iOS 12.1 is finally here and if you’re an Apple product user, you should totally consider updating your phone to the latest iOS update as there are a lot of new features that you won’t want to miss out on.
iOS 12.1 allows user to express themselves in conversations with much relatable emoji as there are more than 70 new emojis being added into the keyboard including new characters with red hair, grey hair, and curly hair. There is also emojis for bald people, more emotive smiley faces and additional emoji representing animals, sports, and food.
iOS 12.1 have made FaceTime more flexible as you can now add up to 32 people in one conversation simply by adding in another person into an active FaceTime Call. Additional features include “Automatic Detection of active speakers”, which means while the user is on call, FaceTime uses on-device intelligence to display the most prominent speakers on the call, automatically highlighting the current speaker by bringing them to the forefront. FaceTime will automatically adjust the size of the person’s image in the conversation based on how active they are in the conversation, duration of speech, volume, and even motion. Participants who are not active will appear at the bottom until they speak up.
Other than that, FaceTime also features “Ringless notification” whereby when calling more than one person, FaceTime displays a notification that lets you join a call instantly without being disruptive or causing any disturbance. Group FaceTime have also integrated into the Messages app, making it easy to start a Group FaceTime right from a group iMessage chat. All FaceTime conversations are encrypted end to end so they remain private and only could be viewed by participants. For Group FaceTime, you can choose to join using audio or video from iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Besides adding more emojis and being able to start a conversation with your friends and family via Group FaceTime, there is also an update for your camera. With iOS 12.1, users are able to adjust the depth of field in real time preview, enabling more control to create portraits with a beautiful background blur. Portrait mode with Depth Control is also available on the TrueDepth camera for selfies, which includes Memoji and faster face tracking support for third-party ARKit apps.
Apart from all these new features, iOS 12.1 should also fix the infamous ‘chargegate’ and ‘beautygate’ on the iPhone XS, hence it is recommended that you update your phone right away.
