iOS 10 is here, and it’s the biggest update to iOS yet! There are 10 main features Apple highlighted with iOS 10, and let’s talk about each new change in iOS 10.
1) User Experience
With iOS 10 Apple has made it important to think about the user experience a lot. The UI has subtle changes and improvements all over the place with a little refreshing look. The lockscreen has got a redesign and you can now open the camera by swiping left. When you swipe right, you will see widgets.
3D touch is getting the highlight here as we saw that Apple has integrated that a lot in to the OS. Many apps use it now and it has better use to it. You’ll be able to see things like the latest sports scores with the ESPN app, and even get into video highlights, without entering the app proper.
The notification area has been redesigned with new bubble-like notifications and widgets. The Control Center is now comprised of two panes – one with toggles and one with music controls. Its design also features bubbles. There is a third Control Center Tab if you are using the new Home app.
2) Siri
Siri got its own update with new features. But it’s biggest change is the opening Siri to developers. Now it can send messages via non-Apple message clients, it can reserve Uber cars, among others. Supported apps already include Slack, WeChat, and WhatsApp for communication, as well as Uber, Didi in China, Runtastic, Runkeeper, MapMyRun, and Skype (among others) for VoIP calls. Siri now has more contextual awareness. It makes intelligent suggestions based on your current location, calendar availability, contact information, recent addresses, and more.
3) Quicktype Keyboard
The keyboard has been enhanced with Siri’s intelligence and it can now sense what you want to say or answer. It can read through your messages and suggest creating events, share you location, remember your recent addresses, and the best part is it now supports multilingual typing.
4) Photos
The Photos app has learned a few new tricks, which are quite familiar as they have been on Android for years. The app can now show your photos on a map, you sort them by the faces of your friends. There are also memories and autogenerated videos.
5) Maps
Maps app is getting a boost with Map layers, smarter and proactive assistance as well. The Maps also supports extensions and it offers fast routes by following all the traffic around you and suggesting places nearby. It can also make reservations.
6) Apple Music
Apple Music is also getting in on the refresh fun with “a redesign from the ground up”. Almost everything is different and it has tabs for Library, For You, Browse, Radio, Search. Lyrics are also being added in the new version of Music and the UI looks quite nice.
7) Apple News
Apple News is getting breaking news notifications and subscriptions in iOS 10. In-app subscriptions are a major new feature for the OS even beyond Apple’s own apps.
8) Apple Home
Apple Home is the first major all-new app from Apple that lives on the Home Screen. It builds on Apple’s HomeKit infrastructure to let you manage and control all your connected and compatible accessories around the home. HomeKit is now also built right into Apple’s swipe-up Control Center, so it can be accessed even from your iPhone’s lock screen. The Apple Watch will also include built-in home control support as well.
9) Phone
The Phone app has been updated with some cool features too. All third-party VoIP apps can now use the same calling screen as your default Phone app. Skype, Viber or other – they all get full-screen notification with a photo, some options and a big answering slider. The Voice Mail now can show you a full transcription of the message if you like And it can now detect if a message from an unknown number is a spam or not even before it gets into your voicemail.
10) Messages
Messages are getting rich links in the new iOS version, allowing things like videos to play right in line inside the message. Emoji took the center stage as a key feature too believe it or not. You can now just tap and automatically turn words into emoji. You can also say things using larger or smaller type. Messages is also getting bubble effects, which are just cute animations when displaying messages. Cool video background animations are also there. And just like Maps and Siri, Messages are being opened up to developers with iMessage apps.
Apart from these major 10 parts iOS 10 packs subtle changes across the board according to Apple. Apple has also considered privacy a lot with the new iOS 10 and hence it has end-to-end encryption, all intelligence and suggestions are happening on-device – there is nothing in the cloud or Apple’s servers, there is no user profiling, and all privacy data is not shared between apps.
iOS 10 will be available as a free update this fall for the following devices.
The update to iOS 10 will be available for free this fall. An open public beta will start in July and the first developer preview will be available today.
Checkout Apple’s Website for a dedicated overview of everything new here.
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