My fav features of iOS11 !

The recently held Apple Event was most awaited by all apple geeks and fans, specially to see the announcement of the iPhone X. Though the phone looks awesome, is a beauty and well is a tribute to 10 years of iPhone and is claimed to be the revolution in smartphones...it's price (Rs.89,000 for 64GB and Rs.1,02,000 for the 256GB model) made my heart heavy and consider if it was worth selling both kidneys for a phone.

Anyways, I saw a couple of friends post on their social media pages that they're loving the updated iOS11 and I instantly downloaded and installed the update to see what the hype was all about. And my oh my am I impressed.

Let me give you a quick back-story. I bought my iPhone 6S in August 2016 (Yes, why did I not just wait a couple months and buy the 7 but my previous android broke, was shattered even after one round of screen replacements and hence I had to buy the phone). My 6S worked fine and smooth till about last couple of months when it started lagging and responding slow. I had exhausted 64Gb space (Half thanks to photos) and I thought maybe that's the reason the phone has become slow - coz otherwise iPhones never hang, that's the beauty about them. I deleted some useless apps, videos and other heavy files and made it a point that atleast 5GB empty space is always there, but I was still dealing with a slow phone.

Now after updating the phone to iOS11, my phone is working like a beauty! The update also gave me an option of having low-res versions of my photos available on the phone while high-res is on the iCloud, I turned on that option and instantly had 11GB of more empty space on the phone. Woohoo! Here are the most useful/awesome features I have liked with this new update, hope it helps -

1. Screenshot

Now I take a lot of screenshots, mainly for work. With the update, when you take a screenshot, it is saved and pops up on the lower left corner, and when you click on it you can then draw/doodle etc write there before saving! How cool is that. Makes it easy for me to put notes or show what I am trying to show in the screenshot with the use of arrows. You can add text, signature, magnify the image, add basic shapes or even share directly from right there! 

2. Sticker Apps

Now I am not certain whether these apps were available before the update also, but on updating I got a notification that sticker apps are now available where you can use your own selfies and other photos from the gallery to easily create stickers and use on iMessages and other apps. I downloaded & installed 'Sticky' on my phone, it's from the makers of Prisma and is free and easy! It removes the background leaving only your face, allows you to choose from a couple of effects and background colours and you can change the position or add text. Love it, and my only request would be to add more customization options. Yet to check the other two apps out - they're called Sticker Maker Pro and Sticker Boost (Paid).

3. Control Panel

Control Panel still opens with a down to up swipe - but looks different now. You can quickly toggle, hard press to see more options. But what I loved is you can change the brightness or volume levels right there, no need to click and go inside the feature like before. I usually lower brightness before giving the phone to my kid, so this feature is definitely useful.

4. Do more with LIVE photos

We all love the LIVE photos in iPhones, which show you what actually went behind the photo and captures every frame. You can now add effects to your live photos - choose from Loop, Bounce or Long Exposure. My favourite is Bounce, it's like Boomerang but for Live photos. Try them out!

5. Notifications

Notifications now have an option of view/clear, instead of just clear. On clicking on View, the text or notification opens as a preview for you read it completely, and if you then want to open the app you can do so by clicking once again. So if I get a notification for an email, I can click on view and then I get an option to archive or reply from there. The options will obviously be different for different kinds of notifications.

6. Files (File Manager)

I swear, I used to always wonder why iPhones don't have a simple file manager like android does. So this is definitely a plus - you can search or browse for recently opened files or files from iCloud or Google Drive too!

Overall, my phone is faster, I have more space and am loving the interface and frankly speaking am in no hurry to change my phone anymore! Guess I can now wait for the price of the iPhone X to reduce. Do comment with more features you've seen or loved, as I am still discovering