Safari On iOS 6 To Feature Offline Reading Lists, Smart App Banners, Photo Uploads & iCloud Tab Syncing

Apple announced some major updates to Safari on its upcoming iOS 6 mobile operating system today. Safari, for example, now lets you sync tabs between different machines using iCloud. Instead of those annoying overlays that many mobile sites show you to alert you of their mobile apps, Apple will use a more unified system in iOS 6. Instead of these banners, Apple will now show a link to the App Store (or to the app, if you have already installed it) when you open a site that also offers a mobile app. Apple calls this feature “Smart App Banners.”

Another new feature in mobile Safari is support for offline reading lists. In its first incarnation, Reading Lists were basically just glorified bookmarks. With this new version, Apple is now going after the read-it-later market that’s currently dominated by Read It Later/Pocket and Instapaper. Now, Safari can cache full websites for offline reading, not just links.

iOS 6 users will now also be able to upload photos right from Safari to their favorite websites.

Apple is also adding a fullscreen mode when iOS 6 detects that your phone or tablet is in landscape mode.