14 Best New Hidden Features Of iOS 7

Earlier this month, Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the two new iPhones that would be next to hit the shelves: the blingy, ritzy, iPhone 5S, and it’s cheap, gross, plastic-covered little sister: the iPhone 5C. (A lot of people hate the iPhone 5C.)

Along with the new phones came another announcement: the release of Apple’s “radically different” new operating system: iOS 7.

The iOS 7 upgrade has been available since September 18, and has been irritating people pretty much since then too. But amidst the download, installation and syncing issues that have been plaguing users around the world come a bunch of new features that could make it all worthwhile. Here’s the top fourteen bits and pieces that’ll make you feel like you’ve got a new phone, even if you don’t.

–

1. That’s Not My Name

Do you have a stupid name? I do. Siri has been calling me Kieron for years, but now she’s ready to learn.

If she (or he — you can now change the voice) has been mispronouncing your name or the name of your hometown, you can finally start correcting her. Just say, “That’s not how you pronounce that,” and she’ll fix her elocution. Professor Henry Higgins would be impressed.

As a fun game, you can also train Siri to mispronounce the name of politicians. For example Tony A Butt. Bronwyn Bit Shit. Just let her go on Albanese. She’s a robot, not a god.

–

2. Links On Twitter

How annoying is opening up a link from Twitter, guys? Ugh, so time consuming. Well, time consume no more! If you go to Safari bookmarks and then click on the @ symbol, Safari will generate a feed of all the tweets you follow that have links attached, for you to easily click on and/or bookmark.

It’s handy if you only want to scroll through Celebrity Charity Retweets and Brilliant Junkee Articles and Brendan Maclean Videos without the hassle of that pesky observational comedy…

–

3. Your Compass Is Now Also A Level

The in-built compass app now also acts as a level, saving you the $1.69 download fee for a level app every time you want to check if the picture frame is hanging straight or if the table at the cafe is on a perfect 45 degree angle. Clever.

–

4. Crop Photos Before You Take Them

Say goodbye to second guessing whether the main course, cocktail and your friend giving the thumbs-up will fit into a square when you open it in Instagram. You can now take square photos in the camera app.

LOOK HOW IMPRESSED I AM!

–

5. Quit Multiple Apps At Once

Who has the time to quit apps one by one these days? Great news: the iPhone can take three fingers now.

After double clicking the home button to scroll through your open apps, you can swipe up with three fingers on three apps, and quit all three at once. It will save you anywhere between three and ten seconds, so you can get back to your busy day of whatever it is that’s draining your battery life and making your phone run so slow… Candy Crush?

Apple has not yet addressed rumours that iOS 8 will be able to handle a fist.

–

6. Apple Maps Has Night Mode

Say goodbye to high-beam light coming from your phone whenever you try for directions. (And that’s always been the police’s problem with you being on your phone, right? The amount of light?)

Of course this is both great AND useless: we all use Google Maps anyway.

–

7. Timestamps On Messages

Every message now has a time stamp! If you slide the messages to the left you’ll be able to see if enough time has passed to send your next desperate request for a booty call.

Also, if you go Settings>Messages you can turn off “Send Read Receipts”, so your latest suitor can convince himself you’re just asleep.

–

8. Block Those Jerks

Just go Settings>Phone>Blocked, and you can stop the sex requests for good, including both texts and calls. Probably also handy for blocking telcos/sales calls/dentists/bikies etc.

–

9. Download Bigger Things

Standing at the gate, about to board a six-hour flight across the country, I was desperately trying to download audiobooks by David Sedaris, Stephen Fry and the new release from Chopper Reid. It kept coming up with an error message: “This attachment is too large to download over a mobile network. Please connect to Wi-Fi and then try again.”

With iOS 7, you can now download files up to 100mb, as long as your data allowance allows it. Which means you never have to miss out on confessional auto-biographies by savvy gays/murderers ever again! REJOICE!

–

10.  Good Vibrations

Go to Settings>Sounds>Ringtone>Vibration>Create New Vibration, and then, like morse code, tap in your favourite pattern of vibration… ladies.

My favourite thing to do at the moment is go into my boyfriends phone and change his vibration pattern to CONSTANTLY VIBRATING UNTIL YOU FIND ME, for every time he gets a Tweet. (Please send your tweets to @rhysnicholson.)

–

11. Get Organised

Folders are now unlimited, everyone! So if you’ve got folders for Games1, Games2 and Games3 you can put them all under ‘Games’ — or, probably more accurately, ‘Word Games I Play On The Train To Look Intellectual’ and ‘Pong’.

–

12. FaceTime Audio Calls 

FaceTime now does audio-only calls over 3G and Wi-Fi, which should mean international calls will be free (not including data). So now there’s no excuse for not staying in touch with that Ukrainian girl you were best mates with for three days while backpacking in Peru.

On a serious note: Telco’s are getting quite nervous that you’re going to make all your calls over the internet. It won’t be too long before we start paying much less for phone calls and texts, and much more for precious data, so enjoy your unlimited plan while you can.

–

13. Technical Improvements

There’s quite a few improvements to features like automatically logging on to recognised Wi-Fis, automatically downloading updates to apps (and learning when the best time to do that is, like when you’re sleeping), being able to limit the cellular use of individual apps (so podcasts don’t download willy nilly, but tweets do) — and if you swipe up from the bottom, the control centre will appear with instant access to a light, a calculator, flight mode, lock, brightness and volume — quite handy.

The notification centre got a reboot too, and now looks something like this:

(The weather had disappeared from my notifications; apparently a common error. To get it back, go to Settings>Notification Center>TODAY VIEW>Today Summary, and switch it to green, for ‘ON’.)

–

14. Creepiness

Another new feature in the notification centre is that your phone now knows how far it will take you to get to your favourite places  (once it’s learnt where they are). For instance, you’re at lunch and you need to know how long it will take to get back to work: it knows. Or perhaps you’re at the beach and you wanna know how long it will take to get home: it knows.

What’s that? The internet knows exactly how much longer you’ll be away from your home and all your stuff? No, that’s not worrying at all… At least they don’t have our fingerprints. Except, wait a minute.

–

So there you have it, a bunch of new shit. Now we can all start guessing what’s in store for iOS 8. Personally, I’m hoping for an app that teaches me how to make eye contact again. I used to be so good at that.

–

Kyran Wheatley was born in Perth and moved to Sydney. His other achievements include being a presenter for triple j, hosting numerous podcasts of varying success, and having a Twitter account that is his actual name.