New features in iOS 12 | Articles | Phones

Most recent­ly, Apple pre­sent­ed a new oper­at­ing sys­tem iOS 12, which will soon be switched to all Apple mobile devices that are now run­ning on the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. The func­tions of the new axis are intend­ed to change the way we are used to work­ing with the iPhone.

Multiplayer in ARKit

iOS 12 fix­es Apple’s stance on aug­ment­ed real­i­ty apps and now brings addi­tion­al mul­ti­play­er capa­bil­i­ties to the sys­tem called Shared Expe­ri­ence. Thus, it will be pos­si­ble to play aug­ment­ed real­i­ty games with friends.

LEGO even intro­duced a four-play­er game where you can build an entire city.

ARK­it 2 will be avail­able to play­ers world­wide, and iOS 12, mean­while, will be the widest plat­form for aug­ment­ed real­i­ty in the world. Already last year we were shown what ARK­it is capa­ble of, but its sec­ond ver­sion is designed to be a real break­through in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty.

Measurements in the Measure app

Anoth­er AR app worth pay­ing atten­tion to is Mea­sure. Using the advanced sen­sors of mod­ern Apple devices, it will be able to mea­sure the dis­tances and sizes of objects around you. In the demo ver­sion, it was pos­si­ble to mea­sure the suit­case and for this you just need to click and cir­cle the bor­ders of the item right on the screen.

The appli­ca­tion is able to mea­sure the approx­i­mate dimen­sions of a pho­to, which is use­ful when buy­ing pho­to frames or plan­ning an inte­ri­or.

A new “USDZ” for­mat has even been cre­at­ed for the appli­ca­tion and devel­op­ers, Apple worked with Pixar on its cre­ation, and even Adobe pro­vides file sup­port. Files of this for­mat can be sent via mail, mes­sages and Safari.

Camera app

Apple did not announce changes to the cam­era app at its WWDC 2018 event, but the com­pa­ny lat­er announced that the app would receive an update in iOS 12.

Por­trait Light­ing mode on new­er iPhones with a dual rear cam­era will look more nat­ur­al. Now the appli­ca­tion will be able to select the char­ac­ter from the envi­ron­ment more effi­cient­ly, there­by pro­vid­ing clear bound­aries. Third par­ty appli­ca­tions will also be able to use this tech­nol­o­gy.

Read­ing QR codes will become one of the auto­mat­ic modes in the cam­era app in iOS 12. Also, despite the fact that it is not relat­ed to the cam­era, Apple smart­phones and tablets will begin to sup­port RAW for­mat pho­tos. And on the iPad Pro, you can also edit them.

Photo viewer app

The Pho­tos app is on the path to com­pete with Google Pho­tos. It now rec­og­nizes pho­tos by event type and dis­trib­utes them accord­ing to the event. The appli­ca­tion counts up to 4 mil­lion events, cit­ing the Aspen Fes­ti­val of Ideas as an exam­ple.

Thus, you can quick­ly find pho­tos from the event with­out set­ting spe­cial tags for this. This is in addi­tion to the fact that the appli­ca­tion dis­trib­utes pho­tos accord­ing to the peo­ple present on them, the places where they were tak­en and the dates.

It will now be pos­si­ble to search for pho­tos by sev­er­al queries at once, for exam­ple, by refin­ing the word­ing for more accu­rate results.

A new “For you” tab will also appear in the Pho­tos app on iOS 12. It will include per­son­al­ized sug­ges­tions on how to improve and share your pho­tos. Shar­ing is now eas­i­er, and the sys­tem itself is smarter, because it can allow you to send a pho­to in its orig­i­nal res­o­lu­tion and sug­gests who exact­ly to send the file to.

A fea­ture such as “Share in response” (Share back) has also been added. It allows you not only to send a pho­to to a friend, but also to remind him to send a pho­to back.

iPad uses gestures

It is quite incon­ve­nient to use both iPhone X and iPad at the same time now, because the sys­tems on the devices are dif­fer­ent. So the iPad takes a few tricks from the iPhone X: you can now swipe up to return to the home screen and open Com­mand Cen­ter by swip­ing on the right cor­ner of the screen.

It remains to be seen what exact­ly all this means for the iPad. While they say that the iPad Pro 2018 may well include a TrueDepth cam­era, Face ID, Ani­mo­ji and Mem­o­ji.

Siri remembers commands

Siri is get­ting smarter. Now, if you have a ded­i­cat­ed key track­er, you can teach Siri to acti­vate it to find your keys with­out hav­ing to go into the app. You can teach Siri so many com­mands that you need a sep­a­rate Short­cuts app to store them. It will be able to fol­low all your habits and pref­er­ences, write and send mes­sages, plan events and remind you of address­es or events. In this way, you can com­plete­ly cus­tomize Siri to serve you much more effec­tive­ly.

Siri translator

Siri already serves as a good trans­la­tor, but in iOS 12, more than 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages ​​\u200b\u200bare added to its col­lec­tion. Let’s see if Siri can final­ly trans­late words and phras­es into Russ­ian.

But that’s not all, as Siri is get­ting new fea­tures: now it will be able to find out and report the sched­ule and results of races such as For­mu­la 1 and NASCAR. The results of Siri search queries are also cal­i­brat­ed, for exam­ple, she reports on the use­ful­ness of cer­tain prod­ucts, their calo­rie con­tent and the amount of vit­a­mins.

Anoth­er new fea­ture of Siri is the search for saved pass­words. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this fea­ture works.

News, Voice Memos and CarPlay

The news appli­ca­tion is pro­vid­ed with more con­ve­nient nav­i­ga­tion and search. Although this appli­ca­tion is used much less fre­quent­ly in Rus­sia than in oth­er coun­tries, it is good to know that it is aimed at con­ve­nience. The Stocks app has also been redesigned with busi­ness news and charts. In addi­tion, head­lines from Apple News will be dis­played there.

Voice Reminders will final­ly be avail­able on iPad and MacOS. They will also be sup­port­ed in iCloud, so you can use them on all devices.

iBooks has become Apple Books and has received a new store design. Although, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Apple book­store does not work in Rus­sia.

CarPlay will final­ly get sup­port for third-par­ty apps like Google Maps. The fact that this appli­ca­tion appeared on the screen dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion is great news, although Apple avoid­ed men­tion­ing the names.

User habits

The Do Not Dis­turb fea­ture gets a new Do Not Dis­turb Dur­ing Sleep mode. The mode silences not only audio noti­fi­ca­tions, but also screen acti­va­tion and does not turn off until you unlock your smart­phone in the morn­ing. You can per­son­al­ly allow some appli­ca­tions and noti­fi­ca­tions to dis­turb the mode.

The mode can be auto­mat­i­cal­ly turned off after an hour, at the end of the day when you leave a cer­tain loca­tion, at the end of a meet­ing marked on the cal­en­dar, etc.

Also in iOS 12, you will be able to dis­able or con­trol noti­fi­ca­tions from the appli­ca­tion with­out going to the set­tings for this.

Siri will also be able to con­trol your noti­fi­ca­tions, depend­ing on how you react to them.

Screen Time is anoth­er way for iPhone users to edit their behav­ioral habits. You can find out how much time you spend using cer­tain appli­ca­tions, and which ones noti­fy you most often.

To reduce usage time, Apple offers app lim­its. You can set appli­ca­tion lim­its, and noti­fi­ca­tions will inform you about the time.

Par­ents can lim­it the use of appli­ca­tions for chil­dren and for them­selves.

Group Notifications

A small addi­tion will allow you to glue noti­fi­ca­tions from one appli­ca­tion. So, mes­sages from instant mes­sen­gers will not clog the screen.

Group FaceTime

Face­Time calls can now include up to 32 par­tic­i­pants, allow­ing you to have a group chat and have real con­fer­ences. Peo­ple can join and leave a call at any time. When some­one speaks, their video win­dow will increase, even if they are at the very bot­tom of the list of par­tic­i­pants. Such calls can be answered via Apple Watch, Home­Pod, iPad, iPhone and of course Mac.

Animoji and Memoji

Inno­va­tions have also affect­ed Ani­mo­ji, now they rec­og­nize the func­tion to show the tongue and wink. Sev­er­al new masks will appear, and most impor­tant­ly, you will be able to cre­ate a mask that looks just like you. All this is still avail­able direct­ly from Mes­sages, but you can choose the hair­style, eye col­or, acces­sories, and more. All you need is a TrueDepth cam­era.