iOS 11 release date and features: iOS 11 is now Apple's most popular OS
iOS 11 is now installed on 47% of Apple devices
Apple's mobile operating system is one of the cornerstones of its business, and it's some of the most-used software in the world. iOS 11 was announced at WWDC on 5 June 2017 alongside the release of developer beta. Following announcements made at Apple's Special Event, iOS 11 will be heading to general release on 19 September.
Here we round up all of the latest news about Apple's newest mobile OS and break down its key features.
iOS 11 latest news
13/10/2017: Apple's newest operating system is now its most popular, as the majority of its customers are now using iOS 11.
It's great news for Apple given that iOS 11 has only been officially available for a few weeks, and that users typically take much longer to migrate over to a newest operating system.
Android Marshmallow, released in 2015, still dominates the market share for the platform, despite the fact that its successor, Android Nougat, has been available for over a year.
Apple's iOS 11 has now been installed on 47% of devices, according to analytics firm Mixpanel, edging ahead of iOS 10's 46%, with iOS 9 or earlier still operating on 6.7% of devices.
Although it's an impressive adoption rate, users have been slower to upgrade than they did with iOS 10 over the same release period. When last year's OS released, it took only two weeks for iOS 10 to become the most installed platform.
Apple has already released a handful of minor bug fixes for iOS 11, including one that could drain the battery life of a device in less than 96 minutes. There's also the OS's first major patch in the works, which, once its available, will likely generate a sharp increase in the adoption rate.
26/09/2017: iOS 11 'drains batteries in less than 96 minutes'
Apple users have reported seeing a drastic drop in application performance, as well as significantly faster battery drain after updating to iOS 11.
London-based mobile security firm Wandera recently analysed the battery performance of Apple's latest operating system, and found that an iPhone would completely empty in under 96 minutes. As a reference, it found that iOS 10 would typically last up to 240 minutes before needing a recharge.
"New functionality in iOS 11 could also be responsible for draining the life out of your phone," said Liarna La Porta, marketing manager at Wandera. "Animoji and iPhone X's FaceID hardware use face-scanning technology relying heavily on the camera which is a notorious battery sucker. The hardware enabling this advanced facial recognition in the iPhone X could be the reason there is such a dramatic difference in battery decay rate."
However, the firm advises against rolling back to iOS 10.3.3, as the security benefits of iOS 11 far outweigh the hit to the battery life, as intolerable as it may be.
Yet that's not the only problem plaguing iOS 11, as according to a number of angry Reddit posts, users are reporting frequent crashes or load failures on applications that were perfectly functional before the OS update.
Safari, Reddit, ESPN, Yahoo, Spotify, as well as native text and music apps are all reportedly suffering from performance issues, in some cases taking over a minute to load or becoming unresponsive entirely.
"Ever since I upgraded, launching apps is an absolute chore," said one user. "I never had a single issue with my 7+ before last night and now suddenly it's like this phone is stuck in quicksand."
Another user reported that the iPhone's volume buttons would become unresponsive when using AirPods, and that playing music through an external system, such as a car radio, would produce skips in songs or poor audio quality.
IT Pro has contacted Apple for comment on the issues, however it is likely that the company will release a fix in its next update.
iOS 11 release date and availability
The first iOS 11 beta was released in June at Apple's WWDC keynote. Following a total of ten public betas, Apple has now set an official date of 12 September for its general release.
This bucks the trend somewhat, as Apple usually makes the latest version of its OS immediately available for download when it reveals the latest generation of iPhone - in this case, the iPhone X. Instead, it will arrive a full week after the phone's debut.
As with all iOS updates, iOS 11 will be freely available to Apple customers with compatible devices. This time around, the minimum supported devices are: iPhone 5s and upwards, iPad Mini 2 and upwards, iPad 5 and upwards, and all iPad Air and iPad Pro models.
iOS 11 features
iOS 11 brings with it a number of new features, including both surface-level cosmetic tweaks and seriously meaty feature upgrades. There's a slew up updates, but here are the biggest things that Apple is introducing with its latest iOS version.
Siri upgrade
Apple has improved its signature AI voice assistant for 2017's range of devices, making its male and female voices more expressive and natural, enabling them to adjust intonation and pitch as well as emphasis and tempo.
It's now able to translate English words and phrases into Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and can offer more personalisation based on use of Apple's Safari, News, Messaging and Mail apps, suggesting topics you search for on Safari when you're typing an email, for instance.
ARKit
A big new feature for iOS 11 is the inclusion of augmented reality, with iPad and iPhone developers encouraged to use their built-in camera and motion sensors with the new ARKit to layer virtual elements on top of the real world for a different take on apps and games.
Camera improvements
Apple's upgraded Portrait Mode to take pictures with optical image stabilisation, True Tone flash and HDR, to make them better-looking than ever. While Memory movies can now play in both landscape and portrait modes, Apple is conscious of your storage space, so uses High-Efficiency Image File Format to halve the size of every photo you take on iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (and presumably on the iPhone 8, too).
Apple Pay person-to-person payments
Apple Pay gets ever more convenient with iOS 11, now allowing you to not only pay over the counter with contactless technology, but pay friends simply by sending an iPhone-to-iPhone text using Messages. For the first time, Apple is also allowing users to authorise payments using facial recognition, using its new FaceID technology. If voice is more your bag, you can use Siri to pay someone with the debit or credit cards you have stored in Wallet. Recipients can transfer the money from their Apple Pay Cash account into their bank account, or use it to buy things using Apple Pay.
Disable Touch ID
Apple has also added a feature that allows users to bypass the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in order to make an call to the emergency services. By tapping the Touch ID button five times on a compatible iPhone, iOS 11 will bring up the option to dial emergency services without the need to enter a password to make the call.
The idea is the new feature is to ensure that iPhones can still be useful in situations where the user might be in danger or if they are having difficulty dialling the emergency services, or if they are unconscious and someone else needs to use their smartphone to make a emergency call.
Furthermore, the five rapid taps disable Touch ID and revert into requiring a password to be tapped in to the handset in order to activate it; a useful feature in situations where the user may be forced to unlock their phone using Touch ID, for example by authorities seeking to make people unlock their phones with their fingerprint in order to access their data.
The fingerprint scanner will then be disabled until the user puts in their password which will then switch Touch ID back on. Essentially, the additional feature adds another privacy option into the security suite of iOS 11.
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