iOS 8 : Release Date, Features and Rumours

Earlier this week, Apple announced the newest version of their mobile operating system iOS 8, at their annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). The new iOS version is aimed at extensively integrating the use of Apple devices into daily life activities. Therefore many new exciting features and upgrades have been added. The new improvements are as follows:

Touch ID

Application developers will be able to use fingerprint authentication to protect apps, especially those that involve handling sensitive information.

Siri

Users will be able to activate Siri hands-free with the phrase “hey, Siri”. It supports 22 new dictation languages and has streaming voice recognition to show users results as they speak. There’s also integration with Shazam for song recognition.

Keyboard

Apple has now added support for third party keyboard apps such as Swype. A new feature called QuickType also adds predictive suggestions based on users’ habits.  

iMessage

Apple has singled out iMessage to be its most used app and has added some pretty interesting improvements. You will be able to add message threads and remove people from them. Audio and video messages, and location sharing within the app are notably interesting additions; with the ability to reply audio messages by putting the phone to your ear, and the message automatically sending when you lower the phone.

Healthkit

This is a new app which will enable access and retrieval of health data and also integration with other health apps. The app is also expected to enable healthcare institutions exchange health data remotely with their patients.

Notification Center

This improvement interests me the most; users can now have basic access to applications from the notification center without having to launch the app. For example: reply messages or like posts on Facebook. All this can be done without having to close an app that you are already using. I’m looking forward to seeing how this will look.

Extensibility

This feature will enable apps to extend their features with other apps. For example: being able to edit a photo with a third party photo editing app, within the native photo app. Widgets have also been introduced.

Family Sharing

A family or group of people of up to six will be able to share reminders, photos, calendar events etc. A particularly cool thing is that music and app purchases can also be shared so long as the family uses the same credit card. Therefore parents will be notified about purchases their children make and can approve or disapprove them.

Release Date

The exact release date has not been announced yet but it should be somewhere around autumn. I will however keep you updated. Unfortunately, iphone 4 users will be left out of this upgrade; here is the list of devices that will support iOS 8:

• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 5C
• iPhone 5S
• iPod Touch 5th generation
• iPad 2
• iPad with Retina Display
• iPad Air
• iPad Mini
• iPad Mini with Retina Display