iOS 10 release date, news and features: Cool things to try in Apple's iOS 10

The official iOS 10 release date was on Tuesday, three days before the Apple Watch Series 2 and iPhone 7 release. Apple's new iOS 10 update is sneakily big and packs a lot of changes that users may not come across if they are not looking for them.

Here are small changes to Apple's dramatically different iPad and iPhone update that can make a big difference.

iOS 10 release date and time

iOS 10 is available for download right now. Users can download the iOS 10 update to their iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and iPad by launching Settings from the device Home Screen and tap on General for the Software Update.

iOS 10 compatibility
iOS 10 is available for iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, unless a user have an age-old phone or tablet that still uses the 30-pin dock connector or an older iPad mini or iPod touch. Unfortunately, Apple's forthcoming mobile OS update will not support the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. The iPad mini and iPod touch 5th generation are the outliers that will not work either despite having lightning and this calls for an upgrade.

iOS 10 raise to wake

With the new iOS 10, the moment a user picks the phone out of the pocket or lift it off the table the display comes alive, this feature can be disabled though. This is a great feature that have been experienced on a select number of Android phones, like the Google Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P.

Rich lockscreen notifications

A user will not have to exit the homescreen for quick reads and replies, the iOS also works with third-party apps like Apple Home devices and Uber. Users will see the notifications broken up into bubbles and be able to use 3D Touch to show hidden menu actions. In addition, pressing on a calendar invite alert will enable a user to accept or decline. The 3D Touch-enabled iOS 10 notifications work even better for Messages.

Clear all notifications button

What may be the best change to iOS 10 notifications update is the ability to clear all of the old notifications with 3D Touch. According to Tech Radar, swiping such messages away one by one or dismissing them in groups is a time-consuming mess in iOS 9.

To do this, user will just have to press that little "x" icon within the redesigned notifications pulldown menu and tap the "clear all" box that pops up. In addition, it is super easy to clear away expired alerts with iOS 10, this will please everyone inflicted with phone notification-clearing OCD.

Water detection

Apple availed the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus as the only water-resistant devices, the company has not made a fully waterproof iPhone yet. So it is making it easier to avoid potential water damage with the iOS 10 update.

Control Center is decluttered

The swipe-up-from-the-bottom Control Center overlay menu has a brand new look that helps declutters the layout in iOS 10, a feature Apple users have been asking for. It once again features four app shortcuts along the bottom (calculator, flashlight, stopwatch and camera app) and moves the fifth Beatle, Night Shift, to a new, bigger spot above the quartet.

Lockscreen camera and 'widgets'

It is easier than ever to flip on the camera with iOS 10 because sliding the lock screen right (when Control Center is not open) automatically transitions to the camera app. This is a camera app shortcut seen on several Android phones and it beats reaching for the bottom right corner, where the camera shortcut remains in iOS 9.

Graphical 3D Touch shortcuts

Within the home screen, 3D Touching app tiles like Activity gives users a more graphical account of their fitness goals. They will know faster than ever that they have to close those daily activity rings. ESPN had implemented this feature within its 3D Touch menu which runs scores and has a button to easily add a widget. It is even more graphical, throwing up a drawn out play-by-play interface and video of in-progress games a user is following.

Talk to Siri normally

Siri has gotten much smarter in iOS 10, but many people probably will not think to ask her to show off the new features. Siri now is able to work with more apps and a user can ask Siri to conduct more sophisticated searches on their devices such as, "find emails from my boss from Tuesday," as well as for photos featuring certain objects or people.

Siri third-party apps

Besides WeChat, Siri is ready for other chat apps, like Slack and WhatsApps, and ride hailing services like Lyft, Uber and Didi in China (which Apple invested in recently). Searching photos through apps like Pinterest Shutterfly can be done with users' voice thanks to Siri, and they can start, pause and stop fitness workouts with Runtastic, MapMyRun and RunKeeper. Siri can also help a user send money to friends with Square, Number26 and Alipay, or start a VoIP call to tell their friend.

Siri-influenced QuickType keyboard

Apple's on-screen QuickType keyboard can intelligently tell the difference between what a user is saying and what computers usually think he/she is saying thanks to more advanced Siri intelligence. Using what Apple calls "differential privacy," iOS 10 understands the wider context of what a user is typing, influencing the words in the suggestion bar above the keyboard. It has better context by taking into account the whole sentence, not just spitting out the next guess based on the previous word.

Photos with advanced computer vision

iOS 10 is going to make use of deep learning so that it will be easier to organize photos with what it calls "advanced computer vision," a feature evident in Google Photos. Apple touts the Photos app's ability to make albums based on face recognition, and can do the same for object and scene recognition thanks to 11 billion computations. It also serves up a mean of seeing photos overlaid on a map based on where they were taken.

Apple Maps is way better

iOS 10 fixes the biggest complaint about Apple Maps, its inability to scroll ahead on a route. Right now, Maps annoyingly springs users back to their current location whenever they try to look anywhere else.

iOS 10 users will be free to zoom around the map with the new Apple Maps feature and the navigation software is also dynamically zooming in and out of long stretches and complex interchanges. Maps for iOS 10 is adding traffic on route to better compete with the rival Google Maps and enhances its nearby functionality with more points of interest that you can find along your route.

Vehicles that implements Apple CarPlay not only get suggested alternate routes based on traffic conditions, but also Maps' turn-by-turn directions can pop up on the screen. Apple is weaving iOS 10 details from other apps into Maps, like if it knows a user go to work at a certain time, it will suggest the route, or make one based on a calendar event address.

Apple Music

iOS 10 users will have a redesigned Apple Music experience as it "allows the music to be the hero," according to Apple. It lets the cover art stand out. It looks to be a much cleaner design, highlighting cover art properly and suggesting music that users will like in a more logical fashion.

But non-paid subscribers will not get to enjoy this feature. The Apple Music refresh does add some more depth by way of lyrics (though it does not seem to follow along with the words like other apps do, like SoundHound does).

Apple News

60 million people do receive Apple news every month with 2,000 publications and it is in for a redesign, too. The For You tab available breaks news into personalized topics and hand-picked stories by editors.

News for iOS 10 will also introduce subscriptions so that users can read the Wall Street Journal, periodicals usually behind a paywall or see every issue of National Geographic. Breaking news notifications have also been added to this pre-loaded app so that big stories appear right on the iOS 10 lockscreen.

Home app

Apple's developer-focused HomeKit will be available to end-users with iOS 10, the new app appears right on the homescreen unsurprisingly called "Home." It will tie all of users' home-based IoT devices together into a simple interface and include Scenes to change the mood of rooms in a pinch, no matter who makes their home's previously fragmented smart tech.

Also from the lockscreen, a user can peek at home notifications, say, if they get a doorbell alert. Peek into the notification by pressing on the bubble and a video doorbell like Ring will give them a live camera view.

Phone

For those users who hate listening to voicemails and actually never check them will be excited that the rumored voicemail transcription idea is in iOS 10. It will let them know what a voicemail message says via more convenient text right within the visual voicemail.

Messages

Messages is introducing rich links within a conversation and a live camera view as soon as possible. Apple is making bigger emojis that are now three times as large as before, and the keyboard can now identify words easily replaceable with emojis via a single tap on each word.

Apple will include the 72 new emojis made by the Unicode Consortium. They are already in the company's emoji style and Android Nougat uses them. In addition, there will be bubble effects so a user can "say it loud" with a bursting bunch of text, or say something "gently" with slow-to-exist texts.

Users can also use "Invisible Ink" that requires the message receiver to slide their finger over a text or photo. It will either be a nice surprise, or horrific shock to their friends. Apple displayed an Invisible Ink demo in which a blurry photo turned out to be a bride-to-be's hand with a wedding ring on it.

Photo markup

Users can draw or type on any picture users take, starting in iOS 10. So now much more of their phone's photo album can look like the Snapchat account. This feature is pretty deeply hidden, but users can find it by opening a picture and finding the 3-slider icon that opens up editing options. From there, hit the three-dot icon in a circle and select "Markup".

Email filtering

Almost everyone has a messy inbox that makes it hard to find exactly what they want when they want it. Apple's new Mail app in iOS 10 has a filter button in the bottom left-hand corner, which lets users filter flagged and/or unread messages, messages sent directly to them, messages with attachments, or messages from people on their VIP list.

Prioritise downloads

If a user have got a lot of updates to download, they can 3D touch on apps to move the update they really want to the front of the queue. So if they are really dying to try out the new buddy system in "Pokemon Go" and have to update a lot of apps from work, they can move the fun one to the front of the queue.

Bedtime benefits

According to USA Today, iOS 10 bedtime feature on the iPhone aims at getting a user to try waking up or sleeping at a given time. Users can set up bedtime reminders, wake up sounds, and store sleep data into a third party sleep tracker and the Apple Health app

More to come from iOS 10

In addition to the iOS 10 features, Apple quickly mentioned Notes with multiple users editing a document, the ability to edit Live Photos without annoyingly relegating them to stills and a new conversation view for Mail. Split View support for two Safari windows has been added on the iPad, finally letting users open up dual Safari windows at once on their tablet. Apple noted that despite the deep learning capabilities of iOS 10, it will keep that to the silicon on the device and not invade users private data thanks to "differential privacy."

Watch a video of iOS 10 features here: