One of Apple’s strength is creating a highly intuitive and pretty operating system. This is reflected in almost all of their products—most especially in MAC OS. The same thing can be said with iOS 7. It comes with new features, which allows a more intuitive experience when finding apps and controlling the settings of the phone. Plus, if you embrace a minimalist design, then it’s easy to fall in love with iOS 7.
What’s Awesome:
- With the new features in Camera and Photos, taking and storing photos is even easier.
- Control Center is a sure hit.
- New swipe gestures are intuitive and handy.
What Could Use Improvements:
- New Camera settings has tendency to accidentally press HDR ON.
- Add separate folder for screen shots in Photos app.
Design and Interface
When the first beta version of iOS 7 was released, it suffered a lot of criticism. Most people complained that it was too “flat”. It’s true, iOS 7 looks flat or a little bland when it comes to color and design.
However, it’s important to remember that Apple has always favored a minimalist look. In fact, this is one of Steve Jobs’s principles when creating Apple products. He believed that “simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.” And iOS 7 is indeed a reflection of this design principle.
So, the flat color choices and design might not appeal to some people’s eyes. But the important thing is it works, and so far, iOS 7 works quite well.
Although some of the redesigned logos of the apps look better than their predecessors, I’m not such a big fan of the FaceTime and Reminders icons. The FaceTime icon seems too generic with its simple green and white colors. Reminders, on the other hand, follows the same colored-theme of the iOS 7 but no longer has the “check” symbol.
Other than that, the rest of the redesigned icons look simple yet elegant. It’s like a classy lady wearing a beautiful pearl necklace. It’s not about the presence of different colors; it’s about how it goes with the overall outfit.
Besides the new design of the app icons, Apple also redesigned the fonts, transitions, and colors of the entire iOS 7 environment. The font styles and sizes remind me of Windows phone. The fonts are simple in design and color, but the sizes are playful as it constantly changes from huge texts to smaller texts when accessing the apps, the control center, and the notifications.
The apps within a folder are also arranged differently. Instead of swiping down to access the rest of the apps in a folder, you have to swipe right this time. It’s not a big deal, but for someone who stores more than 10 apps in a folder, it takes some getting used to.
Photos
The Photos App and the Camera are two of the best things that happened in iOS 7. Not only they did get a new look, but they also come with handy features making the experience easier and richer.
With the new Photos app, there are many ways to arrange the photos in your Camera Roll. You sort and view the photos according to date and location. One of the amazing things is looking at all the photos you took for one whole year. It’s like a summary of the things you’ve done for the past or current year. It’s a sneak peek of the awesome or lame things you were able to do. 🙂
In the previous iOS, videos are merged with the photos in Camera Roll. Now, all the videos get a separate album. Although this is a tiny change, it makes it a lot easier to view all the videos without having to scroll through hundreds of photos in Camera Roll.
Another amazing thing about the Camera app is recognizing the date and location of images that you downloaded from the internet. I usually download a lot of photos from Google Images (photos of dogs, wallpapers, Yoga poses), and the Photos app sorts these images according to date and location too.
One thing that could have made the Photos app even better is dedicating a separate folder for screen shots. Nowadays, taking a screen shot is actually one of the most used feature of a smartphone or tablet.
Camera
The Camera also has new features that are not entirely gimmicky; they are features that are actually useful.
First off, the navigation in the camera app is a lot more convenient. You can easily access the different settings with a simple tap or two. For example, turning HDR on and off can be done without going to the Camera settings.
Although there is an advantage of having all the most used settings on the camera screen, this kind of setup allows accidental pressing of HDR. Using HDR puts more pressure to the processor because it spits out two different photos: the original photo (without HDR) and the second photo (when HDR is turned on and combines the images in different exposures within one single image). When doing this, there is a noticeable lag.
Another hit feature of the Camera app is adding live effects before you take the photo. So, for those who are filter happy, this is a handy feature. You can immediately see how your image would look like before snapping the photo.
The Bottomline
The iOS 7 definitely got the makeover that it needs, but it’s still far from perfect. It combines the strengths of iOS, Android, and Windows mobile in one OS.
Although Apple did an overhaul of the overall look of iOS, they focused more on the experience. And with new gestures and features, iOS 7 is almost seamless and more efficient. There are a few reasons to hate it, but there are definitely more reasons to love it.
True, battery life is a bit of a shock when updating iOS 7 for the first time. But after three days, I was able to manage the battery life. 🙂 Reading this post now after using iOS7 for more four months is quite weird.
Worth mentioning is that the battery life just went from short to even shorter based on most user experience.