What’s new in iOS 16: more useful and complete

iOS 16 has been shutting down for a week now. All phones from the iPhone 8 range and above can be upgraded to the new Apple operating system. It is one of the most complete updates to the Apple brand. After many years of maintaining a discreet look and offering quite a few customization options for the locked screen, Apple has opened its case with a fascinating reinterpretation of the face of the mobile phone.

The multi-layered organization, with the time/date, widgets and images where people are pinned to the clock numbers is amazing. The user can now redesign almost any element on their iPhone’s input screen. In a simple way and with the possibility of using as many people as possible, changing from one to another at will or associating them with states of focus (eg leisure or work).

You can now tackle topics like astronomy (with images of the Earth, Moon or Solar System), LGTBi pride, color or emojis, among others. Even make the phone use random images to display every moment on the screen. However, the big news is something that Android users have been enjoying for a long time are widgets. Apple has done it in an elegant and functional way, in a little less time, just like on the Apple Watch, with its multiples: calendar, time, alerts, and activity rings, among others.

As a result of using that top area of ​​the phone with information, notifications now appear below, although at the same time notifications are grouped and appear as if they were coming from a wheel.

One of the most exciting new developments in iOS 16 is Visual Look Up. It is enough to touch a subject in a photo for a second and iOS 16, as if by magic, extracts it from the background and allows it to be shared or used in another application. Not only does it work with people, it can recognize pets and even birds, insects, and gnomes.

iOS 16 also comes with iCloud Photo Library Sharing, a feature that lets families share their photos in a separate iCloud Photo Library that up to six people can share. It has many customization options on photos to share, according to people and dates. A new button in the Camera app lets you send photos directly to this new shared space.

As if iMessage engineers have approved WhatsApp, already sent messages can now be edited, even marked as unread again. And through it, you can share a function released last year, SharePlay, to access content like movies and music in a coordinated way with friends and family.

Live text, one of the most useful functions that arrived a year ago with iOS 15, which thanks to artificial intelligence allows you to extract, copy, translate or share text contained in an image, now also works through video. Simply turn off for direct text access.

In Apple Maps, one of the novelties is the ability to plan routes and identify stages along the way, so that you don’t have to program an address for each one.

The small novelties and tweaks in iOS 16 are numerous and appear in different applications and the user will discover new things, but above all, the perception that the iPhone operating system offers is that it is getting closer every day. It’s been a long time since Steve Jobs introduced the brand’s first mobile phone in 2007, with a revolutionary graphical user interface. The 60th edition continues on the same path: facilitating interaction with the mobile phone and automating much of it.