If you have any of Apple’s latest handsets with rounded-corner displays, such as the iPhone X, XS/XS Max, or XR then chances are you’re familiar with the tiny Control Center grabber that appears at the top-right corner of the Lock screen, as depicted above.
For whatever reason, this grabber doesn’t appear anywhere else in iOS besides the Lock screen; yet you can invoke Control Center from anywhere by swiping down from the top-right corner of the display.
Notches or not, facial recognition employed on some of the top Android handsets doesn't really hold a candle to Apple's sophisticated Face ID feature that allows for accurate 3D depth mapping thanks to specialized TrueDepth hardware which uses invisible infrared light.
If you have an iPhone X or any of Apple’s newer Face ID-enabled iPhones, then you’re undoubtedly familiar with the two-step process required to unlock your handset.
Right out of the box, iOS requires you to swipe up from the bottom of the Lock screen after Face ID recognizes you; but wouldn’t it be nice if your handset unlocked itself automatically? If you’re onboard with this idea, then you should seriously consider checking out a free jailbreak tweak dubbed AutoUnlockX by iOS developer SparkDev.
Starting with last year’s iPhone X, Apple nixed the Home Button from its entire lineup of smartphones and replaced it with the software-based Home Bar. The Home Bar resides at the bottom of your display, quietly waiting for upward swipe gestures for unlocking the handset or closing foregrounded apps.
The Home Bar compliments the iOS experience like bread and butter, and it also empowered Apple to achieve the signature edge-to-edge OLED display that many of us know and love, but it’s not without its quirks. Fortunately, a new free jailbreak tweak called XEdgeProtect by iOS developer smokin1337 addresses some of these issues.
Some cool new features are coming to Google Photos for iOS, including Portrait mode bokeh editing and changing the focal point of the blur, as well as leaving the subject of your photograph in color whilst changing the background to black and white.
Apple has determined that some iPhone X units experience touch issues due to a faulty component and has launched a display replacement program to address the problem.
In 2014, iOS developer Elias Limneos released a popular jailbreak tweak dubbed SmartTap that allowed users to perform touch-driven actions such as sleep, wake, unlock, and app-launching when the handset's touch screen was turned off.
Now, Limneos is breathing new life into SmartTap with the release of SmartTap X for jailbroken iOS 11 devices.
You just arrived home after a long day and your iPhone could use some recharging. And when a guy needs some juice, what better way to juice up your iPhone than drop it on an elegant picture frame that's sitting on the table? That's right, Twelve South has created an amazing gadget that looks and behaves like a regular 5x7 picture frame but also happens to wirelessly charge your phone quickly because there's a 10-watt Qi charger hidden inside the frame.
Late last year, Apple was caught throttling iPhones that had degrading batteries. This lead to class action lawsuits, a discounted battery replacement program, and various meetings with regulators around the world. It also forced Apple to add a battery monitoring tool in iOS 11.3. With the 2018 iPhones now in stores comes word that last year's handsets might eventually be throttled too.
As first discovered by The Verge, the recently released iOS 12.1 update brings Apple’s controversial “performance management feature” to the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus for the first time. With this tool, Apple can dynamically throttle the devices (i.e. slow them down) as the battery degrades in order to stop random shutdowns.
An Apple support page explains:
With a low battery state of charge, a higher chemical age, or colder temperatures, users are more likely to experience unexpected shutdowns. In extreme cases, shutdowns can occur more frequently, thereby rendering the device unreliable or unusable. For iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7, and iPhone 7 Plus, iOS dynamically manages performance peaks to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down so that the iPhone can still be used. This performance management feature is specific to iPhone and does not apply to any other Apple products. Starting with iOS 12.1, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X include this feature, but performance management may be less noticeable due to their more advanced hardware and software design.
No doubt this news will lead to some more criticism against Apple. However, it's probably no longer justified. If you own one of last year's phones, you can turn off the performance management feature.
What do you think? Let us know below.
Image of iPhone X battery courtesy of iFixit
Although Apple advertises in support documents and elsewhere on its website that the new iPhone XR series features HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, these colorful smartphones in reality do not have a display compliant with the high dynamic range (HDR) specification.
By now, almost everyone would agree that the stock volume HUD on iOS is complete and utter garbage. There have been countless jailbreak tweak releases over the years that attempted to remedy this problem, but Ultrasound by iOS developer Ayden Panhuyzen is one of the best we’ve seen thus far.
As shown above, Ultrasound is a minimalist volume HUD replacement that appears at the top left of the display rather than smack-dab in the middle as it usually would out of the box. It’s not much larger than the iPhone X’s notch itself, so if you’re watching videos, it won’t interfere very much.
On Wednesday, Apple introduced three new iPhones and a fourth-generation Apple Watch. At the same time, it said goodbye to older products, including the last iPhones with a headphone jack.