Because the yr winds to an in depth, many frenzied smartphone customers haven’t had the prospect to discover main updates to the Google and iPhone working programs that arrived this fall. As you lastly get a breather — or possibly even a brand new telephone in your reward haul — why not begin with among the extra personally partaking options that may make it easier to ease into Android 14 or iOS 17? Listed below are some highlights.
Specific Your self
Google’s launch of Android 14 was targeted largely on enhancing safety and accessibility options. However Google has additionally added contemporary methods to customise telephone screens with new wallpaper, app widgets and shortcuts. To get began, open the Settings app, choose Wallpaper & Fashion and make your selections to personalize your machine.
Apple’s multimedia Journal is comparable to third-party apps like Day One and Journey, which have free and paid premium variations. Whereas Google has not but added its personal devoted diary app to Android, some folks use the corporate’s free Maintain and Docs apps for his or her pensive moments.
Search Your World
Picture-based search provides one other dimension to actions like buying, museum-going, journey or simply strolling round city. Apple’s current Visible Look Up function for figuring out objects in pictures obtained a lift in iOS 17 and now works on movies as properly. To make use of it, simply open a photograph or pause a video in your telephone and faucet the Information icon (the third from the left) on the backside of the display screen. If extra data is on the market in regards to the picture topic, faucet Look Up to see the search outcomes.
(One other trick with Visible Look Up: Once you see a glowing white define round the primary object in a photograph, faucet it to open a pop-up menu. Choose Add Sticker to save a silhouetted copy of the article that you could ship in a message or insert from the iPhone’s emoji keyboard.)
Google Lens works on objects in nonetheless pictures and exported frames from video clips. It’s obtainable as an Android app however is built-in elsewhere, together with within the stand-alone Google app for Android and iOS.
Each Apple’s Visible Look Up and Google Lens can acknowledge, copy and translate textual content in photographs you see by the digicam. Examine every firm’s privateness coverage if in case you have data-collection considerations.
Blast Off
Android’s builders have been sneaking little surprises into the system’s code for years, and this yr’s replace brings a hidden recreation. To uncover it, open the Settings app and scroll down to About Telephone. Faucet it and then faucet Android Model.
On the subsequent display screen, rapidly faucet Android Model thrice to begin the sport. On the sport display screen, press and maintain the Android 14 brand till the telephone begins to vibrate and a tiny spaceship seems. Press your finger on the display screen to get steering controls and use the place data within the nook to fly to totally different stars.
Slip Into Standby
For those who don’t take care of the default widgets, press and maintain your finger on both aspect of the display screen to select new ones from the checklist of Standby-compatible choices. The Night time Mode choice within the settings provides the display screen a purple tint in the event you resolve to use the telephone as a bedside clock.