Apple iOS 12 announced - Here's all your need to know

Apple iOS 12 was recently unveiled as the company's newest update to its mobile operating system. Apple also released the first beta to developers, giving a glimpse of the new features and improvements coming to iOS this fall.

Apple iOS 12 is all about performance

With iOS 11 Apple brought several visual enhancements to the platform, but this was at a cost of overall stability and performance, much to the ire of its users. Apple hopes to fix this with iOS 12, by focussing on stability, performance and under-the-hood improvements.

While performance updates may not be as headline grabbing as flashy new features, the iOS platform and its user-base will greatly benefit from such an update. While nothing much has changed visually, users will notice the platform has become buttery smooth during navigation.

Even in its beta, developers have noticed the enhanced experience, especially on older iOS devices. For example, on the iPhone 6 Plus, which will soon be 4 years old, Apple claims a 40% increase in launching apps, and a 70% boost when launching the camera app. Multitasking is expected to be twice as fast in comparison to what it used to be.


Augmented Reality



Augment Reality is a feature Apple has focussed on in the iOS 12 update. On the video demo, two gamers are shown simultaneously playing in one augmented environment, offering an engaging shared experience. Apple is set to further expand the scope of AR thanks to a new AR file format, USDZ, which will enable Safari and other native Apple apps to display such augmented content.

Apple is also introducing an all-new Measure app, which uses both a digital level and an AR-powered measuring tool that allows you to measure the dimensions of real-life objects with a fairly good accuracy.

Introducing Memoji

Along with Animoji, Apple is also introducing Memoji - Apple's response to Samsung's AR Emoji. When it comes to customizability, Memojis are cute and playful, allowing you to accurately represent yourself and your unique facial features, to a certain extent.

Unfortunately while Samsung uses a face scan to act as a starting point for its AR Emoji, Apple does not.  We cant help but wonder if this is something Apple will look to implement through its advanced front camera setup in future.

Memoji is built into the Messages app on iOS and and is part of the interactive experience introduced with iOS 11 and Animoji. The iOS 12 update also introduces four new Animoji.

Probably the biggest improvement here, however, is the longer duration of the clips - Animoji and Memoji recordings can now be up to 30 seconds long, which is more than enough to say your point and then some. You can even use all the Memoji - as well as the existing Animoji - as face overlays while recording videos inside the Messages app.

While at its core, this isn't necessarily an important feature for iOS, its still a lot of fun, and cleverly ensures that Apple users will stick to the Messages app as their source of communicating with their friends and family.

Siri

Apple's virtual assistant Siri is about to get much smarter with iOS 12. The update makes Siri much more proactive as she tries to learn your daily routines.  Overtime, Siri will suggest shortcuts to apps or actions based on your usage patterns. Among its improvementsSiri will start reminding you to wish family members on their birthdays, and customize voice commands to interact with certain apps.

The Shortcuts app allows you to fully customize how to interact with Siri. You can use some of the preset examples to get started and come up with fully unique interactions to get the information you need.

On top of that Siri will gain support for over 40 languages, food facts, celebrity facts, motor sports and password search

Grouped Notifications

With iOS 12, the update finally introduces grouped notifications. Notifications from the same app will now be grouped neatly together, allowing the user to expand each group based on their need.

It maybe safe to say that this will be one of the most important new features on iOS 12 based on the usefulness in the beta.

Screen Time

Similar to Android's Dashboard, Apple is introducing Screen Time with iOS 12. This new feature aims to measure the time you spend on your iOS device. You can set various limits to how you interact with your device by curbing the hours you spend gaming or on social media. All this is still fully customizable, so you can choose if you want to pay attention to these limits or ignore them.

Screen Time even lets you manage other devices set up with Family Sharing, limiting your kids from wasting too much time on their devices.


Do Not Disturb (2.0)

The Do Not Disturb functionality has also been improved in iOS 12, allowing users to  fully customize the times you want your device to stay quiet. This has been includes on top of the current schedule.

Given that Do Not Disturb isn't a function you check and customize daily, its a nice enhancement for those who want to fully customize how they use their handsets.


source - Apple