Our opinion of iOS 14
We've been with the future iOS 14 for a little over a day, which we'll all be able to enjoy starting in the fall, and we have to say that we've loved it. New features have arrived that were necessary and that give a twist, especially to the home screen, and to the treatment of privacy in the system.
Before we continue with the opinion, we have to say that we do not advise installing the iOS 14 Beta at this time. If you have a second phone and want to tinker with it, install it, but on a personal iPhone that you use daily, we don't advise it.The Beta works very well, but it has small bugs that can affect your mobile experience somewhat.
If you want to experiment with your main iPhone, we recommend waiting for the public Beta that will be released in the next few weeks.
iOS 14 Opinion:
We have to say that we have installed it on an iPhone 7 and it works like a charm. Small lags motivated, we think, by being a Beta that is debugging its operation, but in terms of performance and battery autonomy we did not think it would be so good.
As for the highlights, say the following:
Widgets on home screen:
Widgets on home screen
A success. They make it possible for us to see information that interests us at a glance without having to go into native apps.
Being able to put shortcuts on the app screen is wonderful. We will have at the touch of a finger access to actions, functions, configurations, websites, everything we want. The theme of shortcuts in the new Widgets is going to give a lot of play .
It is very simple to add the Widgets. By making a long press on any app or part of the home screen, and selecting "Edit home screen", a "+" will appear at the top of it from which we can add widgets in different formats.
There is also one, called a smart stack, which bundles many Widgets into one. If we add it, we must move our finger from bottom to top, or vice versa, to go from one to the other.
Widget selection and configuration
At the moment it only works with native iOS apps and services. We hope that over time they will also allow the use of Widgets from third-party apps.
Another thing to note is that Widgets can only be placed in the upper half of the screen. The bottom part must be left for applications or to leave it empty. We believe that it is a way to guarantee being able to turn the page on the home screen, since in the Widgets area it does not always work to move from one screen to another.
App Library:
iOS 14 App Library
Another novelty that we loved. It allows us to delete, but not delete, from the home screen applications that we use but do little. This makes the interface of the screen, in which we have our applications, is cleaner. We will have, in it, the apps that we use the most and when we want to access one that we use little, we will do it from the library of apps that appear by sliding to the left, the last page of the home screen.
Then we leave you a video with a sample of what was commented:
The possibility of “deleting” the apps from the home screen to bring them together in the iOS14 app library, makes the app screen much cleaner, leaving only the apps that we really use ??? ????? pic.twitter.com/c5pbGi7xfP
- Mariano L. López (@Maito76) June 23, 2020
In the application library you can see the apps by categories or in alphabetical order.
Privacy improvements in iOS 14:
It is one of the improvements that we highlight, among them, knowing when an application is using the camera or the microphone. When this happens, an orange or green indicator will appear at the top of the screen. Depending on the color of the dot, we will know if it uses one thing or another. Orange indicates that you are using the microphone, green the camera and microphone.
Witness to the use of the microphone
We have also seen that now it is not necessary to give applications full access to our photos. We will be able to choose the photographs that they can access. As you can see, a new function appears in the privacy of photos that allows us to choose "Selected photos" with the app in question.
iOS 14 privacy improvements
This allows us to choose only the photos that we want that app to have access to. The use, at first, is a bit confusing but you get used to it over time. What we do now, more than before, is share them from the reel with the app in which we want to upload it. This means that we do not allow the application to access the photos on our reel. Truly a success.
The issue of accessing information about the treatment that apps make of our data, and that will appear in the App Store, is not available at the moment.We will be able to enjoy it in an update that will arrive at the end of the year as explained in the small print of iOS 14
New features:
As for the small new features we have to highlight a few.
- Calls: We applaud this small but big improvement. Now when we are using the mobile and they call you, the full screen call does not appear, it appears as if it were a notification strip at the top of the screen. Thank you.
- Touch Back: We have not been able to enjoy this function since it is not available on iPhone 7, but it is an action that is configured in Settings / Accessibility / Touch / Touch Back . This function allows you to configure an action by giving 2 or 3 touches on the back of the phone. For example, by tapping the back 2 times, we can take a screenshot very quickly and comfortably.
- Search emojis: When we click on the emoji keyboard to search for one, at the top we get a search engine in which, putting the action or emoji that we want, it will quickly look for the related emoticons.
- IMessage Conversation Pinning: Needed. As in WhatsApp and other apps, it is essential to be able to pin your important conversations. Now in iMessage it's finally possible.
- App Translate: Wonderful. It works perfectly. If you used another app to translate, delete it because the new iOS 14 app works great.
- Zoom on photos: Now you can zoom much more than before, on any image in your camera roll.
- Picture and Picture: It's nice to be able to watch a video while you're in other apps or the home screen, but on an iPhone we see it as a bit of a nuisance. The screen is small and can get annoying. On an iPad, it's a real treat.
- App Clips: We couldn't implement it. It is a function activated natively, in new iPhones. In the older ones it will appear in the control center. As soon as we can try it, we'll tell you about it because it looks very good.
- Sleep: Monitoring sleep natively will make people like us remove the well-known AutoSleep from the iPhone. We haven't tested the new sleep feature in iOS 14, but interesting information about it appears in the he alth tab.
The operation of the beta of iOS 14 on an iPhone 7, as we have said, is better than expected and the autonomy of the battery has not been affected, We would even say that it has improved compared to iOS 13.5.1 .
We will continue testing the new iOS and as we discover, especially hidden functions, we will share them with you in future articles.
We hope our opinion of iOS 14 is useful to you.
Video with what's new in iOS 14:
If you want to see a video in which we talk about the public version of iOS 14, then we'll pass it on:
Greetings.
