New iOS 15 features unveiled at the WWDC 2021
Apple has finally officially announced the iOS 15 during the online keynote for the WWDC on Monday. Apple announced during the annual developers’ conference and presented a preview of iOS 15, the company's next major version of the operating system of the iPhone. iOS 15 is a follow-up to 2020 iOS 14 and will likely fully be launched this fall on the anticipated iPhone 13.
The iOS 15 is packed with an outstanding number of new features, as well as refinements and improvements. The FaceTime app has been significantly improved with more Zoom-like features. They include links that will allow Windows and Android users to participate in a FaceTime video call via a browser. The notifications also went through a refinement with a feature that lets the user set the phone to bundle all less important alerts and deliver these alerts as a notification summary. Another feature is Live Text, which is basically Apple's version of Google Lens. Users can now watch videos and listen to music with friends over a FaceTime call. Messages can now organize and gather links and content so that the user can view them all at once whenever they choose.
Users can even add their driver's license to the Apple Wallet app.
Apple classified the new iOS 15 upgrades into four major themes; staying connected, finding focus, using intelligence, and exploring the world. The company had a fast-paced feature-packed preview on Monday, a contrast to the somber reality surrounding iOS and the Apple AppStore lately. In the past year, Apple has responded to inquiries about its AppStore from lawmakers and regulators both home and abroad. The company launched iOS 14.5 and with its new levels of user privacy and new concerns over tracking, which led to a corporate dispute with Facebook. Apple is also awaiting judgment in a lawsuit brought by Epic Games, one of the most prominent app developers for iOS.
A development version of iOS 15 is available to download and the Company plans to launch a public beta this summer.
iOS 15 includes first-time support for Android and windows
One of the biggest updates for iOS 15 relates to FaceTime, Apple's app for video and audio calls. In the past year, many people all over the world have relied on video calls to stay in touch with their friends, family, and colleagues. Video call apps such as Zoom and Skype soon became the normal channels through which people communicated. Apple's FaceTime however did not enjoy the same widespread acceptance due to its limitations. The new iOS 15 has reduced some of these limitations by making FaceTime a bit more like the leading video call app, zoom while still maintaining some of its unique qualities.
Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, disclosed that the company's goal for updating the FaceTime app in iOS 15 was to make the app feel more natural and comfortable for users. Users can now schedule FaceTime calls and create links in advance. The links created by FaceTime users can be assessed on Apple devices as well as other devices that run on Windows and Android.
For other devices to access the FaceTime link, the user would need to access the link through the device browser.
The user interface on the FaceTime video screen also got an overhaul with a new grid view. No longer will the user need to deal with the random-sized tiles as they have been replaced with a grid of similarly sized squares for all the callers on the video call. The grid-view arrangement also makes it easier to see who is speaking at a glance. The iOS 15 FaceTime also features a portrait mode similar to the portrait mode for photos on the iPhone. The portrait mode separates the user from the background and converts the background of the video call to a nice artistic blur.
iOS 15 also comes with new tools to improve audio. The new FaceTime upgrade also supports Spatial audio during a call which makes the callers sound more natural, giving the impression that the callers are in the same room with the user. The microphone gets a smarter feature that isolates the user's voice or widens the receiving to capture all the details of the user's environment.
The new FaceTime features were introduced via a video of two people having a FaceTime call. Behind one of the callers was a child using a leaf blower. With voice isolation enabled, the sound of the leaf blower was effectively removed.
Watch movies and listen to music over FaceTime in IOS 15.
Yet another incredible new feature of the FaceTime upgrade is known as SharePlay which enables the user to share their screen, music, or videos over a video call. If a user is on a FaceTime call, they can play a song in the Apple music app and listen to it over the call with the caller. This feature also supports video content from Apple TV, Disney Plus, Tik-Tok, Hulu, and HBO Max among other video applications. Developers can also include the share play API in their apps which makes it quite possible for YouTube to support this feature one day.
Sharing a video over FaceTime can also be extended to the Apple TV. This endows SharePlay with a huge potential to add an enormous wealth of multitasking and service integration on FaceTime calls.
Messages new design and more organized content.
The messages also get a visual overhaul and look more organized. In an iMessage conversation thread, the photos are now shown in a new collage design, and when there are many photos, the photos are shown in a photo stack. The user can swipe through a photo stack from the in-thread view or tap to open all the photos into a separate screen.
Another new feature is called Share With You. It takes the text, videos, music and story links shared via iMessages and organizes them into a new tab for the corresponding app. If for instance, a friend sends a link to an Apple news story via iMessage, the link is automatically added to the Shared With You tab in the Apple News app. The tab not only shows the link but also the sender of the link. When the user taps on the person's name, the messenger app opens and shows the message's conversation with the sender.
Shared With You also brings photos shared with the user in messages into the user's photo app. The photos appear to only import those photos that the user is interested in. Screenshots and memes will not be added.
The Shared With You feature works and the following apps: Apple TV, Apple News, Apple Music, Podcasts, Photos and Safari. Users can also kill a message content or link and have it elevated in the shed with you and show up in search.
iOS 15 overhauls notifications and adds new tools to help users focus.
Notifications on the iPhone have gotten a revamp to help users deal with all of the phone's alerts. Notification summary is a new feature that allows users to schedule when an important notification will get delivered. The feature prioritizes which notifications are most important while the rest are bundled for a delivery whenever the user chooses. Siri now has the ability to automatically read time-sensitive messages when the user does not have the phone with them. For example, if the user orders a food delivery and it arrives, Siri can read the notification via a HomePod or the Apple Watch.
Users can also use the new focus tools in IOS 15 to help them concentrate on certain things when using their phones. For instance, if a user is at work, they can choose to only be notified by co-workers for apps like Calendar, Slack, or Mail. Other settings for the focus feature include sleep, personal, and Do Not Disturb which the user can schedule to come on when they set their bedtime.
Live-text allows users to digitize and interact with text in photos.
The iOS 15 live text feature uses artificial intelligence to find text in photos or through the iPhone camera viewfinder. Users can copy and paste the text or if the text is a website link the user can open the link. The feature sounds quite familiar to the Google Lens.
Live-text automatically generates photo tags in the photos app to its device-wide spotlight search feature. Also, a new search feature called visual lookup allows users to search the word beach for instance, and the iPhone will display any photos that have a beach in them or photos that were taken at a beach. This feature is revolutionary for searching through a wide collection of photos, allowing the Apple Photos app to catch up to the detailed photo searches Google Photos already performs.
Adding a user's driver's license to the Apple wallet in IOS 15
The Wallet app in Apple's iOS 15 allows users to add corporate key cards and driver's licenses. Apple claims that it is working with the TSA on ways to accept it in United States airports. This feature comes in addition to being able to carry credit and debit cards as well as car keys and transit fare cards, (only phones equipped with Apple U1 chip for ultra-wideband can support this feature)
Other new features of iOS 15
There is an exceptional number of other new features in iOS 15. For most users, it is fun to continue to explore new features and try new applications that have not been tried before, such as new outfits for Emoji stickers.
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