There’s a lot to be excited for if you’re an Apple fan in the coming week. According to TechRadar, the widely anticipated iPhone 8 is set to be release on September 12th along with the 7S and 7S Plus. iPhone owners who aren’t looking to upgrade won’t be left out in the fun. Apple’s newest operating, iOS 11 is set to officially roll out with the new Apple products. There are a ton of changes, but here are our top five iOS 11 features to be excited for!
1. Customizable Control Center
The Control Center now takes up the entire screen, rather than the bottom half. The increase in screen space has allowed many more functions to be displayed. iOS 11 allows you to pick and choose the settings you use the most. Some new functions that you can now access through the Control Center are: timer, magnifier, stopwatch, notes, among other features.
2. Files app
Finally! A Files app on the iPhone and iPad. A lack of file management system is one of the main reasons why the iPad couldn’t replace your laptop as a daily driver. The new Files app allows you to access all your files in one space similar to the Finder for Mac. Third party apps have separate folders to allow easy transfer of documents and photos. It will be interesting to see if the File app will be able to download anything off the Internet such as torrent files.
3. Drag and Drop
The Drag and Drop feature will allow text, photos, and files to be easily moved from one app to another with the drag of a single finger. This feature is incredibly convenient while split-screen on the iPad. Now you can drag a picture over into another app without having to tap through the share option seen on iOS 10.
4. Instant Markup
The Instant Markup is going to be so clutch for students. The Instant Markup allows you to annotate PDFs or other documents. Taking a screenshot will also bring up the option to edit with various drawing tools. This will allow you to edit and make marks on virtually anything you can screenshot. The Instant Markup feature is designed to work seamlessly with the Apple Pencil, but fear not. You can use your finger as well if you don’t have $99 to fork up. This is extremely convenient if you don’t want to take all the extra steps to import your PDF to a separate app such as Notability.
5. Wi-Fi Password Sharing
It is easier than ever to deal with the “what’s the Wi-Fi password” question. Rather than trying to memorize a default password of sixteen random letters and numbers, you can now share Wi-Fi access with other trusted Wi-Fi devices. The Wi-FI Password Sharing works like this. Suppose you have friends coming over who all own iOS 11 supported devices. You’ll get a pop-up notification asking if you want to send your password to let your friends have access to your Wi-Fi. Choosing “Send Password” will automatically allow Wi-Fi access to all your friends.
6. Unobtrusive Volume Slider
I can’t tell you how happy I am about the addition of this minor feature. It would annoy me to no end when I would adjust the volume to a YouTube video and see the volume slider block the video I was watching. The new volume slider will now have a smaller footprint and reside in the top corner of the video.
7. Store more photos and videos
I own a 16 GB iPhone 6S. I deal with the “Storage almost full” notification almost everyday. The reason is because I have so many photos that I am too lazy to move to the cloud. Apple changed the way photos and videos are compressed in iOS 11. Apple is replacing JPEG to HEIF. HEIF stands for High Efficiency Image Format. To put it simply, it uses an advanced compression algorithm to allow photos and videos to be stored in smaller image file sizes while retaining higher quality images compared to the JPEG format. Apple claims that you’ll be able to save twice as many photos and videos, which is going to be massive for people with smaller iPhone storage sizes.
8. Apple Pay with a message
Apple is looking to take down peer-to-peer payment apps such as Venmo and PayPal. iOS 11 will allow money to be sent and received through the Messages app using Apple Pay. The standard fingerprint authentication will allow money to be sent with a debit or credit card linked with Apple Pay. The money you receive will be stored in Apple Pay Cash that you can spend with Apple Pay, use in apps, use on the web, or transfer to your bank account.
These are just a few of the many changes that are coming to iOS 11. To be honest, I am more excited about the iOS 11 rollout than the iPhone 8 or iPhone 7S release. iOS 11 looks to improve significantly over iOS 10 and it seems like the iPad is getting closer to being a daily driver. As an iPad Pro owner, I would love to see the day that I can replace my laptop with something as portable as the iPad Pro.
Click here to see a list of compatible devices for iOS 11.