iOS 17 Hands on - Top 10 Features

It is about IOS 17. I'm using it for about a month it's probably the single biggest updates that iPhones have ever had you can do multiple timers at once you can automatically clear out any used Verification codes from your emails you can reply to messages by swiping right you can show it a photo of a meal and it'll tell you how to make it it even has an AI that can learn to speak in your voice which we'll test later and these are just the little things so here are the 10 major changes that you need to know bearing in mind that this is the beta starting with the basics iOS 17 has an upgraded language model or in other words your phone will better understand what you're trying to say and this works in two ways autocorrect is noticeably more accurate like you can actually test this side by side with an iOS 16 phone and see how it just gets those really subtle human nuances and dictation I have not tested a phone that can do dictation better than this iOS 17 phone can when you talk you can see it right there like one word behind what you're saying just waiting to hear your intonation so it knows whether to add a comma or a question mark and even sorts the apostrophes play plus swear words it no longer just assumes that you meant to say ducking number nine is the FaceTime upgrade so when you now react to things you'll get these augmented reality effects that I guess are just there to amplify that expression.

It's not useful and I can totally imagine you wanting to turn the feature off but I do like that you have to be quite purposeful if you want to trigger them they won't happen automatically that the effects will work even though the other person might not have IOS 17 and that they're actually using this true depth camera system on the front of your phone to figure out where you are in the frame and place the effects not just on top of you like a sticker but around you plus now that they've got this augmented reality stuff going on in FaceTime it also means that you can do portrait mode effects just like you can in your camera app except I don't use it there and I do use it here being able to increase the amount of light on your face and not just blur out the background behind you but dark in it is like the best way to take a video call and then because the iPhone's doing all this processing on the hardware level not the software level it works across other apps too like Zoom and WebEx plus you can now leave a FaceTime message if the person doesn't pick up it really feels like apple wants FaceTime to be the way that you call people okay personalized contact posters is probably the headline feature of iOS 17. Apple spent quite a bit of time at their event talking about it and it didn't really register to me as something that would be any kind of game changer but it's only using it that I'm realizing how smart it is so you pick a name and then either a emoji uh me Milo gee a photo or a letter and then you can fiddle with those elements till you get to a poster that you're happy with now the main downside is that it's not unlimited customization you could definitely do more with this concept.

But I imagine the reason behind controlling it is to create some sort of consistency so everyone's posters follow the same format so they're recognizable and so those same details can be used in multiple different parts of the UI and I really rate this feature it feels very easy to get a result that looks professional you flip between different presets and even if your image doesn't fill the screen they fade it out in a way that makes it look purposeful and probably the best thing about contact posters is that it's you picking how you come across to everyone else up until this point the best way to make all your contacts look neat and consistent has been you setting the photos and details for other people I've tried to do this one by one a few times on some of my past phones because I do I love the idea of a fully organized clean contacts list but it just takes a special kind of commitment to actually keep that up consistently whereas now each person is only responsible for one person's image and that's you it's how you are going to look to other people so it's applying that little bit of social pressure that I think you need for a feature like this to actually kick off it also happens to be a very clever way to make iPhone users pressure their Android friends to also get iPhones oh that even Milo's climbed up he doesn't look that good normally now the contact posters also tie in really neatly with the new airdrop so what you used to have to do is to open the media you wanted to share Click Share and then click airdrop and potentially also who you wanted to airdrop to now you just bring two iOS 17 plus phones together.

The transfer initiates it's using NFC to check for other phones which means that it's not like wireless charging where you have to perfectly align two things to an exact spot and the way it animates is so sick first time I discovered it with drisha we just sat there for 10 minutes doing it again and again so we could keep seeing it in action but also they have fixed what I would say is the main problem with airdrop which is that it's only so far worked when you're close essentially when you bring two iPhones together they find each other via Bluetooth and then create a direct Fast Five gigahertz Wi-Fi network between them so the phone sending the file is like a Wi-Fi Hub that the phone receiving the file is connecting to that's why it's so fast that's why you don't need to be connected to a normal Wi-Fi for its work but it's also why if you step more than about 10 feet away from each other it cancels there's only so far that your small phone can Propel that direct Wi-Fi signal so what happens in iOS 17 is that as soon as you pull your devices far enough away that the direct phone to phone connection Fizzles are odds both devices realize and they switch their connection over to an indirect transfer the device sending the file is just uploading to the internet at the same time as the receiving file is downloading from the Internet it's slower but slow is better than ever but then it's not just files you can also share your contact poster like this along with all the other details about you that you want to so there's now a very tangible benefit to each person filling out their own contact details and making their poster look nice and pretty now okay there is a Siri upgrade too. 

And I'm particularly glad that Siri is getting some love because it feels like it was introduced 12 years ago as the future of how to interact with your phone and then it just sat there while Google Assistant has been getting better at a much faster rate so Siri now responds to just the word Siri you don't need to say hey anymore me realizing that I've just accidentally triggered every iOS 17 user's phone but it is quite clever because it waits for a split second after you finish the word to make sure that you're not about to say cereal or serious we've now got continued conversation which to be fair Google Assistant has had for a long time but nonetheless I would say is the single biggest Improvement that Siri has had from the very beginning because it means you can actually have a conversation with it without needing to tap the button every single time like this what's the weather today rain is okay what about tomorrow looks like what about this time next week I can't so you just told me what it is next week okay well the continued conversation part of it is cool plus you can ask it to read web pages by just saying Siri read this tmau is an uncommon condition that causes an unpleasant fishy smell Siri call Doctor it's not quite like real speech like it still has that robotic intonation that modern AI programs are actually starting to bypass but I'm using this to read out news articles in the mornings and it's not too far off feeling like a personalized one-person radio station.

I spent 15 minutes last night rattling off the weirdest phrases that the film is asking me to do so that it could train to learn my voice a gentleman with the fan exclaimed good morning what is this and to test the results in action hello there my name is iron Mani I'm a 27 year old economics graduate and I love phones what I never said those words to this phone number five though has got to be the Safari update so for starters you can make profiles like work and fun it's a bit convoluted you actually have to go into the settings to make those profiles before you can use this but once you've done that you can flick between these different modes by tapping this icon I would say this itself is one of those hyper specialized features that I probably won't use because you already have tab groups which can group all the tabs related to any one thing together but what is cool is that they've also made the tab groups experience better too you used to have to switch between them with this not so pretty menu now you just swipe so when you're in a tab and you swipe it swipes to the next tab in the tab group you're in and then when you zoom out to look at all your tabs in the group you can swipe to change the group and the other thing which now I've seen it as a feature just feels like such a no-brainer your private browsing windows are locked by default so no one else can see them unless they have your face which it changes the dynamic from making sure that you always close every single one of those private tabs after using them to now trusting that it doesn't matter only you'll be able to see them regardless.

But then how much bigger change has got to be this new standby mode so as long as your phone is locked on charge in some way it can be Apple's 100 plus wireless charging stand which is very fancy but I'm glad that it doesn't have to be that and that you just make sure it's in horizontal mode it'll activate this new interface there's a widget screen which lets you pick from a bunch of different interactive titles a photos page and then a clock page where you can cycle through different clock Styles it actually feels a lot like an Apple Watch to use now I don't think this is for everyone it's kind of everything your phone already does but just present it in a different way but there is certain contexts where I do see the benefit like if you're working for example and you want to keep an eye on your phone in case something important comes up but you don't want to be on your phone then sticking it a bit further away from you in this standby mode it feels like a more passive way to keep up to date kind of like that nothing phone we just tested I'll leave that video linked from this one I'm liking this new attention from filmmakers towards mindful use of the smartphone and probably the best part of it is that if you're really into sports being able to see live scores without actually having to find a place to watch it and the distraction element of that I think that's great oh and it has automatic night mode you know how you get those blue light filter apps that take out a lot of a distracting blue light that wakes you up and strains your eyes well a night mode here there is no blue light and hey if you're enjoying this video then a sub to the channel would be.

But then how much bigger change has got to be this new standby mode so as long as your phone is locked on charge in some way it can be Apple's 100 plus wireless charging stand which is very fancy but I'm glad that it doesn't have to be that and that you just make sure it's in horizontal mode it'll activate this new interface there's a widget screen which lets you pick from a bunch of different interactive titles a photos page and then a clock page where you can cycle through different clock Styles it actually feels a lot like an Apple Watch to use now I don't think this is for everyone it's kind of everything your phone already does but just present it in a different way but there is certain contexts where I do see the benefit like if you're working for example and you want to keep an eye on your phone in case something important comes up but you don't want to be on your phone then sticking it a bit further away from you in this standby mode it feels like a more passive way to keep up to date kind of like that nothing phone we just tested I'll leave that video linked from this one I'm liking this new attention from filmmakers towards mindful use of the smartphone and probably the best part of it is that if you're really into sports being able to see live scores without actually having to find a place to watch it and the distraction element of that I think that's great oh and it has automatic night mode you know how you get those blue light filter apps that take out a lot of a distracting blue light that wakes you up and strains your eyes well a night mode here there is no blue light and hey if you're enjoying this video then a sub to the channel would be.

I don't know the interactable widgets do not end with standby though so this is an iOS 17 home screen you can call someone directly from it and I was quite surprised to see you can configure it so this left hand button over here for example launches a FaceTime video but then the right hand button launches a WhatsApp message you can play and pause music you can control your podcasts it's all pretty simple stuff but I'm a big believer in widgets like these because they keep you out of apps and the webs of algorithms that those apps use to make you lose track of time but by far the thing that I'm most excited about in iOS 17 is what's happening with messages so for starters new interface very shiny but then you know the speech detections just got better so now when you send a voice note it literally instantly transcribes it and it's smart about it like if you send a 15 minute recap of your life it knows that that's something that the other person needs to listen to to get but if you just wanted to send a voice note that says hey remember to buy milk because say you're in a situation where you can't type then it will turn that message into text so the other person can get the contents of that message in whatever the most convenient way is for them at that time it's a subtle thing but I think it matters and then the cherry on top is check-in which is where your phone uses its location data to let the people you care about know automatically when you've reached where you told them you were going which saves you having to do the whole text me when you get there okay I've arrived dance every single time but to be really honest more so than any of the features that are actually useful I have had the most fun playing around with stickers.

I have not once in my life made a custom sticker on a phone until iOS 17 because this makes it very easy and very very cool so let's say you're browsing your photos and you come across this masterpiece you just hold down on the face and click create sticker that's it that's something that you can now drop straight away into messages and not just in this really flat way that feels like a typical conversation thread you can put them anywhere and then you can turn those digital stickers into what feels like physical stickers with different effects that respond to how you tilt your phone I gasped when I saw this not because it's bleeding edge Tech but just because it's a really clever human feeling and direction that leverages the tech you already have now I will say it does feel a little at odds with the very polished controlled nature of some of the iPhone's other features like contact posters because when you start messing with stickers these chats get very chaotic very quickly but then I'd be lying if I said it didn't allow you to express yourself better than you used to be able to like if I think about the absolute whale of a time that my team has had making custom emojis for our slack group this is a playground on a whole other tier and that's iOS 17.