The newest update for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch is near, and I've got a firsthand look of what's to come in the new iOS 7.1, the first major update since iOS 7 was released.
Update: iOS 7.1 Released to the Public (3/10/14)
The final version of iOS 7.1 was released to everyone. To see what's new for all, check out our What You Need to Know About iOS 7.1 guide.
The Cool New Features in iOS 7.1 Beta 1
While the current build includes a multitude of fixes for big issues, it also features several superficial improvements that could make your Apple device more enjoyable overall.
Let's take a deeper look at some of these features.
The New Dark Options in iOS 7.1
If reading your screen is difficult at all, or you just like a darker style on your device, you can now dig into the Settings on your device to darken the keyboard, dock, notification center, and folder backgrounds in order to make everything easier to see and read.
For more info on this, check out our detailed softModder guide on the new dark options in iOS 7.1.
You Can Now Bold Text Without Restarting
Previous versions of iOS have allowed you to bold your text for a better viewing experience, but it required you to restart your device before the setting would apply.
Now, in iOS 7.1, you can enable Bold Text without having to restart your device. All you have to do is switch it on and check out any application on your device—it's pretty much instantaneous.
There's an Automatic Flash/HDR Indicator
If you open the Camera, you'll now get a small yellow indicator at the bottom of the device letting you know whether or not your automatic flash or automatic HDR is on or off before you take a shot.
While it may not seem too drastic of a change, it really helps me in knowing if the feature is being used, so as to not waste precious time taking two pictures. This way you know if your flash is going to be used for the picture you take.
Note: Automatic HDR only works on the iPhone 5S.
There is also a way you can auto-upload your Burst Mode photos to your Photo Stream, but like Automatic HDR, it's only available for the iPhone 5S right now.
It Now Tells You That You Have No Notifications
If you drop down the Notification Center, you'll now see an indicator that lets you know whether you have "No Missed Notifications" or "No Notifications." Below, you can see the difference between iOS 7.1 (left) and iOS 7.04 (right), which has nothing but blankness.
The Future of iOS 7
Since this is the first step towards a more refined operating system, you can count on there being many more advancements and bug fixes in any future releases. Hopefully, they'll finally get to fixing the wallpaper issues everyone's been having.
What would you like to see on you Apple device that is currently lacking from this operating system? Let us know! And make sure to check out our other iOS 7 tips.
Just updated your iPhone to iOS 18? You'll find a ton of hot new features for some of your most-used Apple apps. Dive in and see for yourself:
6 Comments
Auto reply to text!! Texting and driving is one of the major concerns these days. Androids have apps that auto reply to text messages, while iPhone still fails to offer it. I believe it is a must!
Why would you need that? Just tell them later on that you were driving. Emails and texts are not a real-time communication protocol like phone calls. Also how would your phone even know you're driving (vs being a passenger)
This is really a shock to me. There are dozens of small problems with iOS 7, and there are, doubtless, many features user have submitted to Apple that could be included in a 7.1 release. As I recall other release with .1 numbers, all increased usability of the software in many different ways. Is Apple under the impression that iOS 7 is that nearly perfect? How about a complete rework of the keyboard, to make entry of common things easier? How about making it easy to take an address from an email, or text and put it into a contact entry? How about making the interface more consistent so that things work the same way across applications? How about restoring the memory functions to the basic calculator keyboard? Why do I have to slide the text notification, reply to the text, then click the display off if I get a text when the phone is locked? Why can't I just tap 'send OK', or 'send 'busy', and have the phone return to its prior state? None of these things are major efforts, and many of them should have been done long ago, but a .1 release should do more than a couple of cosmetic changes, and many invisible bug fixes. I'm NOT impressed.
I don't think anyone has noticed on ios7 with an iPhone5 that when you text... while it's sending if you try to switch from landscape to portrait or viceversa it's really laggy. BUT I discovered something to speed it up a bit.. when you increase contrast, that laggy switch goes away.
Also I don't see the point of "Set and Scale" of the iOS when all you can do is go from normal size to big size only. There is a lack of flexibility with that and I think they should fix it. When setting up photos for contacts, instead of just putting the picture as it is, they automatically zoom the hell out of it making the contact picture way too zoomed in. It's ugly.
These are "cool new features"?
I upgraded my iphone 5 to the ios 7.1.
I am getting a darker keyboard but under the acessibility setting i don't see any setting to toggle it.
Also when i turn on the bold text. It still asks for a restart
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