LAST UPDATED: June 23, 2020, 11:00 a.m. EDT: Apple ended the impatience of iPhone users with the announcement of new iOS 14. The official announcement about the iOS 14 was made in the annual WWDC held on June 22. Several new features like New iPhone home screen, Siri, flexible widgets, picture-in-picture mode, car key, etc are announced with the latest version of the update. Though, many features are exactly the same that we covered in the iOS 14 Rumors.
Apple put its focus on changing the home screen along with providing several other important features in the new iOS 14 updates. Apple has changed the entire home screen with grouping, widget management, Siri placement, calls notification, notification management, default app settings, and so on.
1. Grouping apps in-home Screen
Since the launch of iPhone, it’s home screen mostly remained the same. But this time with iOS 14 update apple provided drastic changes to the home screen. The new features make organizing and moving apps more convenient. Their introduced App library of iOS 14 will automatically organize apps in a new page on the home screen. It also provided the capability of grouping the same apps in one folder e.g., Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter will be organized in a folder named social apps. Other apps will be organized in the same way. You will be able to hide pages of apps too.
2. Widgets Management
iOS 14 has made widgets management more flexible and informational. In new iOS 14, users can create, resize, and pin widget according to their liking. This is the same functionality that Android users currently have. But Apple went one step ahead by providing Smart Stack of widgets based on which apps you use frequently and during what time of day.
3. New App Clips Functionality
The core idea behind the App clips functionality is accessing the features of an app without downloading it to your phone. Whenever you need to do an task, a small card will automatically pop up on your home screen, providing accessibility without downloading the entire app, for e.g, you are in the mall shopping for some suits and want to pay. Just scan the given QR code or NFC at the shop’s register, a popup will appear to do the payment. This is something new and unique to apple. There’s also no concern of privacy because you are not downloading the actual app on your phone.
4. Default Apps Features
As we told in our iOS 14 Rumors article, Apple launched the default apps feature in iOS 14. This feature will let users choose the default apps to do a particular task e.g., you can choose Gmail to open, instead of default mail app, You can also change the default browser too.
5. Picture-in-Picture Video
Taking a clue from iPadOS and MacOS, iOS 14 introduced the picture-in-picture feature for users. This is a kind of multitasking where you can do two things at the same time. This feature will allow you to watch a video while also doing everything else on your iPhone. Remember that the audio will not come up if you are on call because two audios cannot be played at the same time.
6. iOS 14 lets you pin conversations
This feature is already available on WhatsApp and other Android phones where you can pin the conversation to be on the top of the messaging app. Whenever you need to text someone, just click the first option without even seeing the name.
7. New SIRI interface
Previously, whenever users access Siri, the entire home screen goes black and blurred for some seconds. But now in the iOS 14 update announced by Apple, the Siri interface is completely changed. Now if a user long-press the home button, they will see a Siri logo animation on the bottom of the screen, instead of all the screen getting black.
8. Memoji get more customizations
Memoji’s in apple got updates with more customization features. Apple added 20 new hair and headwear options to emojis.
9. Translation by Siri
According to apple, the knowledge of Siri went up by 20 times this year. After touching this milestone, Apple has provided users the ability of translation by Siri in many languages. The new Translation app in iOS 14 is designed for conversations. It will automatically convert the audio into text on the screen along with providing the translation to your preferred language.
As of now, the Translate app will support 11 languages:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Russian
- Korean
- Arabic
- Portuguese
- Mandarin Chinese
10. Call notification windows get small
After updating your iPhone to iOS 14, incoming calls will no longer take the entire screen. You will see a small notification on top of the screen from where you will be able to answer as well as reject the call.
11. CarPlay get digital car keys
Forget your car key? no problem, use your iPhone to unlock the doors. With this new groundbreaking addition in iOS 14, users will be able to lock and unlock their cars with just their iPhone. This new feature uses NFC and lets you share keys with friends and family. These digital car keys will be made available from next year.
