It seems like Hewitt Times articles reviewing new Apple products have become a bi-annual tradition, considering the fact that the major tech company rolls out a new iPhone roughly every six months. But is the new release of the iPhone 5s and its complementary operating system a major change? Or is it all hype? To the untrained eye, the new iOS 7 system may not seem to bring many changes except for some brighter graphics, but to iPhone veterans, the changes herald a whole new world.
In a world where communication is just one item on people’s lists of hundreds of other daily tasks, multitasking is a must. iOS 7 makes multitasking more efficient and less daunting than on previous versions of iOS. Apps are now easier to close than ever: with just a double click of the home button and a quick flick up, they disappear from the screen. That same double click gives you the option to navigate through and preview apps on a larger scale. To maximize its efficiency, the iPhone now schedules software updates while your phone is connected to Wi-Fi, using up less 3G data and less battery.
New iPhone buyers will be happy with the new notification center. Rather than tons of notifications piling up from multiple apps at one time and in one crowded place, they are now separated into three tabbed categories: “Today,” “All,” and “Missed.” Missed notifications means no more unread mail that you can’t seem to find, and, as always, you get to choose which apps send you notifications.
Every iPhone owner knows that their phone’s camera has great quality and consistency, especially for being a barely-noticeable part of a smartphone. But with new software comes a new camera, too. With the swipe of a finger, the user can navigate through taking regular photos, square photos, videos, and panoramic photos. The camera also comes with built-in filters to eliminate what might have otherwise been time-consuming photo editing. Photo fanatics will also love the new organization feature of iOS 7’s photos. Click into your Photos app to access tiers of organizations from “Years” to “Collections” (organized by date and location) to “Moments” (smaller sets of photos within those dates and locations) and finally to individual photos. Every one of these layers lists locations at which the sets of photos were taken, and clicking on the locations will bring you to a customized Apple Map with your photos posted to their unique locations. This eliminates the annoyance of tirelessly scrolling through photos to find one taken months ago.
The newest iPhone model, the 5s, with iOS 7 preloaded on it, has fingerprint recognition, an utterly groundbreaking innovation for personal gadgets. It can actually be used to lock and unlock your phone instead of a passcode. The new fingerprint reader must be trained to recognize your unique fingerprint, but it can also be authenticated to read up to four other fingerprints.
It’s now even easier to share media without the hassle of e-mailing or texting. The new iOS7 software has configured a sharing method called AirDrop. AirDrop allows you to send media like photos, videos, and music to a nearby iPhone (model 5 or newer) with a click of the Share button. The software searches for other devices with AirDrop turned on through your current WiFi network or Bluetooth range.
Julia Wolinsky ’14, who downloaded the developer’s version of iOS 7 back in July, noted, “The beta version was really buggy. Applications would crash all of the time and my phone would randomly turn on and off. Sometimes when I would get out of the subway, my phone would not regain service, so I had to turn it on and off. I really like the look of it, though, and I love the calendar, home screen, and weather app!” She is excited to begin exploring the official iOS 7 released to the public yesterday.
With hundreds of hidden features, it’s only a matter of time until new shortcuts are unlocked and the iOS 7 craze is in full effect
…that is, until the next iPhone and software inevitably arrive.
http://youtu.be/rT_OmTMwvZI
This article was actually really helpful–I just got the iOS 7 myself, and I didn’t know that some of the things you mentioned even existed!
Great write-up Vicky! We in the tech office don’t have any new phones but we were excited to try out the new iOS. Personally I find any colorful modern art painting like a Kandinsky or a Klee looks really good on the home screen with the bright colors on all the app icons. One thing I noticed was an immediate drop in battery life. It turns out if you go to Accessibility and change Reduce Motion to on, your battery will last way longer. It’s too bad, because the motion effect, technically called Parallax, is cool. When it’s on (reduce motion off) your icons look like they are floating above the home screen image when you tilt the phone.