iOS 16 was announced three weeks ago this week at the annual WWDC conference, and the developer beta has been out for two weeks too. I have been testing out both new versions of the world’s best mobile operating system so what have they been like to live with?
Well first off, I wouldn’t recommended updating yet, wait till September or wait till the public beta. Whilst these new versions are out for Developers it is very much really meant to be used for testing purposes only and can be incredibly glitchy or break your phone completely.
And this is where I was heading, Last week the second beta came out and thank heavens it did because the first two weeks weren’t amazing for me. The first version of the beta was making my phone hotter than usual and with the hot weather we we’re having during this first 2 weeks my phone during the day was becoming pretty much un-usable. This is expected however with a beta and has been fixed with the release of the second beta.
The release of the public beta is expected to be released in a couple of weeks and whilst the new lock screens do look cool, I wouldn’t download it just yet and if you do always back your device up and it’s better to install on a device you wouldn’t use every day.
The New Lock Screens
I’m sure you would have heard by now but one of the biggest focuses to the release is the completely re-designed lock screens. This features many new changes where you can customise many different aspects of the lock screen.
This is including the clock, Font & Colour. The fonts you can choose are very well designed but I remember using this feature first time on Day 1 and I was trying to scroll through the fonts to eventually realise that not being able to scroll wasn’t a bug but in fact there is only 6 fonts to choose. I was expecting more but this is a small thing.
Customising the wallpapers is actually very easy and can all be done in the new Wallpaper gallery feature and Apple have even made some new customisable wallpapers which do look good & unique.
Something else new which I’ve seen for the past three years get rumoured was “Lock Screen Widgets” If you’ve got an Apple Watch you might recognise some of these as they are very similar to the watch face complications. When Apple announced this I was reading a lot of slack from Twitter users how they didn’t try with this and just copied it from the Apple Watch however in my opinion it works perfectly. It’s a perfect balance and all of them have the right information when you need it.
For me I’ve got the Current weather temperature and in house temperature (Using an HomeKit sensor). At the top it now displays the date above the clock with how my activity rings are doing in number format and lastly, I have the batteries widget which changes throughout the day depending on the status of my batteries & accessories connected.
Whilst Android have had things like Widgets on the lock screen and customising a long time now (Years) Apple once again have managed to do it in their own unique way and when iOS 16 does get released officially around September you can tell that customising your phone wallpaper is going to be extremally popular and people all over social media are going to be everywhere for a little while. Already on Twitter I’ve seen a lot of people sharing what they’ve created.
Customising the lock screens is so incredibly easy that you can really do all of it without even leaving the lock screen and if you use the “Focus” feature it can do even more by changing which lock screen is active for example depending on what Focus is active. I don’t use this feature so didn’t want to comment on that more.
I’ve written so far mostly about the new lock screen, but this just shows how much of a big new feature this is.
Messages gets expected, late features
Messages got 3 main new features this year that other messaging apps have had for a while. This includes being able to edit messages (But only for 15 minutes after sending) and now you can undo send a message (Again for only 15 minutes after sending – which seems a bit odd) Other than that the only other real changes is now its even easy to share stuff from other apps from Apple.
For me I use messages yes but have never really found the app anything special or different from the others. I mainly use Messenger from Meta to message others and WhatsApp for work.
Also now has Undo-Send.
Maps
Apple Maps now is used more than ever, don’t get me wrong it’s still not as popular as Google Maps but Tim Cook no longer feels the need to write a letter of apology for it like he did back in the day. This year they’ve finally added multi-Stop routing to maps a feature that sounds stupidly simple but useful. Routes can also be planned on your Mac and then brought over easily to the phone.
I could talk quite a bit more about iOS 16. The reason I think that is, is whilst this new version looks small. It is quite big with nearly every app being refined or having had a new feature added to it. You can view the full-list here on Apple’s website here: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16-preview/features/
Thanks for reading,
Kyle Wilkinson
Twitter – Talking about Apple but to be honest all sorts of small geeky things & running – www.twitter.com/kylewilkinson46
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YouTube – Sometimes I talk on here instead of writing it down & See my Apple opinions in the most different way around - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC89S8ERNGsvZlZoesLCMGKA
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