There are many, many reasons to upgrade to iOS 5, none better than Mobile Safari, which packs a lot to love — Tabs, Reader, Reading List, Twitter integration and greatly improved performance, as well as a re-imagining of search within page (shown above).

I have been a big iCab Mobile 5 for years. Among other things — it’s still a great mobile browser — real tabs was a serious advantage.

Now, Safari Mobile 5.1 offers great tab functionality — fast switching, tap and drag re-ordering (brilliant). Additionally, pages are a lot more persistent — if you’re composing a blogpost in one tab while switching between other tab, the open edit session doesn’t (knock on wood) spontaneously reload.

The one downside is that tabs don’t work on the iPhone and iPod touch. If you want tabs on the iPhone, iCab Mobile is your friend.

Less is more, more is more

Another long sought feature is the ability to send the contents of a webpage. Here it’s important to note that Mobile Safari won’t be sending the whole page — ads and all the other bull cookies — which might be a problem for some folks, like advertisers.

Scott Forstall demo’ing Mobile Safari 5.1 at this year’s WWDC

See also:
— Live for Snow Leopard: Safari 5.1.1, Security Update 2011-006
— What’s new in Mac OS X 10.7.2
— What’s new in iTunes 10.5

That said, although Reader is iCloud independent, Reading List does. Thereupon, to finish reading a lengthy article started on an iPhone or iPad on your Mac, it will need to be running OS X 10.7.2.

And, as advertised Mobile Safari 5.1 is much faster, noticeably so on my original iPad and it’s slippery on our iPhone 4. A big part of faster derives from background processing, which means pages still load when you’re in another tab or, to a lesser degree, another app.

What are you liking in Mobile Safari and iOS 5?