The iPhone Gets Smarter with iOS 14

June 25, 2020 Off By Rowena Cletus

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Apple’s preview of its upcoming iOS 14 revealed drastic changes to the way users of the platform will be able to interact with their iPhones. Taking a page out of Microsoft’s book for the defunct mobile OS, iOS 14 features revolutionary Home Screen. Instead of seeing rows of apps across several pages, the main page features useful widgets and essential apps.

These widgets provide timely information and can be pinned in different sizes on the home screen. Apple says that it will allow users to create a Smart Stack of widgets, which uses on-device AI to show appropriate widgets based on time, location and activity.

The following pages consist of apps grouped into categories called the App Library. It is able to present relevant apps to users based on the aforementioned AI. Users will be able to display or hide pages for quicker access or reduce clutter. Though Android allows for apps to be grouped together, it lacks AI assisted sorting measures.

New to the platform is the support for Picture-in-Picture view. iPhone users will be able to handle FaceTime, phone calls or Siri interactions whilst completing another task. The operating system provides a compact interface for these interactions, negating the need to shift focus from the task at hand.

App Clips are associated with products or business. Linked apps will load instantly when users scan an App Clip code, NFC tags, QR codes, shard through Messages or Safari. An example of such a use case scenario is the task of renting a scooter or purchasing a coffee. A user can scan the necessary information, which will launch the respective business app.

Messages in iOS14 takes on a streamlined approach similar to that on MacOS Big Sur. Important conversations can be pinned to the top of the messages list. Users can keep up with group threads through mentions and inline replies. There are also a whole list of new emojis that include hairstyles, headware, face coverings and more.

Baked into the maps app, is cycling directions, providing users with directions that take elevation into account as well as how busy a street is, and whether there are stairs along the route. Electric vehicle routing include charging stops and types of chargers. Guides, provide a curated list of interesting places for people to see and visit.