In the wake of lawsuits centered on Apple’s decision to purposefully slow down old models of iPhones, the purported focus of Apple’s iOS 12 is improving the speed and performance of both new and old phones, as well as eliminating some bugs.
But as the Verge reports, there are still a handful of new features that come with the update including one that tracks your phone usage, group FaceTime calls, and an app that can measure your furniture.
The new Screen Time feature is one of the most significant add-ons with iOS 12. With it, iPhones users can see how much time they’re spending on their phones and for what. The tracking device will break down app usage by categories like games, social media, and others, and track which apps give you the most notifications. At the end of each week, Screen Time will provide a summary of your usage. You’ll also be able to set time limits for apps. So say for instance you want to limit the amount of time you spend stalking models on IG, you can use Screen Time to tell you “time’s up” when your allotted Instagram allowance runs out.
One of the more interesting features that no one really asked for, but seems super useful nonetheless, is an app for measuring things. With Measure, you can measure objects or walls around you thanks to some new augmented reality tools from Apple. This will be helpful at the beginning of a new lease, when trying to measure out your new place or decide what furniture to buy.
There are several other features to look forward to, including the grouping of notifications to eliminate an onslaught of notifications from the same app, and group FaceTimes. On iOS 12, up to 32 people will be able to call into a FaceTime chat, which is probably unnecessary, but also pretty awesome.
The Photos app in iOS 12 will take photo face recognition a step further by making suggestions on who you might want to share the photos with, depending on the subject. People who are sent photos on iOS 12 will then be prompted to send their own photos from the same event. Say you’re going out to brunch with friends and snap a few photos. Later on your phone will remind you to send those photos to your friend, and then remind your friends to send their photos of the affair to you. Pics or it didn’t happen, right?
