I've been using iOS 11 Beta on my iPhone 6 for a week now. My experiences with the latest iOS shipped from one infinite loop in Palo Alto, leave​ me the sensation that this time, Apple did a huge step forward.

This means that for those like me that still use an iPhone 6 or bellow, things are not so smooth and pleasurable as it uses​ to be.

The objective of this post is not to make a deep review of the iOS 11, but to present​ what to expect when the update becomes officially available around the end of September.

iOS 11 brings a lot of new technologies under the hood, like the super cool ARKit, which will give to developers the necessary tools to add Augmented Reality to their apps with easy.

But for you, my humble friend, who still need to collect a lot of Steem to think about buying a new iPhone, none of the cool features will be available for you.

For the first time​, ​ you will wish to have things like force touch, live photos and some extra processing power to carry on this new mammoth called iOS 11.

Here’s my humble, very short and fast review. Enjoy it:

1 - New Design:

IMO excellent. I liked the new Control Center, especially​ the Apple Remote Widget which allows​ you to control your AppleTV without need to unlock and find the Remote App on your phone.

I also enjoyed the new font style adjustments. It fells like there’s more room on the screen.


Image Source: https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/ios-11/

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Image Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-redesigning-app-store/

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The App Stores is completely renovated. Now it’s more easy to visualize the app details screen or download apps using your fingertips as a password.

2 - New notifications system

Apple new iOS 11 is one of the most ambitious iOS update with no doubt. Especially if you are a heavy user of the iPad.

It turns out that Apple is moving the UX/UI to make more use of ForceTouch screens. If you still have an iPhone 6 don’t except much of the notifications on your locked screen. It works fine without force touch, but it takes longer to check the notification content and now you cannot swipe the notification buble to clear the screen. You must check every message to remove it.

I believe it’s a bug of this current iOS 11 Beta version. So far, sometimes the notifications do not open after press it for a while.

3 - Performance and Battery Life

If you watched the WWDC Keynote were their launched iOS 11 a few days ago, will notice one slide with many words around the iOS 11 logo.

Image Source: http://magictechnews.com/wwdc-2017-ios-11-features-apple-didnt-have-time-to-announce/ .

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There’s so much more happening inside the guts of iOS 11 than they could show up during the presentation. iOS 11 is heavy and the user with iPhones 6 and bellow will have a bad time after this update.

As is normal to happen, iOS should have an increased performance after the beta phase but would not expect to be much better than now.

For me the iPhone is very slugish . It is noticeable the delay on the touch actions the time necessary to load the apps.

Battery life is another subject that may will be better before the public launh. In my case my iPhone barely last 2/3 of the day.

I also notice that the device is running way more hot than normal. The processor is really been abused this time.

4 - QR Code and ARKit

I aways though that the QR code was an incredible idea to communicate with easy, just using photograph. But there’s no way to ask people to download an app just for that purpose.

iOS 11 integrates and QR code reader inside the Camera App. What I like most is the way the QR content is presented: with a little top notification that gives you the choice to stay in the camera app or go to the URL provided by the code. Super neat!

Image Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/06/iphone-can-scan-qr-codes-ios-11/

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It’s funny how Apple is taking some ‘old’ know technologies like QR codes and also Augmented Realty to bring it back, this time, to make it to be something useful

ARKit SDK it’s a huge facilitator for developers to bring Augment Reality to the iPhone. ARKit works starting from the iPhone with A9 processor (iPhone SE and up). Apple is giving the opportunity from day-night to the developers to create apps that can enhance the reality as seen through the iPhone camera.

Image Source: https://eccux.net/apples-amazing-looking-ar-could-also-be-super-sharable/apple-arkit-2-wwdc-jpg/

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There’s no more need of an special app for that. From the consumer point-of-view it can be expected to see the apps you already use start to receiving some AR feature soon. For developers, Apple is giving a huge user base of current iPhone users (A9 processor and up - No iPhone 6) :( to be explored with creative new apps. That will be an exciting moment to observe some game changer apps. Let’s see!


5 - Screenshot and Scan!

As I said before, iOS 11 is full of new features and Apple make some enhancements on what is related of multitasking this time. iPad owners will have an app dock (similar to the desktop) and they can combine up to 4 apps at the same time on the screen. There’s also a new exposé like view of the opened apps.


Image Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-11-on-the-ipad-pro-is-still-missing-one-important-feature/

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None of this features actually works on the iPhone, they are exclusive for the iPad, but Apple brings a new interest way for you to use screenshots on both devices.

Image Source: http://iapplestuffs.com/2017/06/top-features-ios-11-iphone-ipad/

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Screenshots are a very useful way for people to communicate, repost content, share confirmations screens and so on. When you screenshot your phone, the screen image is minified to the left low corner of the screen. This way you can touch it to have it opened on an special editor were you can write on it, crop and choose to where you want to share it or just save to the camera roll.

Using ARKit system to indentificates planes in the camera image, Apple also brings an new way for you to ‘scan’ a document. It’s doesn’t matter if the paper is not well aligned to the device. It will identify the perspective and save a regular image like and scanned document.

Image Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/7-things-you-might-have-missed-at-wwdc-2017

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That’s it. I could go on with other new features like the new improved Siri, new gestures inside notification center (which is not working very well for me), AirPlay 2, new file formats for photo and video (they will have same quality with smaller sizes), built-in screen recorder and so on.

What feature you would like me to review? Leave your suggestion on the comments.

Thanks for reading it.

-Eduardo