Will iOS 14 Be the Much Needed Change For the iPhone?

Apple’s latest software upgrade for their mobile devices was announced a couple of weeks back and we were able to get our hands on it. With a developer’s account, the beta of iOS 14 allows you a whole new way to view your iPhone. While the public beta is set to launch later this month, we’re toying around with some of our favorite new features.

Widgets

The biggest change to iOS 14 is the home screen widgets. Apple introduced widgets to the iPad and now found a way to implement them into the iPhone. Right now, unless we can’t find them yet, there are only Apple widgets available for the current build. Being as the launch is only 2 months away, I’d expect a lot more companies to get on board.

Widgets allow the home screen to have larger icons containing more information, a banner style display, or a full-on takeover of the home screen. While iOS 14 is still rocking the clean-cut and organization people have fallen in love with, this is the first major upgrade that allows the iPhone to be a lot more customizable.

Minimized Call Notifications

If there was one thing that is so small yet such an improvement it’s incoming call interference. Gone are the days where the whole screen is taken up by an incoming call. Why did it take Apple so long to get on board with this? Who knows but at least now you can continue your work with only a small interruption while ignoring calls. Besides who calls these days, just shoot a text and we can answer at our leisure.

More Apple: Apple Needs to Swing Big Attempt to Acquire DC/DC Comics

Siri

Another upgrade to the iPhone/iPad is Siri. While we’re not 100% sure if the automated assistant has any new capabilities, again taking up the whole screen is a thing of the past. Now all you get is the minimal interaction bubble that accompanies Siri in the old mode. But that’s not our favorite part. Buried by their announcements, one of the most useful features we found was the ability to tap the back of the phone to interact.

While you set this up to incorporate functions such as go back to the home screen, I chose to use it for Siri. I can now just double-tap the back of my phone to bring Siri up. Yes, the “hey Siri” function is still probably the most used feature, but with an iPad, HomePod and iMac sometimes I want to save the time and just use the phone.

App Library

This by far is the best feature of the new update. App Library allows you a full homepage all the way at the end of your home screen where all your apps are neatly stored and organized. Turning off your home screen pages and decluttering your view is more satisfying than you’d think. Maybe you have your heightened organization skills set up like this with your current OS, but iOS 14 takes it to the next level.

Oddly enough while you can turn off the app pages on your home screen, you still will have a couple of live ones as the aforementioned Widgets will take up some space on your home screen. It looks like Apple designed this to allow your phone to display more live information than worrying about cluttering your home screens with apps you have to open to get info.

iOS 14 will surely change the iPhone. There are still a few more features like App Clips and the Translate app that will take a solid year or so to see their value. While they have their merits now, App Clips will need more companies to get involved and Translate will need time to see reliability. Right now, iOS 14 is just a fun new build that will make your phone feel more unique. It will be a few months before you see the value of the changes.