Top features of iOS 12

“iOS 12 brings tons of new bells and whistles onboard as well as improvements over existing features”

Even before you notice the weather change, you can tell its Fall when the hype around Apple and Google phones starts picking up pace. Apple took to stage today to host its Gather Round’ event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. The event witnessed the Cupertino-based tech giant unveil the latest iPhones and launch Apple watch 4. The new iPhones come with the latest iOS 12 pre-installed on them. The platform was first announced at the WWDC earlier this year and brings features like grouped notifications and shared AR among others. If you missed out on the details, here’s a lowdown on everything that the latest iteration brings to the table.

Improved FaceTime to let you connect with more people

For Apple users, one of the reasons for being on the platform is the complete ecosystem including the convenience of being able to use services like iMessage and FaceTime on any Apple device using a single ID. With iOS 12, FaceTime is getting a major upgrade. The iOS-exclusive video calling feature now lets users connect with up to 32 users at the same time in an ongoing call. An interesting added detail is that FaceTime automatically detects when someone is speaking or is keeping mum, and shrinks or enlarges their video windows accordingly. Users can easily start a group FaceTime directly from a group thread in messages or join an ongoing call at any time.

Take control of your life with Screen Time

Apart from introducing new ones, Apple is known for taking an existing technology or feature and re-introducing it with finesse on its devices. The company has introduced a new feature called Screen Time in the latest iOS version, which is its own take on Google’s Digital Well Being feature. As we get more and more dependent on our smart devices, brands are taking it upon themselves to help users take control of their lives back with ingenious features. Screen Time on iOS 12 lets users control how much time they or their kids spend on games, apps or surfing the web on the iPad or iPhone. They can set a time limit on using a particular app or even monitor how much time has been spent on an app or a set of apps on the device.

Express yourself better with Memoji, Animoji and camera effects

Apple introduced Animoji last year on iPhone X (review), which uses the smartphone’s Face ID feature. With the latter being present on all three iPhones this year, the Animoji is now present across the entire line-up. The feature lets users create animated avatars of themselves or use existing Animojis to stimulate their facial movements and share with others via iMessage or other platforms as small video files. One interesting addition in iOS 12 is the ability to detect tongue movement, which was missing last year. Apple has also introduced four new Animoji characters including Koala, Tiger, T.rex and the popular Ghost emoji. A new addition to the feature is what the brand is calling Memoji, where users can create a customisable avatar of themselves with varying face shapes, accessories, skin tones and more. These Memojis and Animojis can be shared with your contacts through iMessage and the former can also be used to represent you in FaceTime in real time.

Finally, grouped notifications for individual apps

For an operating system as sophisticated as iOS, it eluded everyone as to why Apple wouldn’t streamline the way iOS handled notifications. The cluttered notification panel with a different tab for every single notification has been an eye-sore for Apple users, until now. In iOS 12, the notifications threads from the same apps are grouped together so that users can check important notifications at a glance. Furthermore, users can now manage which apps can show notifications in the notification panel and turn them off for others. Also, Siri can now analyse your interaction with the notifications and suggest whether you would like to keep showing the notification from a particular app or stop them. All we can say right now is, finally!

Do Not Disturb now understands you better

How many times has it happened that you missed important notifications or calls because you put your smartphone in Do Not Disturb mode for a brief period of time and forgot to turn it off. This is not likely to happen anymore if you are using an Apple device on iOS 12. The Do Not Disturb mode on iOS 12 comes with customisable scheduling. You can decide whether you want the feature to be active for one hour, until evening or morning, until the end of the event or till you are at a specified location. As soon as you leave the specified location or the event ends, the Do Not Disturb mode will automatically turn itself off.

Photos app gets smarter

With the cameras on iPhones being one of the best in the business, it’s but natural to click a ton of pictures and videos, which in turn result in a flooded gallery. As such it sometimes gets cumbersome to find one particular picture or video. However, the new Photos app on iOS 12 takes care of this particular issue. The app now segregates images based on several criterions including time taken, locations, event and more. There is now an advanced Photo Search section, where even before you type in the keyword it shows images arranged according to recent events, people and places. Another interesting feature added in iOS 12 is a new sharing feature which makes it easier to share images with friends, who in turn are prompted to send images from the same event/trip /meeting back.

Siri now learns from your routine

Apple’s digital assistant Siri also gets a serious upgrade with the latest software iteration. The voice assistant can now analyse and recognise your usage pattern. Based on usage behaviour, Siri can now pair third-party apps and suggest shortcuts when you need them. What this means is that it can now notice your food ordering behaviour and if it senses a pattern, will automatically suggest your regular order, food ordering app at the noted time. Apple has also added a new Shortcuts feature to Siri, which allows users to string multiple commands into one action.

These are the top new additions that the iOS 12 brings over the last generation operating system. Apart from these, Apple has also added support for ARKit 2.0 and new AR format called USDZ, which lets users experience Augmented reality in regular apps like Safari, iMessage, Mail and more.

Apple claims that iOS 12 can launch apps 2 times faster than iOS 11, open the camera 70 percent faster and display the keyboard 50 percent quicker. The latest platform is compatible with iPhone 5s and above, iPad Mini 2 or later, and iPod Touch 6th generation. The company has announced that the public rollout of iOS 12 will start from September 17th.

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