Vasupradha Ramachandran
Apple has released its iOS 15 features on Monday, June 7th in their annual WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC). This version of the OS update is said to support all iPhone devices starting from 6s, including iPhone SE as well. Here are some of the exciting and intriguing features of iOS 15 that were demonstrated in Apple’s WWDC21 event. iOS 15 majorly focuses on improving the quality and performance in keeping people connected, helping them find focus without any distractions, explore the world around and discover things with intelligence.
Keeping people connected
1) FaceTime
The new iOS 15 improvises FaceTime by introducing SharePlay. SharePlay enables users to listen and watch music, series and movies and share it with friends over FaceTime. The screen can be extended to Apple TV while still being connected with your friends and family. The synced playback and controls enable users to still view their friends to see their reactions. The volume automatically adjusts when the person is talking. FaceTime comes with interesting microphone-related features like “Spatial Audio” to make the FaceTime experience more realistic. Users now have the option to filter background noise with the help of the “Voice isolation” feature.
All the people on facetime can now be viewed on equally spaced grid titles. The updated portrait mode helps the user to blur the background. Another new feature called “FaceTime links” allows users to schedule a call and share the link with any user regardless of their OS environment. Windows and Android users can join FaceTime meetings over the browser. This browser version of FaceTime is end-to-end encrypted making it as secure as the FaceTime app.
2) Messaging
Messaging in iOS 15 is now more efficient. The “shared with you” feature identifies links, images, music, articles and other content that are shared with the user and makes it available in the corresponding applications. For instance, if a person shares a music file with you, the file will be available on Apple Music under the “shared with you” section. The user can also reply to the shared content right away without having to jump back and forth to Messages. This Shared With You feature is inbuilt in many iOS applications like Safari, Photos, Apple News, Apple Music, Apple TV, etc.
Multiple images shared over messages will now be elegantly displayed in neat stack format. Users can tap on the stack to view individual images in a grid format and save them to their libraries.
Finding focus without any distractions
The new iOS 15 comes with powerful tools and functionalities to help users to optimize their priorities to find balance with work and stay focused. Focus helps users to allow only the required notifications to pop up when the focus mode is on. Users can also customize their notifications from a suggested list or create their own notifications list.
Once the focus mode is activated, the status will automatically be displayed in the Messages so that the people on the other side would know if a person is busy with work. The notification bar now displays application icons a little bigger compared to the previous iOS version to make it easy for users to identify the application easily. Users can also schedule their notifications to quickly catch up with notifications that are delivered daily.
Exploring the world around
1) Maps
The iOS 15 comes with new features like city experience and new driving features on Map. The city experience feature can be used to know the details of roads, neighborhoods, landmarks, buildings and more. The city experience also offers a 3D viewing option to explore famous landmarks. The new feature includes details like turning lanes, crosswalks and bike lanes. The Maps also offers a street-view perspective when the user arrives at complex intersections. Maps can suggest alternative driving directions according to real-time traffic conditions.
Maps also come with two additional features to offer immersive walking instructions and transit features to guide users with step-by-step directions using augmented reality and to find public transport stations along with expected transit time respectively.
2) Safari
The experience of browsing has been very much improved with iOS 15. The new design of Safari maximizes the tab on the user’s screen and is now easy to switch between tabs using just the thumb. Tabs can be saved and organized as per the user’s needs. These tab groups sync across various Apple devices and can be easily accessed in the customized order from multiple synced devices.
Users can access the voice search functionality to search for content across the internet using Safari. Just like the desktop version, the mobile version of Safari allows users to install extensions on the iPhone as well.
Discovering things with Intelligence
iOS 15 comes with inbuilt intelligence to help the user identify and discover more in photos, easily find what they are looking for and to re-experience special moments in their life. Live Text in photos identifies useful information on images. Based on the information on the image, users can make a call or send an email just by tapping on the image. Live Text in-camera is similar to Live Text in photos in terms of identifying information. The only difference is that the Live Text in the camera can be used by pointing the camera at the text.
Live Translate is used to translate texts on images. At present, the inbuilt intelligence can understand 7 international languages like English, Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. iOS 15 also comes with a feature called Visual Lookup. This feature can identify any objects like animals, plants, locations, etc that are present in the images.
This iOS 15 update is expected to be fully launched this fall (late September) with all of the above mentioned features along with various other features for healthcare, privacy, storage and many more.
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