Apple earlier this week unveiled the all new iOS 11 Beta Preview. Which will lead to the final build, that probably might release this September
Droid Sector
Design Aesthetics
Starting off with the User Interface. The iOS 11 brings subtle design changes to the interface elements throughout the operating system. The text is bolder, apps like Calculator and Phone have a new look along with the Lock screen, and Control Center have been entirely redesigned.
But on the very first hands-on you get to know that both the notifications and your lock screen have been merged. Which is a bit confusing. I feel this isn’t a good idea. it’s going to take a bit of time for us to get used to it because when you are on the lock screen you get to see all the notifications that appeared when your phone was locked but when you swipe-up, you will be greeted with a stack of your previous notifications, with lots of swiping to do.
On the home screen, you get to see that the dock has shrunk a bit for better screen space. But I’m really not sold out with this idea. Because the names of the folder made better sense. And yes! the one unique thing about the iOS has been changed to the traditional Android style signal bars. I felt the circular design was a lot more beautiful than this.
The iOS 11 has faced a lot of changes. Siri gets a new makeover after a very long time now. The text is bigger and this time Siri tends to shoot multiple answers than just one.
There is another major step taken by the UX Designers. The volume bar is now made sleeker and doesn’t cover up the center of the screen. Which I definitely feel is a very good decision. This was one of the highly requested change. Because who likes an ugly looking box in middle of the screen while watching a video.
One important update in the all new iOS 11 is the completely redesigned control center. The interface tends to take up the complete screen. This expanded view gives better information and options. Along with the 3D touch feature working over the toggle icons. You can also see that the icons are placed over a dark background. The iOS 11 also lets you to do screen recording. But you have to take few steps to trigger the icon onto the control center menu. You can also then edit and share the screen recording, just as any other video stored on your iOS device. This will surely come in handy at times.
Talking about Dark. There is something super exciting about the all new iOS 11. This was something that Android was taking pride over for a very long time. Eventhough its not as good as on the android devices, the smart invert color is something that is the closest thing to Dark Mode yet! To switch to Dark Mode you need to go to accessbility shortcut and switch on the smart invert colors. Now all you have to do is to triple-click on the home button. Now you will be able to see that all the colors present on the display would have been layered by an invert filter.
More than just design perspective. The Dark mode was mainly introduced to help save your eyesight and for better readability. The Dark-Mode dims the overall screen and changes certain colors to make it less abrasive on your eyesight. Its same as the invert color settings on your iOS 10, which was specifically made for the colorblind, but only difference is it doesn’t have color wrapping.
Siri gets Translation Feature
Apple has used deep learning to integrate NLP(Natural Language Processing) in a better way with the Siri. It gets a major makeover with its voice. With better pronunciation and multi-lingual capabilities. Siri also gets new translation features. In which it will take the help of Google to Translate the things you tell her in English into Chinese, Spanish, French, German, or Italian.
The company has also promised to add more languages in the future. Siri is using on-device learning to understand more about your preferences, it majorly works like adaptive learning, where the Siri tries to learn your basic preferences by predicting what you might need next.
Maps – Lane Guidance and More
Among the plenty of makeover, even the Apple Maps gets a place in this revolution. I must say it has improved a lot since its disastrous debut. Though it wasn’t as robust as Google Maps, but this fact might change in iOS 11, because the new update comes with features like lane assist, speed limit, and a “do not disturb” while driving mode. And also you get a beautiful popup on clicking a markup place, containing the complete information about this place.
App Store – Redesigned
For the first time in the nine years history of Apple, they have finally redesigned their App store. The iOS 11 gives a brand new refreshing interface to the App Store. The store features a new App of the Day, Game of the Day, and Daily List with the best apps currently available for users to download. The redesign of the grid makes the apps fit in a better way. It kind of borrows the design aesthetics of the Apple Music and definitely a lot of cleaning has been done which makes the interface well optimized for better usage.
Camera – HEVC (the High Efficiency Video Codec)
Talking about the Camera. The app has been updated to support high-efficiency video coding (HEVC). This means that it supports up to 2x better compression. This format will shrink the size of the photos and videos up-to 50 percent, without loosing the quality. That’s going to save lot of valuable storage space on your device.
Summary (the High Efficiency Video Codec)
These are just a bunch of updates that we talked about. But Apple is effectively working towards adding more features in its further build, before this Fall.
