Yesterday, Apple issued the third beta of iOS 7.1 to developers for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Like the original beta track for iOS 7.0, these iOS 7.1 betas have slowly been introducing some user-interface tweaks to the iOS Device experience. While not significant, changes to the Phone application, system sliders, some icons, and the keyboard slightly alter the way Apple’s products are used. Many of you sounded off in the comments about the changes, but we’ve compiled a poll (below) for you to vote if you like each new change over the iterations in the current release of iOS 7:
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I DO ☺️
The circles are more coherent, but from a practical point of view, the rectangular call button was more useful, because one just had to touch any place in the box. Very useful for people using their iphone one-handed with small fingers. But now you have to hit it exactly in the middle.
Darker keyboard is good though.
Couple of tweaks are really welcome ones; Reduce White Point, Call Screen Tweaks (circular buttons) are my fav.
I liked the bigger, rectangular call buttons more than the new circular ones. But I’ll get used to the new ones. Everything else I like… especially the new power down screen, I think that looks great.
IMO, the earlier rectangular long button to end a call, could be accidentally be pressed. But now, with a small circle at the centre, accidental disconnection is avoided to 99%. But as you said, it was difficult for me to start using these new circular ones. Now, it’s kind of cool. :-)
I have way too small fingers, had to try several times until I could hit the small circular button. I’d rather get the big squares back.
It’s enough already with the circles. 7.0 is a decent balance, but 7.1 is really laying on the circle theme a bit thick
the major reason why i hate it is because it reminds me of the Facebook app.
I like some of them, but UX wise I don’t like the idea of making the call buttons smaller.
Yes. Agreed. From a UX standpoint, its a step back.
I don’t like the smaller buttons, however, I DO like the symbols/icons instead of words
Agreed
Looks more harmonious with the circular call button
yes i love it …and everyone knows iOS has a very beautiful UI .
I do! :)
Its not about design,but performance.Design is ugly,too much white colour everywhere.Hopefully it will be performance improvement because now iPhone5 is struggling to cope with it.Not mention iPad3….
The white is fine. Get over it.
Can’t get over it. Too blinded by all the white.
Get over what?Lags all over the place?
Durp. if you have a dark wallpaper. The whole interface reflects that. Or have you not even used it.
No it does.Appstore,ibooks still white everywhere and it looks awful.
It’s cool, but I really hope Apple does something with the music app. So help me god, it’s pink.
What is wrong with pink?
iPod software has always matched, or enhanced the album artwork since the first colour iPod. The pink colour scheme detracts from the album art, which it shouldn’t – and since the music app is the digital variant of current iPod software, it shouldn’t. Blue highlights worked because it’s a clean, professional, colour, that’s neither masculine or feminine. The colour scheme of the music app has always emulated iTunes, and classic iPod software, and it no longer does that. Even purple would have made more sense than that god awful pink.
So what? It looks good
I really don’t see an issue with pink, either. I think Apple for a long time has shown everyone how blue is there favourite colour. From iOS to OS X to the t-shirts Apple store employees wear. Blue is everywhere. I think Apple is moving to balance out the colours they are using, moving to more of a ‘rainbow’ palette – albeit not a true rainbow – rather using the 5 colours they have used for their iPods, and now iPhone 5C evenly in there UIs. This pink colour is welcome with open arms, because it is new and refreshing. I don’t think it takes away from anything, rather the app is easier to navigate because of the bold colour choice. I think they’ve already given so much real estate to the album art it’s near impossible to outshine it. Anyways, last time I checked I didn’t stare at the album art while listen to the album – so what does it even matter?
I don’t like the change from full-screen contact photos on the call screen to a teeny circle. Looks like a terrible waste of space. Plus it feels friendlier getting a giant picture of a friend when they call you than a black screen with a tiny thumbnail.
I do like many of the other changes. But the Power Off slider looks funny to me.
See, I’m the other way around.
I much prefer the small icon…but then there’s an inconsistency with the way the images are displayed.
It’s not all black, btw, it’s actually a larger blurry version of the contacts image.
I, of course, realize it is not black. However, it isn’t a blurry version of the contacts image but a blurry version of your wallpaper. See here: http://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/01/photo-12.png
Regardless, it is a dark flat expanse of open space.
See comparison here of call screen over iOS 7 evolution: http://i.imgur.com/3JLUEUq.png
Are you talking about that screenshot above of the Steve Jobs call? Because that’s an outgoing call, not an incoming one. I’m guessing the screen is different when the call is incoming which is where you are currently seeing full-size photos.
Yes I am. Sorry. I should have noted that.
You can see the new incoming call screen here: It is your wallpaper with tiny contact bubble.
http://i.imgur.com/3JLUEUq.png
I’m sorry but I think it’s siily to run a full changes to beta software. One, next to nobody is running this their phone, and two, there is no guarantee this is what 7.1 UI wil ultimately look like. Let’s not forget beta 1 had a dark keyboard option which isn’t in beta 2 or 3. What’s the point in voting on something that may or may not be final? I guess because it’s good click bait for all the iOS 7 haters out there?
You don’t think there are people at Apple that read forums like like?
You don’t think people seeing screenshots like this might actually contact Apple and give them feedback?
…you don’t think?
iOS betas are not public. They’re not meant for the general public to critique. I’m sorry but the general public designing iOS is basically design by committee which is something Apple has never supported. My guess is most of these leaked screenshots come from non-devs who got access to the beta. Most developers would respect NDA.
Its fine. I am ok with the changes. I was ok with the current design in 7.0.4 though.
Keep it coming Apple :d
The sliders remind me of Android Froyo, but flattened. Still, I like them better than the “boxes” with no context.
I like the direction. They need to bring back the old style folders.
What was better about iOS 6 folders?
All of the tweaks are great, however I feel lost with the new ‘active shift’ state thanks to the new white coloring of the button. It’s very confusing to tell whether you are in shift mode, caps lock, or normal. The circular approach is really well done.
Mixed bag. I don’t like the smaller call button and don’t think it should match a the shape and size of the number buttons. I do like the animation of it turning to the hang up button but they could have done that with the old shape too.
I like that the ui for the number pad animats in from the button on the call screen but that dismiss button is out of place.
I hated the old power off UI but the new UI is terrible looking in a new way. Too much going on there and it doesn’t match anything else in the os. and wait, isn’t this the old lock screen paradigm???
I think the tweak most overlooked from the screen shots is the ability to call steve jobs from the great beyond.
I don’t really see the point in making the call/end buttons smaller. Just makes it harder to tap the right area. I understand they’re probably trying to make it fit better with the whole OS, but it was find before.
I may be a minority here, but I wish iOS 7 had iOS 6 UI sans Skeuomorphism. They are trying to fix things that weren’t broken. Just wasting time/money. I’m not saying iOS 7 is super ugly, but I feel it’s incomplete (specially iPad). Also, they are over using grey and whites.
There are several other important things to fix, e.g. inter-app communication, decoupling default apps (e.g. calendar, notes, browser) from core OS, improved Siri with API support, iCloud data, image search by tag, Finder for iOS…so on.
I’m in agreement here. I hope that after this the Apple “cultists” start to realize, from history and empirical evidence, that when pre-release betas start going out to developers with SUBSTANTIAL missing improvements, that we should NOT expect any such of those improvements throughout the yearly lifecycle. It didn’t happen in iOS 5, 6, or thus far in 7. And there are WAY too many “foundational” things that need to be dealt with in iOS, or it -WILL- start losing significant marketshare to Android. Google has done a pretty damn good job catching up from the INSIDE, the guts of the OS. Once they turn their attention to really polishing the outside, Apple could find themselves in a difficult spot.
Google decoupling the “default” apps in KitKat was also a HUGE move. User experience with Mail alone in both iOS and 10.9 Mavericks shows the dire need of that product to arch over OS cycles. Mail in Mavericks is just a flaming disaster. Calendar isn’t much better. People who actually USE these devices to get things done, for real, not just in commercials, need better productivity apps–better FOCUS from Apple on the productivity apps–than what they’ve gotten in the past 2 years.
I do not like the less transparent/darker folders. First time I saw iOS 7 I thought the translucent folder was a genius idea. I also think circular call button is too much circle and less practical. I was getting used to neon green theme but I see it is also going away. Changing some of the main themes in iOS 7 (colour palette and translucency) screams lack of confidence in design.
I find I’d prefer something in between these two designs, for example when someone calls me, I would like to see the photo take up the entire screen, not just a circle. However, I do prefer the layout of the buttons, with them being circles and so on. It a little disappointing to see that they are making the UI darker and some elements thicker – pulling from iOS 6. It still irks me that there is the ‘slide to power off/unlock’ text. Why not just a little line with an arrow, something graphical rather than words. They still have discrepancies in there UI, for example the icon/function of deleting something is different in each app! When will they fix that?
In the same way that the opposite of a problem is not always its solution, increasing the use of circles and curved lines is not the answer to Windows UI.
I can’t wait to see how the UI of OS X and iOS will merge this year …
It is totally wrong to judge based on a screenshot only. Think about the user experience, not just the design.
The circled call button is just killing me. It may look fancier than a previous version of it, however, it is much harder to tap it. Since this button is ALWAYS used in the Phone app, it supposed to be larger than just a circle.
Seriously, the 7.0 calling screen is ok, it looks and feels coherent. Why on earth they decided to make more circles? It would be better if they made Airdrop compatible with OS X.
there are so many things they could have done than this. Never thought the new phone ui was a problem since launch. the beta for 7 was, but not what they shipped. No Idea why they are fussing with this now.
Yes, I like the tweaks a great deal, especially power down and those changes related to the phone app, i.e., the slider for answering a call. The “old” slider seemed to be problematic in function.
It’s progress, but I still don’t think that iOS should be limited by Jony Ive’s ability to draw good. By eliminating rounding and shading, and removing icons that look like the things they represent, he is decreasing the amount of visual information and making it harder on the user.
Jony is designing software UIs as if they were hardware. They aren’t. Making things barely visible is good for hardware and bad for software. He needs to take a course in software UI development. Any book on web development will contain tools to help him select color combinations. Walk-into-the-Light White, Invisible-Ink Blue, Prostitute Pink, Eye-Scratching Green, and Ultra-Faint Gray are not good choices. He fails to take into account that projected (screen) and reflected (hardware) have different effects. He also contrasts colors that don’t contrast (such as on the return to call button).
iOS 7 has a long way to go before it matches the beauty and utility of iOS 6.
Meanwhile, Calendar and Address Book in Mavericks have the same invisible UI as iOS 7. Not good. If OS X 10.10 Renegades (or whatever it’s called) follows this trend, the adoption rate will be slow.
I DO.
Most of them are so slight it’s hard to hate or like them.
The new “slide to power down” one is just hideous though. What were they thinking?
The new shift button is driving me insane now. It’s so hard to tell if it’s caps or not or even if caps lock is on. No question in iOS 6.
agreed i struggled for 30 seconds then i got it and all was well, hate those little bits off the unknown
All I want is for the dialer to be upgraded. I want to be able to type in someone’s name on the key pad have it pop up and then hit call. There is 1 to many steps to call someone outside of recents. Flip phones can do it…
Contacts>scroll to person’s name and tap>tap number to call.
If that’s too difficult or too many steps, you shouldn’t have a phone.
All I want is the wallpaper in the top right corner, anyone have a link to it? :^)
I’m all against circular button for the call interface
It should be rounded at the sides and full width, like the power off shape
What i really want to know is how many
went into comming up with this UI change and whether apple could have brought something more substantial that actually bettered users’s expereince of iOS..
The green icons are too dark now, if anything all the gradients are too harsh and need to be more subtle, i cannot stop looking at the call and text buttons which look like they don’t match next to icons like safari etc.
i don’t think i like reduce white point, i mean its a start but if they can pull off a auto dark theme like in “tweetbot” or “digg” app i would love it. Dark theme is one think after i started using it in tweetbot i can’t get over how useful it is
Hideous. Less so than 7.0, but still what i expect a chinese knockoff to resemble.
Ironic that they took away the ‘slide to unlock’ slider from the lock screen in 7.0, but are now adding it to the ‘power off’ screen in 7.1. I’d like to see it return to the lock screen, too.
I for one, can’t not wait to use it on my Galaxy Note 3.
sorry to tell you but you actually just stamped the paper saying android is a copy of iOS -_-
I want to see a few of things:
1) The return of the shuffle, repeat and repeat-1 icons in the Music player in place of the text-based buttons. This change in iOS 7.1 is a step in the right direction, but the icons are still better.
2) The return of the AirPlay icon button in the music player without having to use Control Center (put it next to the volume control like they do with the video player).
3) Consistent use of the Trash icon for deleting messages in the Mail app and across all apps. Sometimes we see the word “Trash” and sometimes we get the trash icon. Use the icon 100% of the time in 100% of Apple apps.
me likey…just bring back the old folders.
The keyboard not only looks different and is easier to type on imo, but also works differently in terms of capitalizing and switching between letters and numbers. Over all I like it more. STILL wish they would have brought back the ‘dark keyboard’ though.
keep tweaking its called progress
Why can’t we just have styling options?
I love the new circular call buttons, the power button is the best of all.
Yep, love the changes!
I’ve long evangelized for the use of round buttons. Our fingertips are round, not rounded rects. For the most part, I approve of Apple’s direction here. HOWEVER, they display a definite failure to really understand UI when the make all the buttons the same size! The answer and hangup buttons should be larger, as they are the primary button users will be aiming for MOST of the time with either left or right hands. Getting there, but not their yet.
Also, in several of the screen shots above, I really had a difficult time choosing the newer design iteration, even though I generally agreed with the direction. For instance, in the iTunes Store and Music apps the new “Buttons” (History, Repeat/Shuffle) just look wrong. The side spacing is too thin, and it looks “off”. Poor design (I much preferred the use of parentheses in the leaked WebOS designs recently hitting the web). Also, the word spacing in the description paragraph in the Text Size Setting…what are they POSSIBLY thinking leaving “below.” orphaned like that in a center-justifed block of text?!? Really, who is overseeing the actual “design” of this stuff and misses something so egregiously ugly?
I still really don’t get the feeling that a “professional” designer is leading this effort. It all feels way too “Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO and Logo Designer Extraordinaire” to me. Are we looking at some attempt at a “bobo amateur-design-mistake chic” movement coming from Apple? I’d hope not; because if they start injecting Tekton into iOS, I will lose my shit.
not as good as my jailbreak on ios7
One thing I’d really like to see, and I may be the only one because I’ve never seen it mentioned, but I’d like to see a proper built in graphic equalizer similar to the equalizer apps you can download. I downloaded one a few years ago and have never used the built in music player app since. The only time I use the built in one is if I want to play music I bought more than a few years ago and is DRM. The equalizer apps won’t play those albums. But the built in music player app with it’s preprogrammed settings are useless. At least for me. I like deep lows, high highs, and low mid. There’s no programmed settings that give me the kind of sound I can get from “Equalizer”. Anyone else think the same thing?
iOS 7.1 beta 3
Something missing from your screenshots, if you are on a call hit the top button on the iPhone so the screen goes black, then hit the home button to bring the screen back up, and the “chat head” of the person you are talking to will show up on the screen
A step in the right direction but not enough.
IMHO: IOS sucks. I see it as childish and difficult to view. An image more suited for children in the nursery school, not a premium product in the board room. Personally, I’m not using it until it gets a more professional image.
But that’s just me. My opinion.
My $200 Samsung phone issued by my employer lets me pick the colours, grey scale etc etc on most of the main apps. Surely that’s what Apple needs to give us? – more room to customise to our own (personal) tastes.
I like everything better except for the small “Call” and “Hangup” buttons in the phone app. I actually like having the larger button.
No they really need to blow up iOS 7 And bring back good old Scott Forstall and Richard Williamson. Forstall was the best and #1 IOS designer and they need him back or they are just going to collapse the IOS for good. and Forestall I would have made CEO.
AG!!!!!! he is such a G!
Please tell me if this a BUG or not. I have reset two phones because of this issue…
‘Playing’ songs that are already on the tablet with iCloud… I thought I was just streaming until every time I would ‘play’ a video or song, it would take up “OTHER” space. Since they weren’t downloaded, I couldn’t delete them. My “Other” space when I connected the device to iTunes would show over 6 GB it was crazy.
What is going on with this? I know I can have the show video/music off, but I would LOVE to be able to stream it and use iTunes Match.
I can play 4 songs and the available useage would go down from 10.0-9.9. I did a test after resetting.
I would like to understand this. I don’t want to download the songs. My phone is 16gb. Even playing a movie to the end, it still takes up space.
It seems like a cache issue. Is there a way to delete the folder or something?
I like it
All for beauty in design but before all that, how about an iOS that doesn’t randomly reboot my iPad Air practically every day? Stability used to be a hallmark of iOS, now it seems an afterthought.
calling steve jobs, really?
Need more improvements ios 6 was faster than ios 7 on my iphone.
they have to add location services and mobile data to the control center for a quick access with out those control center is useless., doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t think anyone has noticed on ios7 with an iPhone5 that when you text… while it’s sending if you try to switch from landscape to portrait or viceversa it’s really laggy. BUT I discovered something to speed it up a bit.. when you increase contrast, that laggy switch goes away.
Also I don’t see the point of “Set and Scale” of the iOS when all you can do is go from normal size to big size only. There is a lack of flexibility with that and I think they should fix it. When setting up photos for contacts, instead of just putting the picture as it is, they automatically zoom the hell out of it making the contact picture way too zoomed in. It’s ugly.
I really like the purplish nebula Wallpaper in the comparisons, is that included in iOS 7.1?
Yes
I am happy with everything so far, with one exception… Why is the “Slide to unlock” in a dark black font after update to 7.1. It looks weird, as if something went wrong during the update. Anyone else have an issue with this?
Same issue here. Ugly has heck!
Until Apple decides to innovate and do what no one else is doing, by giving us options to change the them back to the UI of Ios 6, or they do it on their own… I will stick with my Iphone 3GS until it dies and buy another brand in protest.
Speaking about the user interface alone, there is nothing I like about the iOS 7. Give me the look of the iOS 6 and the advanced technology of the iPhone 5s… Or give me the ability to alter the user interface and I will make the interface into something I would want to spend my hard earned cash on.
with kontrast stronger, but no white fadin’ to grey, still wite and the brightness maybe 75%, and of course stronger letters.. maybe a tipp the Auto-Brightness leave better off, cause then ju have allways a brilliant display if not doing so its u’re irretating swimming screen