Apple loves a surprise or two. The Cupertino giants decided to surprise everyone when they announced the Beta update to iOS 9.3 last night. The iOS 9.3 update is perhaps one of the most feature adding incremental updates that we have seen in the recent past and one that you definitely should be excited for if you own an Apple device that is running iOS 9.
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While it takes anywhere between 3 to 5 weeks for a Beta release of iOS to go into Public release, we cannot hold back on some of the things that the update would bring, so here are the features that you should be looking forward to, when iOS 9 does come out:
Night Shift
We have seen apps like Flux or even Twilight on the likes of MacBook or Android phones which overlay a warmer tone of color on your display preventing excessive glare from troubling you during evenings. Apple has built in Night Shift in iOS 9.3, which basically allows you to warm your display or cool it with a blueish overlay when you want or as per a schedule. You can set a schedule where Night Shift automatically will get activated around the sunset time and turn off around the morning time. You do have the ability to Auto Adjust the Brightness on your display so just in case you do not want to fiddle with the colors on the panel, you can simply turn on Auto Brightness and trust the system to not burn your eyes.
Watch OS 2.2
It is kind of mandatory now that with every major iOS update, you get the Apple Watch update, given the two work in synergy. With Watch OS 2.2, you will be able to sync more than one iPhone to your Apple Watch. So, if you carry two iPhones with you, when you travel or generally, you will be notifie of the activities from both the phones on the same watch, as long as both the phones are running iOS 9.3 and above, and the watch is updated to the Watch OS 2.2.
New Quick Actions and Live Photos Options
For those of you on iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus, there is some more goodness for 3D Touch. You will be able to use 3D Touch on apps like Settings which will open several more Quick Actions, such as directly going into Battery Settings rather than having to navigate all the way through or check out the Weather of a particular loctaion, but just Force Touching on the Weather app icon. You will also be able to turn an image that you clicked as a Live Image to a Still image and still keep a duplicate of the same.
Lock your Notes
Notes is one of the most extensively used apps by users on iPhones. It is used for storing all sorts of information, both private and confidential. Apple will now allow you to lock your Notes app with your fingerprint scanner protecting your data. Once you have set the authentication via Touch ID, everytime you would want to go inside the Notes application, you will have to use your registered finger to be able to view or change the notes.
iOS in Education
Apple has long pushed that their products especially the iPads and Macs will help bring a revolution in the way education works across the schools. With iOS 9.3, Apple has brought the ability where students can simply log into each others iPads if they wish to collaborate on work. Teachers too can mirror one particular screen if she likes to. Youc an read more on what Apple is doing with Education in iOS 9.3 here.
Which of the above features are you most excited about? Let us know in the section below.