It’s difficult to imagine that Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) can be thought of as only a matter of weeks away rather than months. WWDC may be the holy grail for eager developers wanting to go hands-on with Apple engineers, but it’s also the time of the year that a lot of passionate iOS device owners learn about the future of the iOS platform. We’re going to take a look at what we know, what we think we may know, and just when we can expect to welcome iOS 10 into our lives.
iOS 10 Features (Rumored)
From a purely visual and aesthetic standpoint, iOS 10 will likely be identical to what we currently have with iOS 9. Those that are secretly hoping for a huge aesthetic overhaul – like what we saw with the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7 – are going to be left largely disappointed. But those who are more interested in new features than UI overhaul will be pleased to know that iOS 10 is rumored to bring a number of new features to the table.
The first one of those could be new emojis. As has been previously reported, an agreement by the Unicode Consortium could potentially pave the way for 74 additional emoji characters to find their way onto Apple’s iOS 10. Those new emoji characters have already been agreed on by the Consortium, and as such are all set to be featured in Unicode 9.0, schedule to be released mid-2016. Perfect timing for initial developer previews of iOS 10.
Those who heavily use iPhones for managing their photos could be in for a surprise as well. A number of sources have already put it out there that the stock Apple Photos app in iOS 10 could bring back some much loved features from the iPhoto experience that was killed off by Apple. The level of integration is currently unknown, but could include tools such as having the ability to edit EXIF data directly, and being able to edit specific areas of a photo within the app. There’s also the possibility of Apple adding face detection in iOS Photos app, something which the Mac version of the app has but the iOS one doesn’t. In short, expect a big overhaul of Photos app in iOS 10.
iOS 10 could also be the first version of iOS that actually affords the user with the luxury of hiding those pesky stock Apple apps that never get used and are simply tucked away in a folder somewhere on the device. With the recent discovery of new set of keys having appeared in the JSON structure of the App Store that define whether or not the app is a first-party application as well as whether or not that app is defined as a “hideable app”, and Apple’s CEO having already confirmed that such a feature is coming, hiding or uninstalling stock Apple apps could certainly be a thing with iOS 10.
While the Control Center is a definite ease in terms of iOS usage, we hope Apple further improves that experience by allowing more customization and enabling 3D Touch Quick Actions for toggles in devices that support it. For this, Apple could definitely take some cues from iOS 10 Control Center concept shown here.
Last but not least, with two iPad Pro models in its line up now, there’s also the possibility of Apple bringing more iPad exclusive features to iOS 10 just like how it did with iOS 9 last year to pitch its tablet more as a laptop replacement.
Besides this, there could of course be a ton of new features, changes and improvements that we don’t know about yet but we expect to know more about them as WWDC nears.
iOS 10 Beta Download
This is an easy one. Apple has historically released preview versions of its new iOS during its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). That week long event is highly expected to take place anywhere between June 13 to June 17 this year, meaning that developers and public beta testers can both expect a pre-release beta seed of iOS 10 immediately after the opening keynote.
iOS 10 Release Date
In a similar fashion to the initial beta download predictions above, Apple has historically been very predictable when it comes to making a major version of iOS publicly available. Going by that, we expect final version of iOS 10 going live around the world in the same week as Apple’s next-generation iPhone going on sale, which will be in September this year.
We will be continuously updating this post as we learn more about the upcoming rumored features for iOS 10, so keep checking back and stay tuned!
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