Apple has announced the launching of its next major software update for iPhone – iOS 18. The software will feature numerous innovations, as exhibited by Vice President of Software, Craig Federighi, during the WWDC event. These new updates will range from customizable home screens to more advanced options. The real deal is that users can finally modify the location of app icons to their preference. But that’s not all.
iPhone users can now arrange app icons and widgets on the home screen as per their preference, a feature Android has boasted for years. In addition, apps can now be hidden from the home screen and app icon colors can be personalized. Moreover, lock screen corner buttons can be changed to any of the user’s liking, not restricted to flashlight and camera.
The Control Center has been upgraded, allowing users to scroll across multiple pages of controls and switches for essential functionalities. Multimedia and ‘smart home’ controls will have a prominent place. Third-party app developers will also have access to the Control Center.
iOS 18 brings a more significant degree of privacy, allowing authentication via Face ID for any chosen app’s launch. A similar lock can be installed for an entire app folder that keeps apps from launching without the user’s knowledge. Now, users can also control which of their contacts can be accessed by third-party apps.
The ‘Messages’ app is now more vibrant with the possibility to use any emojis in Tapback responses, akin to reactions in Telegram. There will also be new formatting opportunities such as bolding, underlining, strikethrough, and italicizing. It’s now possible to edit sent messages too. Excitingly, Apple has expanded the iPhone’s satellite communication capabilities, including message exchange through the satellite. An impressive feature is the message scheduling capability that Google Messages already offers. Furthermore, Apple has confirmed an evolution to the modern RCS standard with iOS 18.
Apple’s built-in ‘Mail’ app has seen improvements as well, with the addition of automatic message categorization: payments, updates, and promotions – remarkably similar to Gmail. For circumstances when you’re more focused on gaming than working, iOS 18 introduces a new ‘Game Mode’ that minimizes background activity, consequently enhancing performance while reducing lag when using gamepads or AirPods.
iOS 18 brings the most promising updates to the ‘Photos’ app yet, as Apple gets ready to compete with ‘Google Photos’ on Android. More importantly, the application is now optimized for ever-growing libraries that many have compiled over years of iPhone use. The App features sorting by faces and pinning collections to the top for easier access.
In addition, Apple introduces Apple Intelligence – an AI system to be part of iOS 18 (and MacOS as well). The neural network will understand the user and his personal context to a larger extent than other services. Among the AI’s many capabilities are easily generating images in ‘Messages’, answering varied questions, providing a concise summary of texts, notification prioritization, and much more.
Apple’s assistant Siri gets a more natural interaction and can now answer a wide range of questions. Siri can also perform more active actions in iPhone apps on behalf of the user, like finding a particular photo by its description, editing images, or moving items in various apps.
…more updates to follow.
