The iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 were announced back at WWDC in June and will bring a horde of new features to your iPhone and iPad.
Apple has announced the iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 will be coming to a wide range of iPhones and iPads on September 20. This is four days ahead of the release of the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro models. Apple announced the new iOS and iPadOS software versions back at WWDC in June, and since then, developers and beta testers have been using the early builds of both software versions.
At the iPhone 13 launch event, Apple did talk about the new iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 but it forgot to mention their release dates. But later, the Apple website got updated to show that it is happening on September 20. That is good news for people who are holding onto an old iPhone, as old as the iPhone 6s. After the update, their iPhone is likely to perform better, but the most interesting deal is that it will look new.
There is a horde of features and improvements that iOS 15 brings. Notable features include notification summaries, focus modes, live text, and the new Safari browser, the design of which was recently a matter of likes and dislikes. Apple is doubling down on productivity with the new iOS 15 using features such as focus mode that lets you decide what apps and notifications should reach at different times of the day. I think it is an important feature for people trying to balance their work and personal lives.
Since I enrolled for beta testing and have been using iOS 15 for a while, I can tell you live text is another feature that is going to come in a lot of handy in certain situations. You just point your iPhone camera to anything that has text imprinted or even handwritten, and the text reader will immediately let you mark up the content or simply select all of it and copy it to the clipboard. Then, there are FaceTime improvements that include spatial audio support, grid view, portrait mode, and different mic modes to adjust how you sound.
But the biggest feature is SharePlay, which is an extension of the new FaceTime features. SharePlay will allow people on a FaceTime call to watch a movie together, listen to music together, and even share their iPhone screen, just like they would on a group video conference. SharePlay will work on most video calling apps and movie and music streaming apps, but that is some months -- at least, some weeks -- away. Apple said recently that SharePlay will arrive later this year, so there is no way you will be able to use it with the iOS 15 rollout.
iPadOS 15 is also going to amp up your productivity on the iPad, because the iPad is more important than ever. Features such as an app library, resizable widgets, better multitasking, and a new menu for split-screen are coming with the next update.
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