Iphone 14 | What you need to know about the iPhone 14 and iOS 16 | apple iphone

When Apple presents the iPhone 14 in autumn, the iOS 16 operating system, which is also new, will also reach older devices. As long as it is possible, as long as the old smartphones are sufficiently fast and offer enough memory, they will benefit from the current, young software. iOS 16 will even run on the five-year-old iPhone 8. Such sustainability is unusual in the smartphone industry. Other manufacturers only offer updates for three years. However, some functions of iOS 16 are so performance-intensive that they necessarily require a younger iPhone. The old models simply don’t have the computing power.

Even if there is not even a hint of reliable information about the iPhone 14, one can infer some details of the upcoming hardware from the innovations of iOS 16. Right at the beginning of the conference, Apple highlighted an improvement very prominently: The lock screen of iOS 16 is updated, more information from individual apps can be seen at a glance even when the display is locked. There is a new menu to customize the lock screen, which includes colors and fonts. Mini programs called widgets can be placed directly on the lock screen.

You can quickly switch between different lock screens. A static display becomes a dynamic element. With the new live activities, you can follow real-time events on the lock screen. For example, how long the Uber taxi needs to arrive or the status of an ongoing football game. So you no longer have to unlock the iPhone and start the desired app, but get the information at a glance on the device.

That’s a big win, but with a small caveat: If you use an Apple Watch, you can already set up your watch face so that it shows the information you want at any time. Or to put it another way: Apple transfers the dial idea to the iPhone. To make it perfect, only one important detail is missing, which will most likely come with the iPhone 14: the always-on display, which has also been implemented in the Apple Watch for some time and can be found on many Android smartphones. With such an always-on display, you can see specific information at all times without having to pick up the device. An always-on display can now be used to save the battery if the refresh rate is reduced.

Productive handling

Many other improvements in iOS 16 should allow more productive use of the smartphone. The dictation function of iOS will be fundamentally revised in order to switch between finger and gesture control as well as dictation more quickly. In addition, punctuation marks are automatically inserted. This function works exclusively on the device, i.e. without data transmission of the audio snippets to external servers. Because it requires a lot of computing power, this is only possible on newer iPhones.

Apple’s Messages app and iMessage now allow you to retrieve and edit messages that have already been sent. There is a maximum time window of 15 minutes after dispatch. If the recipient is using an older iOS, they will still see the deleted or edited message in the original version. This “lifeline” does not work with SMS either.

Extract text from photos

One of the most important improvements concerns the Live Text function, which is already available. So far, it has allowed text to be extracted from photos. With iOS 16 it will be expanded and in future it will even be able to extract text from videos. An automatic clipping function for objects in videos and photos is very spectacular. It works with artificial intelligence, says Apple and means “Visual Lookup” in German.

The Apple wallet for payment transactions or digital IDs is intended to replace even more physical keys and in future keys can be shared like a photo. Apple Pay is getting an extension called Pay Later with Apple Pay. In the United States, users can spread the cost of an Apple Pay purchase in four installments over six weeks.

Stopovers in Maps

In the future, Apple’s maps will be able to plan stopovers in route guidance and offer better support for local public transport. Third-party providers can use the maps to integrate their information.

Family Sharing lets you share Apple subscription services with the entire household. Now parental control of the child’s activities and the assignment of age-appropriate content should become easier. Photos can also be shared within the family in just a few simple steps. There is also a new iCloud library for shared content that can be populated by all family members.