Everything just got a whole lot flatter…
The stitches that once held first-party apps such as, notes, calendar and contacts together has gone. The glossy effect on app icons has vanished on all but a few apps that are most likely going to be updated in the near future.
As soon as it hit 6 PM BST, I had already fully backed up my iPhone and was ready to download iOS 7.
As soon as my iPhone restarted, I was graced with this screen:
What had been shown 100 days earlier at Apple’s WWDC, was now something I had my hands on too.
Having carried out the initial set up tasks it felt like I had a new iPhone in my possession.
When I unlocked my iPhone, the smooth animations of the icons launched onto my screen, coupled with the parallax effect which gives the screen a perception of greater depth was just enough to put a smile on my face. The apps are given the illusion that they are sitting above the screen.
There are a flourish of new features as well as a burst of vibrant colours that make iOS 7 particularly ideal for the upcoming colourful iPhone 5C.
When you swipe up from the bottom now, even whilst in a running app, the new control centre provides access to your most needed tools. Even though it would be nice to eventually be able to customise what you have in your control centre, it is a handy feature that Apple has implemented – providing fast access to airplane mode, brightness and calculator just to name a few useful tools.
In iOS 7, Apple has made a push for distinctly showing the hierarchy in certain apps. They have done this by adding translucency. For example, in Notes, whilst reading a note if you scroll up you can just faintly make out the last sentence of what was just written. Third-party apps such as, Instagram use translucency very well. It provides a continuous feed of content when looking scrolling down looking at various posts.
The animations in iOS 7 feel fast and fluid especially when you quit and app and go back to the home screen. Dependent on whereabouts the app you have just quit is on your home screen, your phone will zoom out from that exact point. There is also a static image of the app you have just quit on the app icon itself that fades out. The physics of the animations is just right, how the notification centre subtly bounces when you pull it down or the camera on the lock screen which also featured in iOS 6.
The way the apps are launched on to your screen when you unlock your device from the revamped lock screen, is what makes iOS 7 feel well refined and cool.
Some people didn’t actually notice this when they updated to iOS 7, but when you look at the clock icon, it finally tells you the time in real time, with a dynamic second hand.
In messages, the opacity gets stronger as you pull messages down before you begin to type. The physics of the bubbles as you pull them up and down have the correct amount of elasticity and finally, a feature that should really have been implemented for some time now but, if you swipe the bubbles to the left, you can find out what time the message was actually sent!
Safari has been improved, most notably a new feature that I think should be talked about more is the shared links feature. It pulls links that have been shared from your twitter timeline that you may have missed. We also now have an infinite amount of tabs that we can have!
There are so many more new features that I could go on and discuss, for example, the new multitasking, or the ringtones and alerts, Siri, the revamped notification centre or the mail swiiping between mailboxes. I figured that this blog post would be too long if I continued going!
If you are like me and most likely won’t be getting a new iPhone this year; iOS 7 makes it feel as if you have just bought a new iPhone, that initial feeling when there was a whole world of exciting features to explore. Apple have made the correct decision in a revamp, but not so much that it feels foreign to existing and loyal users.
It’s different, it’s fresh, but most importantly it feels right.