Yesterday, iOS 11 was made available to all the iPhone and iPad users. The version of the iOS was announced on June 5 2017 at Apple Developers’ conference. The public beta version was launched in late June.
Image Credit: Apple.com
This latest iOS claims to make your iPhone and iPad more better and powerful devices than ever. From App Store to Camera, from file manager app to Siri and from the ability to record the screen to drag-and-drop functionality, iOS 11 is full of surprises, it seems like Christmas at this time of the year.
We are very excited to share the improvements and new features with you. We have conglomerated all of them in a list. Let’s see what changes the features and native apps have gone through.
App Store:
Image Source: Appleinsider.com
The App Store is power packed with new features to make it useful to explore the new apps and games to have it all. With this upgrade, it has introduced new tabs like Today tab,New Games tab, Dedicated Apps tab.
- The Today tab is helpful in discovering new apps and games with stories, how-to guides and more.
- If you are a game freak, now with the new Games tab, you can keep a check on new games and see what’s most popular with top game charts.
- When you open app pages, you would get more video previews, Editors’ Choice badges, and with all that you can get an easy access to user ratings and information about in-app purchases.
Along with all these new tabs, the tech giant has also introduced dedicated apps tab with top picks, dedicated app charts and app categories.
Siri
Image Source: NDTV Gadgets
Your personal digital voice assistant has become more intelligent and helpful. With advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence, Siri is so much more.
- Siri’s new voice has a human touch and is more expressive.
- It can help you translate English words and phrases into different languages like Chinese, German, Spanish, and French.
- Siri has become smarter than ever and will now recommend you things after apprehending your usage of Messages, News, Safari and Mail.
- Now you can create to-do lists, reminders and notes and you can also set a timer, send a message.
- The new and improved Siri can help you with account transfer and check balance through the banking apps.
Camera
Image Source: BusinessInsider.com
iPhone has dazzled the world with Portrait mode last year and this year, it has become so much more. With enhanced features, your iPhone gets more flashy. So the improvements are:
- With the upgrade, Portrait mode supports optical image stabilization, HDR and True Tone flash (it dabs the color, temperature, and intensity according to the ambient light around you)
- Capture all the beautiful moments of your life and shoot all the videos you want as it this upgrade, photos and videos will take half of the space with new HEIF and HEVC image and video formats
- With this, you also get nine new filters for natural skin tones.
- The camera will identify and scan QR codes spontaneously.
Photos
With the new update, Photos app has also some improvements, let’s check what are they:
- You can mute, trim or choose a new key photo for Live Photos
- Memory movie modifies the content for landscape and portrait orientation.
- More effects such as Loop, Bounce effects and Long Exposure Live Photo effects have been introduced to make the photos more lively. With Loop and Bounce effects, you get to create uninterrupted video loops for Live photo and the Long Exposure Live Photo effects apprehend time and movement.
Do Not Disturb While Driving
This new feature has simplified people’s lives who commute through their own vehicle now and then. With this feature enabled, the notifications received gets mute while driving and it keeps your iPhone on silent mode and the display is turned off. You can also notify your selected contacts to alert them through iMessage auto-reply while you’re driving
Maps
Whether you are on a trip or going for shopping, iPhone Maps helps you to navigate and be on right path.
- Now you get Indoor maps for major airports and shopping centers
- You get turn by turn directions with speed limit information.
- Now you can zoom with a single hand with double tap and swipe to ease your way while driving.
Offload Unused Apps
With iOS 11, the new feature called Offload Unused Apps makes it easy to manage storage space on your device. Whenever your device’s storage runs low, the Offload feature deletes the least-used apps, however, it keeps their data and documents on the device, Once removed, the deleted apps icon is grayed out on the home screen and the good thing is, it can be reinstalled with a single tap. You can activate the feature with this: Go to Settings-> Navigate to General-> iPhone Storage. The feature works both automatically and manually which means you can also choose to offload the apps.
So, these were the common features on iPhone and iPad. Now let’s check out the new features exclusively designed for your iPad.
New features designed for iPad
Dock
Image Credit: iDownloadBlog.com
Let’s start with the favorite Dock, with this upgrade, now you can quickly access your recently used and favorite apps. You can also resize the Dock, so now add as many favorite apps to the Dock as you like. If you want to quickly open the recently used or continuity apps, then that would be available on the right side.
Enhanced Slide Over and Split View
Image Source: SoftwareVilla
- You can easily access to the apps, you can start an app in slide over and Split View from the dock.
- Slide Over and background apps now run concurrently.
- Apps that are opened in Slide Over and Split View can now be kept on the left side of the screen.
Drag and Drop
Image Source: The Verge
- With new drag and drop, it is has become easier to move, copy content and more.
- With this, you can now move text, files, and images between apps on iPad seamlessly.
- It enables you to move more than the item at the same time with Multi-Touch.
- It has Spring-loading to move content between apps
Markup
Image Credit: Apple.com
With Markup, you can quickly markup a PDF, screenshot, photos, web pages and more. Just place your Apple Pencil on the screen where you want to markup and start writing, it is done.
Notes
Image Credit: Apple.com
Notes make easy to remind you things so that you never miss an errand. Just tap the lock screen with Apple Pencil and create a new note. You can also draw inline by placing Apple Pencil in the body of a note.
Search Handwritten Text
Image Credit: Forbes
You can search the Handwritten notes with ease with the spotlight search. You can also pin important notes to the top.
Files
Image Credit: Apple.com
With Files, the new file manager app keeps all the files together on your device. You can browse, organize and search all your files at one place. It is compatible with iCloud Drive and other cloud services. You can also get a quick access to the apps recently used in the past. Moreover, you can create folders, sort the files by name, size, date, and tags.
QuickType
QuickType feature is both for iPhone and iPad
- You can type with the single hand with the new one-handed keyboard support on iPhone.
- New Keyboards available for Azerbaijani, Armenian, Belarusian, Kannada, Maori, Malayalam, Swahili, Odia, Irish, Georgian, and Welsh
- New keyboards for English input on the 10-key Pinyin keyboard and now it takes English input on the Japanese Romaji keyboard as well.
Augmented Reality
Image Credits: BGR
With iOS 11, you get to make your iPhone and iPad Augmented reality technologies enabled devices so now you can experience interactive gaming and engrossing shopping experiences ever and more
Machine Learning
You also get core machine learning technologies which give fast performance with easy integration of machine learning models which make it easy to develop apps with amazing features with a few lines of code.
We have highlighted all the important features and improvements introduced but there is more.
Other features and improvements
- The Control Centre is redesigned to bring all controls such as WiFi, Airplane, Screen recording, music and more on single page.
- With Control Centre, you can add remove apps. Moreover, you can add things like alarms, low power mode, Wallet, and various accessibility controls.
- Airplane Mode has become more intelligent as it doesn’t turn off Wifi and Bluetooth if the airplane mode is toggled to on.
- Apple Music helps you explore music with friends. To do so, create a profile and your friends will be able to listen to shared playlists and they can also check out your favorites or most played songs.
- Apple News recommends Top Stories, Best Videos, Great stories and recommendations all by anticipating your usage.
- When you sign in with Apple ID, you get automatically signs into iCloud, FaceTime iTunes, Keychain, App Store, and iMessage.
- The Automatic Setup also reinstates device settings such as region, language, network, places you frequently visit, how you talk to Siri, keyboard preferences, home, and health data.
- With iOS 11, the device would have storage sense and it will free up space in Settings for apps like Messages, Photos etc.
- It will act smartly in emergency situations and will suggest help according to the location, it will inform your emergency contacts, shares your location and displays the medical ID.
- You can also capture Live Photos from other person’s Mac or iPhone camera via FaceTime.
- Now check your Flight status in Spotlight and Safari both
- With the bilingual dictionary, you get the results in both English and Russian and Portuguese and English. Moreover, it also supports Arabic system font.
Accessibility
- It supports VoiceOver description for images and also for table and list in PDF.
- Now you can type to Siri and can get results for basic search queries
- It also has included spoken and braille caption support for videos for visually challenged people.
- Dynamic Type increases text and app UI to larger sizes for easier use.
- Smart Invert inverts the areas where it may be necessary for people who need it.
- With Switch Control typing feature, you can scan and type all the words at the same time.
So, these are the alluring and exciting features of iOS 11 that will grab attention and turn people’s head. What are you thinking? In case you haven’t upgraded your iPhone to the latest version, do it now and enjoy and experience the luxury of having the new and improved iOS on your device.