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iOS 8 : Whats in it for you

New interactive notifications to tighter integration with the cloud and OS X to support for third party makes iOS 8 the most powerful iOS yet.

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Anuj Sharma
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ios 8

It was announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014 on June 2, 2014, and was released on September 17, 2014. It represents a major upgrade to the existing iOS7 and comes packed with major new features and user interface enhancements

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If you have iPhone 4S or higher, a 5th generation iPod Touch, or an iPad 2 or higher, then you can upgrade it to the latest iOS update from Apple. It has a slew of great features that are worth an upgrade, but older devices may experience performance issues. We’ll talk about both features and performance with the new iOS 8 in this article.

You can quickly edit photos you take and add your voice in a text message. It lets your health and fitness apps communicate with each other, with your trainer, and even with your doctor. You’ll have new keyboard options and even more ways to share your content. Here are some of the things iOS 8 can do for you…

UI Design

iOS 8 enhances the user experience by adding convenient interactive notifications. There are new capabilities in the features you use every day. You can respond to text, emails or calender reminders directly from notification banners without exiting the app you are in. You can also reply directly on iMessage from notification bar by sliding the received message downwards. Uptil now in iOS 7 by just double tapping the home button you could see the multitasking interface. In iOS 8 in addition to that interface you will see faces or names of people you have talked to recently. Just tap on one to call, to message or to FaceTime directly. It has also integrated a smart keyboard which makes typing to messages, and composing mails easier by suggesting appropriate words.

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Photos

The all-new Photos app makes it easier to find your favourite photos with new search features and smart albums that organise photos for you. And you can edit every shot to look even better immediately after you’ve taken it with powerful new editing tools. Search by the date the photo was taken, by location or by album name. Another feature includes Time-lapse mode in camera wherein iOS 8 does all the work, snapping photos at dynamically selected intervals. The result is a video showing an accelerated sequence of the photos over time. It also includes the ‘Recently Deleted’ option wherein in you can recover deleted photos within 30 days.

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Messages

Now Messages lets you connect with friends and family like never before. Tap to add your voice to any conversation. Send a video of what you’re seeing the moment you’re seeing it. And easily share your location so they know where you are. Or turn on Do Not Disturb and then read through the messages when you have time. Start a group conversation and give it any name you like, easily add and remove contacts or leave the conversation when you like. You can also send photos by just tapping the camera icon.

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Family Sharing

It is a feature in iOS 8 that lets your entire family or friends share purchases from both iTunes and the App Store. You can add upto 6 members but all must be running iOS 8 or above on their devices. Once included, you get instant access to each other’s purchase and can view and download them on demand just as you can from your own account. Share music, movies, books, TV shows, and any other purchased content instantly. Family Photo Stream lets you automatically share photos with other family members.

iCloud

By using the iCloud Drive, you can securely store all your presentations, workbooks, PDFs, images and other documents on iCloud and access them from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC. The limit is Still 5GB. The documents edited on one device will be synced automatically to other devices. iCloud-enabled iOS Photos app lets every picture and every edit saved across all of your Apple devices automatically.

Health

In this feature the device deals with your heart rate, calories burnt, blood sugar and cholesterol and provides you with an an easy to read dashboard of your health and fitness data. It also lets you create an emergency card with crucial health information including your blood type or allergies or allow your nutrition app to tell your fitness apps how many calories you consume each day.

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iOS 8: Impressions and Performance

After the release of iOS 8 to public, Apple rolled out two more quick updates to fix iOS 8 issues. We look at iOS 8.0.2 update on iPhone 5S. In iOS 8.0.2, I haven’t seen any app crashes, at least not yet. Chrome, Safari or any other web-browser are working beautifully and so are my other key applications including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Health, Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Maps, Google Hangouts, Pandora, The Weather Channel App, and YouTube. All of these apps are performing smoothly, at least right now. If you are dealing with iOS 8 app crashes, try updating your applications. As for battery life I did not encounter any quick or abnormal battery drain though some of other users have experienced quick battery depletion. I sometimes also experienced a lag while scrolling, freezing in iOS 8 which is resolved in iOS 8.0.2. Cellular Network and Data, Wi-Fi, 3G LTE, and Bluetooth are all working normally after the iOS 8.0.2. Overall the performance of iOS 8.0.2 is fast and smooth without any issues with transitions or animations.

Continuity

iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are going to be joined and will be synced with the Handoff feature that lets you switch between Apple devices easlity and pick up where you left off between devices. This means you can begin writing an e-mail on one Apple device and continue on another. Also iPhone users can respond to calls on their Mac or iPad and can also send SMS from any of them. This is all done automatically when your devices are logged in to the same iCloud account. You can use Handoff with apps like Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar and Contacts.

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Should you upgrade to iOS 8?

Everything from its new interactive notifications to its tighter integration with the cloud and OS X to support for third party keyboards and extensions makes this the most powerful iOS yet. If you are using iPhone 5 or above then you should definitely go for it as we did not notice any performance issues. On the contrary we will advise iPhone 4S users not to go for the update as it slows down the processing and you might even experience frequent app crashes and lags while scrolling. Apart from this we have also heard users complain about crashing apps, battery life, ultra-slow Safari, poor Wi-Fi connections on iPhone 5. There is also an issue of storage on 8GB and 16 GB phones as the update requires 7GB of free space, so you will have to delete apps, music or photos and later restore them.

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