iOS 10.2 went through an undeniably long gestation period before it was rolled out yesterday. Although Apple attempted to keep many of the features under wraps, it’s not that easy to do when you have to release beta versions so developers and public testers know what’s coming up and can prepare for them.
Most users already knew about the extended emoji collection of over 100 new ones, and the introduction of Unicode 9 support. We’ve shown you some of the really hot ones that already seem to be trending.
- ? Rolling On The Floor Laughing
- ? Face With Cowboy Hat
- ? Clown Face
- ? Lying Face
- ? Drooling Face
- ? Nauseated Face
- ? Sneezing Face
- ? Prince
- ? Mother Christmas
- ? Man In Tuxedo
- ? Shrug
- ? Face Palm
- ? Pregnant Woman
- ? Man Dancing
- ? Selfie
- ? Hand With Index And Middle Fingers Crossed
- ? Call Me Hand
- ? Left-Facing Fist
- ? Right-Facing Fist
- ? Raised Back Of Hand
- ? Handshake
- ? Black Heart
- ? Gorilla
- ? Fox Face
- ? Deer
- ? Rhinoceros
- ? Bat
- ? Eagle
- ? Duck
- ? Owl
- ? Lizard
- ? Shark
- ? Shrimp
- ? Squid
- ? Butterfly
- ? Wilted Flower
- ? Kiwifruit
- ? Avocado
- ? Potato
- ? Carrot
- ? Cucumber
- ? Peanuts
- ? Croissant
- ? Baguette Bread
- ? Pancakes
- ? Bacon
- ? Stuffed Flatbread
- ? Egg
- ? Shallow Pan Of Food
- ? Green Salad
- ? Glass of Milk
- ? Clinking Glasses
- ? Tumbler Glass
- ? Spoon
- ? Octagonal Sign
- ? Scooter
- ? Motor Scooter
- ? Canoe
- ? First Place Medal
- ? Second Place Medal
- ? Third Place Medal
- ? Boxing Glove
- ? Martial Arts Uniform
- ? Person Doing Cartwheel
- ? Wrestlers
- ? Water Polo
- ? Handball
- ? Fencer
- ? Goal Net
- ? Juggling
- ? Drum With Drumsticks
- ? Shopping Trolley
Here are three more that you’ll love – the TV app, single sign-on and new screen effects.
TV App
Apple still has a lot of work to do on this app, but they decided to push it through with iOS 10.2 just the same. Basically it’s a TV Guide and video content curator rolled into one.
Nothing revolutionary about it, and it doesn’t have Netflix content, which could be a deal-breaker for many paid video streaming app users. But it does have quite a bit of content.
All you need to do is browse through and tap on the content you want to open it in the relevant app. For that, you will first need all those apps installed on your iOS device.
Single Sign-on
Again, this is for paid video streaming service users. Once downloaded, it will allow you to add various services and then let you sign into everything at the same time. Right now it’s more of a support app for the TV app, or that’s how it behaves. In future, Apple could well extend the feature into something resembling LastPass but does the authentication for you.
Screen Effects for iMessage
These are also low-key additions since third-party stickers for iMessage have been there for a while. Two new animated effects have been introduced – add some “love” in the form of a growing heart, or use “celebrations” to jazz up the message with sparkers and even haptic vibration.
On the whole, there aren’t any earth-shattering changes to iOS 10.2 – which is why they couldn’t call it iOS 11. That would have meant some major changes that they’re not ready for yet. We’re certain Apple is working on something really massive for next year’s iPhone 8, but for now iOS users will have to be happy with the incremental changes on the current OS.
Apple has also brought in a lot of fixes and improvements for existing apps such as Photos, Messages, Music, News, Mail and Accessibility features.
Apple hasn’t specified any security enhancements, but you can bet they’ve added some improvements and fixed a few vulnerabilities along the way as they were reported. The iPhone 6S “shutdown bug” is still being investigated as far as we know, so it could be some time before there’s a permanent fix for that. It was assumed that iOS 10.2 will bring a fix for that but we haven’t seen any reported cases of the problem being permanently resolved.
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