iOS 10 for the iPhone and iPad is available to install now. We'll have a full review of it soon — some of the biggest updates involve new apps that you can use in both Siri and iMessage, so it didn't make sense to review it without trying those out. It's also usually a good idea to wait a day or two before installing it. But all that said, our initial impressions of the OS is that it's "wonderful," as Nilay Patel wrote in his iPhone 7 review. There are more options in notifications, a clearer control center, and a new lock screen. Below, read our initial impressions of iOS 10 from back when the public beta of the OS was first released.
iOS 10 has a laundry list of new features and changes, including a completely revamped messaging platform, the ability to remove some of Apple’s preinstalled apps, and lots of new 3D touch actions. You can read more about them here. But the thing that’s first noticeable and is going to change how you interact with your iPhone every single time you pick it up is the completely redesigned lock screen.
Slide to unlock is history
The trademark slide-to-unlock gesture that’s been a signature of the iPhone’s interface since 2007 is now gone. Instead, the new lock screen is more proactive — the phone comes on automatically when you lift it up, showing you all of your notifications and missed messages right away. Those notifications are more powerful than before, letting you 3D touch to see a message thread or dive into your calendar, all without unlocking your phone.
Swipe left to right, as you’ll certainly do the first time you use iOS 10 (and likely for many more times after that), and you’ll be greeted with a new page of widgets that can tell you upcoming events, weather, nearby destinations, and more. Swipe the opposite direction from the lock screen to launch the camera, replacing the vertical swipe of earlier versions of iOS.
To actually get to your home screen and its familiar grid of app icons, iOS 10 makes you forcibly click the home button. It will then read your fingerprint on the TouchID sensor or prompt you to enter the PIN code to unlock the phone. In earlier versions of iOS, it was easy to never see your lock screen, simply because waking the screen with the home button would result in the TouchID sensor reading your fingerprint and unlocking the phone. In iOS 10, the phone is already awake before you even bring it up to your face.
This is an important distinction — iOS 10 now forces you to look at what’s on your lock screen before you get past it. Your lock screen is now your hub of information, whether it’s missed notifications front and center, or upcoming events and other information a swipe to the right away.
It makes the lock screen way more important than the grid of apps you have behind it. They’re still there, they still matter, but now using your iPhone is finally, truly something more than jumping into an app, back home, and into another app. With the new widgets (which, by they way, are also available to the left of that grid of icons), your apps feel like they’re finally part of the whole phone, just locked away behind an icon. We’ve seen widgets on Android and iOS before, but they’ve never been this prominently or intelligently integrated into the core of how your use your phone.
IOS 10 forces you to look at the lock screen, whether you want to or not
Much has been written over the years about how notifications are becoming the main interface for how we interact with our phones. Many argue that’s probably not a good thing — it’s easy to get overwhelmed with notifications. But in iOS 10, Apple is making sure you see those notifications, whether you want to or not.
Video by Tom Connors
Loading comments...