iOS 10 Delivers Plenty of Useful Features That Aren’t Just Eye Candy

There are some new features that will save you time. You can clear all notifications with a single tap. You can also clear all of the tabs in Safari at once. Also useful is the ability to prioritize downloads of updates.

Let’s say you need to use your weather app, which is currently being updated. You can press on the item and use 3D Touch to open a menu to choose “Prioritize Download,” which will make the other apps wait until the one you need is all there and ready to install.

Apple Mail has some improvements that will also make things easier, including a threaded view of messages that’s similar to what’s available in both Microsoft Outlook and Google mail. You can also automatically quit mailing lists, and it’s easier to delete mail, which is a primary purpose of having email on your phone. There’s also a handy ability to show only new messages.

iPhone improvements

Some of the changes are subtle. For example, when you open a folder to see what’s inside, the screen you’re on is blurred rather than being blanked out with a gray background. It’s not a big deal, but I think it’s attractive.

Other changes, such as the need to actually press the Home button to get past the lock screen aren’t so nice if you’re already using the phone’s fingerprint recognition.

Fortunately, you can return the phone to its original behavior of only having to touch the home button to open the lock screen. On the other hand, if you’re not using fingerprint recognition, perhaps because you have an older phone, then pressing the Home button is easier than swiping.

There are many features that I’ve heard about but haven’t tried yet. So I’ll cover those later. So far my impressions of iOS 10 are positive. Apple has added a number of features that are actually useful, and the company has made it possible to customize the phone more to your liking. For example, now you can clean up your screen by getting rid of default apps.

I also haven’t tried iOS 10 on an iPad yet, although some iPad-only features look useful. For example, you’re supposed to be able to display multiple web pages side by side in Safari.

Overall, iOS 10 seems to be a much bigger improvement over its predecessor than was the case with earlier versions. It’s worth noting that many of the updates to the new version actually do something useful and are a lot more than just eye candy. So taken altogether, iOS 10 seems to be a particularly worthwhile update.

Originally published on eWeek

Quiz: What do you know about the iPhone?