The top iOS 7 features

iOS 7 has finally been shown off and, despite a sea of criticisms relating to its new looks and ‘new’ (borrowed) features, we’re pretty excited about it. Here are a few of the new features that we found most interesting.

Control Center

Control Center brings the awesome usefulness of Android’s quick settings to iOS. Sliding upwards from below the bottom of the screen brings up the transparent CC menu. From here a variety of settings can be tweaked. Brightness, music player, DND/Airplane Mode toggle, Bluetooth, clock, camera, calculator and even Flashlight can be accessed from here. CC can be accessed from the Home Screen and in-app.

Multitasking

One of iOS’ major criticisms just disappeared; iOS 7 supports full multitasking for all apps. The multitasking screen itself does look a lot like modern Android’s own version -- not that this really matters. What’s really interesting is how iOS 7 employs its multitasking. The OS learns what apps you frequently use and when you use them. This provides the multitasking experience without the battery drain that would be required if all apps were constantly updating. For example, your Facebook app, should you use it a lot, would update notifications and the news feed in the background much more regularly than an unused app. If you have a news app that you usually check on your way to work at around 8am then iOS 7 will learn this and update the app a bit earlier, making sure you have less loading time when you do eventually open it.

AirDrop

AirDrop is the most uniquely ‘Apple’ addition to iOS 7. AirDrop auto-detects nearby friends on the same WiFi connection and allows the user to send them files/notifications from any supported app, or from the basic OS features themselves. It’s kind of like how Samsung users can share files by tapping, without the need to tap devices together. It also allows for multiple simultaneous sharing, which makes things a lot easier. This is going to end up being a heavily utilized feature of iOS for a lot of people, and should be a pre-cursor to Apple introducing NFC in the next iPhone.

Safari

The new Safari layout is great, but this is really an area where iPhone’s have finally ‘caught up’. The new full-screen display that is offered by the controls and address bar receding away is useful and pretty, but nothing new. The ‘smart search’ bar at the top is also an appreciated addition that’s been available from Windows Phone and Android for some time now. There’s some cool Twitter shared links integration, a new tabs view with more than 8 tabs now available and iCloud tabs syncing, too. Overall Safari looks to have seen nothing but improvements on iOS7.

Camera and Photos

There are now 4 cameras that can be switched between by swiping left and right: Video, Photo, Panorama and Square. Default photo filters have been also been added. Probably the most exciting addition is the auto album generator. Photos are now sorted by date and location. Zooming out generates generalized folders out of the more specific ones. Zooming out again continues this generalization until the user reaches a view that groups photos by year. This is one of the better features and, while it’s true that other manufacturers have already been experimenting with auto album generation, Apple’s approach looks like it could be the best. But we’ll hold off any grand statements until we’ve tried it out for ourselves.

iOS gets a Back button, kind of

Our final bit of new feature commentary is the new back function that takes a leaf out of the BB10 and MeeGo manuals. This feature is not activated by a button, but by swiping from the left hand side of the screen. Like with BB10 and MeeGo this swipe must start at the very edge of the screen. If a user is writing a text or email, this swipe will take them out of that specific conversation and back to the inbox. In Safari the user can give back and forward commands by swiping from the left and right sides of the screen respectively. This is something that iOS has needed for ages and we’re glad to see its inclusion, even if Apple did seem a little smug about finally debuting such an old piece of functionality.