iOS 9 News and Features Round Up

Coming this Fall (possibly September) you can expect to see Apple rollout their free upgrade to iOS 9. There’s been minor upgrades pretty much everywhere to help streamline CPU and GPU usage, and a host of updated app icons. Read on to learn more about some of the extensive new features and fixes that 9 brings to the table.

•Improved battery life: iOS 8 gets a lot of grief for it’s issues with WiFi and poor battery management, but now with iOS 9 we’ll see something called Low Power mode. In a nutshell, Low Power mode will turn off background refresh and downloads on apps, mitigate screen brightness and motion effects, and generally limit network activity to manual usage (i.e. no automatic email fetching). Similar battery saving methodology is employed on Android devices, however devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 go one step further by offering automatic grayscale switching, consequently conserving more battery power. (Fear not though: iPhone users can manually set up a ‘triple-click’ shortcut for switching to grayscale: Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Grayscale.)

•Improved Maps: When it comes to navigation, everyone pretty much agrees that Google Maps is the superior choice. Largely because Apple is only just now including transit directions (bus, metro, train) as part of their revamped Maps app. Transit directions will be available in a few select cities to start (New York, Chicago, London, Mexico City to name a few) with more cities to follow. Annoyingly, we still have no other choice but to use Apple Maps when linking addresses in Safari. Baby steps.

•Proactive: Similar to Google Now, Proactive is a system-wide feature that is purported to strengthen the dynamic and intelligent interplay between Siri, Spotlight, Contacts, Calendar, Passbook, and some viable 3rd party apps. It’ll also turn your iOS device into a GPS enabled learning computer by tracking user data and offering predictive assistance. Here’s a description of how it might function, from 9to5mac.com:

“For example, if a user has a flight listed in her Calendar application and a boarding pass stored in Passbook, a bubble within the new Proactive screen will appear around flight time to provide quick access to the boarding pass. If a user has a calendar appointment coming up, a map view could appear with an estimated arrival time, directions, and a time to leave indicator based on traffic. Proactive will also be able to trigger push notifications to help the user avoid missing calendar events.”

•Post-PC iPad improvements: Exciting news for iPad owners as they’ll get a chance to finally experience true multitasking, and with split screen capability to boot. This includes picture-in-picture functionality that might just allow you to stream old episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess while also trolling eBay for replica props. Sick chakram skills, bro.

•Move to iOS App: A new feature that’s been a long time coming. Basically, Move to iOS is an Android migration assistant to help you convert from Android to iOS. It promises painless and secure transfers of your contacts, message history, camera photos/videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books.

•Improved Security: Remember last year’s infamous “Celebgate?” The iCloud accounts of many celebrities (mostly women) were hacked and hundreds of risqué photos leaked to the public. Pretty terrible. And very embarrassing to everyone involved, perhaps most of all to Apple. Hopefully it won’t happen again with this latest iOS security update.

 

And all of this in a nice, neat little 1.3 GB package, saving you the hassle of deleting games, apps, and half your photo library just to complete the update (*cough*iOS8*cough*). But as exciting as all this sounds, we’re all agreed to wait on an update to 9.2, right? Apple’s burned us before with upgrades that brick our phones. Although iOS 9 promises to be very legacy friendly, it really couldn’t hurt to take your time with the upgrade!