about to see its world expand a little, with the introduction of support for Japanese. This screenshot comes from a Portuguese iPhone, but whip out a translation app and you can quickly see that Japanese appears to be added to Siri’s settings.

The other change noted in this iOS build is a change to how you bring up the Camera app directly from the lockscreen. Simply swipe upwards on the camera icon, and you’ll apparently jump straight to Camera, without needing the time to fully-unlock your phone and possibly miss the shot you were hoping to take.

Supposedly, these images were obtained from a cellular carrier with early access to iOS builds.

Source: BlogdoiPhone

Via: 9 to 5 Mac