Change Exposure Settings after Focus
The Camera App in iOS 8 allows you to change exposure with a simple slider after you focus. This is a very interesting change in the camera App which was lacking till now. With the exposure control, you can you can improve your shots specially in low lighting conditions, by letting more light into your lens. Yes it will make a difference to your low light shots. This is not the only thing new in the iOS 8 camera app.
Self Timer and Time Lapse Videos
The camera app adds a Self Timer button at the top. You can set the timer to 3 seconds or 10 seconds. The timer won’t be hard to locate and probably will be the first thing you notice when you open the camera app. Time Lapse video options was earlier available from third party apps, but with iOS 8 Apple has decided to provide this in the default Camera App. Time Lapse Videos capture images at lower frame rate as compared to conventional Videos and thus when you play them time appears to be moving faster.
Desktop Apps in Safari
Many mobile app versions don’t provide with same set or complete set of features as desktop apps and sometimes the features you are looking for are hard to locate on Mobile version. In iOS 8 you can request Safari Browser to load desktop version for websites as well.
The feature was already present in most other third party browsers like Google Chrome and UC Browser and it’s good to have it included in the Safari Browser as well. Safari also has support for DuckDuckGo search engine for those more vigilant regarding privacy issues.
Battery Usage
Battery usage is more in depth on iOS 8. You can now check battery consumption by Individual Apps for last 24 hours as well as for last 7 days. You can now see which App consumers more battery and decide if you want to part with it.
This feature too has been present for ever on Android where we find ourselves checking it quite often to locate that rogue battery draining apps. Apps on iOS are better optimized and tested but it’s still a very important change on iOS. To see battery usage pattern Tap Settings» general»Usage»Battery Usage.
Message Settings
Whenever you Google for ways to speed up your iPhone, you will invariably come across the tip to delete your long list of rotting SMS messages. With iOS 8, Apple has provided with the option to automatically delete messages after 30 days or 1 year. You can also leave it unchanged by selecting the ‘forever’ option.
Apple mentioned interactive notifications at the WWDC, but you will also get the option to receiver your messages as alert and reply to these messages by simply tapping them. Settings»notification»messages»Alerts
Weather App
Weather App also has a revamped interface, you get 9 days of forecast which is more than what was provided earlier and you can also view the details of the forecast by simply scrolling down rather than taping the option. The interface is now simpler to use. Apple is sourcing information from The Weather Channel for better accuracy. The app will also provide you with an hourly forecast for full 24 hours instead of 12 hours in iOS 7
Swipe and Dismiss Notifications
The Notification center in iOS 8 has got a makeover as well. Apple already mentioned that you can get widgets and notifications in the form of. You can conveniently swipe and Dismiss Notifications instead of taping ‘x’ for each notification, which was kind of irritating. iOS 8 will also provide with location based lock screen notifications. When you walk by Starbucks an icon will popup on the lock screen and when you pull that up, it will take you directly to Starbucks app where you can make purchases.
Customizable Mail
You can now organize your mails better as iOS 8 will provide you with the option to delete mail messages via long-swipe. You can also customize the left swipe option with mark as read/unread or Flag/ Unflag button.
New Zoom
The Zoom option present in the Accessibility settings now allows you to increase and decrease the size of the magnifier and to toggle the magnifier settings as well. You can simply drag the walls of the magnifier lens according to your needs and can set the order of Magnification as well.
Greyscale
Another option present in the accessibility settings is Greyscale. Enabling this grayscale entire user interface and perhaps some users will like it better without the vibrant colors. Samsung has a similar thing going on in Galaxy S5, in extreme power saver mode, but we are not sure if it is meant for battery saving on iPhone.
Improved App store and Note App
App store will show trending apps and will also remember all apps that you mark as ‘download later’. The App store will also keep track of songs that you ask Siri about and provides suggestions accordingly. Apart from improved App store, new Note App now provides you with the option to underline text and add images.
Conclusion
Apart from above mentioned features, there will be several other tweaks in the new iOS 8. Many of these features are already available on Android platform and Apple’s incorporation of these user friendly features in iOS is a good thing. With time we will know more about new features and bugs in iOS 8. Features like camera timer, more use of Swipe, Desktop Apps in Safari, etc will serve even better if Apple launches a larger display iPhone this year and perhaps that’s what it kept in mind with iOS 8. Source: TechSmartt, Macmixing
