The WWDC event this week saw Apple reveal a variety of new products, with iOS 16 being one of the most intriguing releases of the show.
Several new features have been added to Apple's iPhone operating system, including image segmentation for lock screen wallpapers, machine learning-based cutting out of subjects from photos, and real-time notifications on the lock screen.
Apple borrowed some features from Android and Android OEMs for its new mobile platform. Here are a few additions to iOS 16 that are familiar to Android users.
In iOS 16, Apple announced Live Captions, a feature taken from Android. In 2019, Google launched Live Caption, which transcribes audio playing on your device using machine learning on-device. Apple also announced that iOS 16 will support Live Captions during Facetime calls. Google, however, has already offered this handy accessibility feature in its solution.
With iOS 16, Apple added lock screen widgets, allowing you to see information such as the weather, events, time zones, and alarms from your locked display. Multiple lock screens can even be tied to different Focus profiles. That's another feature that was first seen on Android.
Android's lock screen widgets were first introduced with Android 4.2, way back in 2012. The lock screen could be customized with a clock, calendar, and other elements. Due to Android 5.0, this feature has almost completely disappeared. While some such as Samsung's One UI still offer a predetermined set of widgets for users to choose from, as is shown above, many others don't offer this.
Among Google Photos' many features, sharing photos with loved ones and letting them add their photos has been one of the most popular. The Google service also allows you to add photos by face to an album, so for example you could automatically add all the pictures of your grandmother into an album. Depending on the person in the photo, it will even suggest contacts for sharing.
Apple has borrowed yet another concept from Google with iOS 16, albeit with a few tweaks. Up to five other people can access your shared photo library on iCloud. However, it also follows Google Photos by allowing users to upload their content. Aside from adding the photos based on a start date, you can also add them based on who is pictured in the snaps.
With iOS 16, Apple shows another neat way to use machine learning. Apple's devices can now use the Translate app's new translate camera functionality, which lets you point the camera at text to get a translation.
The Google Translate app has been available for Android devices for years, letting you point your phone camera at text to get a translation overlayed. Apple's approach is a little more limited, as the app essentially takes a photo and then overlays the translation over it.
iPad OS 16 has this feature, not iOS 16. However, many Samsung tablets have offered resizable app windows for a while now. With Samsung's tablets, app windows can be resized and overlapped, particularly in Dex mode or when an external display is connected. This feature was hidden within Dex Labs settings for a while after its release, and some apps can't be resized at all.
The iOS Mail app also can undo sending emails, as well as schedule sending emails. Especially useful if you realized you made a mistake or wrote the wrong person. Gmail introduced both features some time ago. The undo sending feature was first announced back in 2009. Both Android and iOS devices can access these features through Gmail.
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