iOS 14.4 is Out - What's New? By zollotech

Hi, everyone. Aaron here for Zollotech and today Apple released iOS 14.4 to the public. That means that it's available at the same time, everywhere around the world on all supported devices. So if you have an iPhone six S or an iPhone se all the way up to the iPhone, 12 pro max, you should have that update available. Now, if you're not seeing it, you want to go to your settings, go to general then software update, and you should see the update. If you're not seeing it there, tap on automatic updates and turn off, download iOS updates, and then check again for the update.

You should see it there. And so once you go ahead and check again, you should see it, and it will be a fairly large size as this is a big update from 14.3, for example, and depending on which version you're coming from, it could be as large as five gigabytes. So on my iPhone 12 pro max, it was over four gigabytes, but it can vary depending on device. Now let's go ahead and take a look at it. What's new now I'm running iOS 14.4 on my iPhone, 12 pro max, the iPhone 11 pro max, my iPhone 11, an iPhone six S plus Apple also released iPadOS 14.4. I'm using that on my iPad pro 12.9 from 2020. They released watchOS 7.3, HomePod OS 14.4, tvOS 14.4. And we're still waiting for MacOS 11.2, but either way, there's a ton of updates. And if you have any of the supported devices, you'll be able to install it right away.

Now, if you're a beta tester and you want to make sure you're on the final version, all you'll need to do is remove the beta profile that can be done under settings general, and then scroll down, tap on profile and remove the profile. If you're a beta tester or developer, you'll have this. And if you don't want to get any more future beta updates, remove it. And you're good to go reboot, and you'll be on the final version. You just had it early.

If you already updated to iOS 14.4 RC. Now let's take a look at the build number and then talk about what's new. So if we go to settings, then we go to general than about, you'll see the build number is 18D52. This is the final version of iOS 14.4 released to the public. And so that build number, lets us know which version we're actually on.

Now, there is a modem update in this particular update. So that means if you were having connectivity issues and you were on an iPhone 12 pro max, for example, and you're coming from iOS 14.3, you should have a modem update which should help with connectivity. Whether that be with 5g or 4g, you may not have it on all of the older devices though. It just depends. Apple released them on some devices.

Now the first new feature has to do with QR codes. So now we've had the ability to scan QR codes, using our camera for quite some time. But Apple is now giving us the ability to scan smaller QR codes. So if you just bring your camera in front of a QR code to tap on whatever link it opens up, you can open that link. They've given us the ability to scan much smaller QR codes.

I haven't seen really tiny ones myself, but we now have that ability. Now the next thing I think a lot of people will appreciate and it has to do with what's via Bluetooth and volume. Now there's a newer feature that we've had for a little while under settings sound in haptics and headphones safety that will sort of notify us or adjust the volume based on when there's a loud sound to make sure that our ears are not getting blasted with super loud noise and damaging them. So in order to combat this, Apple's brought in this headphone safety feature. However, when you're in a car and you're using music through a stereo, or maybe you're using say a hearing aid, you don't want those volumes to change because you set it differently than you would if you were using headphones.

So they've added a feature under Bluetooth in your settings. So if you go to settings, Bluetooth, and then you select an accessory, so a car, for example, you'll see device type at the top. Now, if you'd have on device type, you'll have the option to select from car stereo, headphone hearing aid, speaker, or other. And so if it's an air pod, for example, it will know that it's a headphone, but for a car, for example, car stereo, you want it to classify that. So it doesn't adjust the volume based on it, thinking you're using headphones for example.

So this should really help with that feature overall, if you're not able to disable it in the headphones and safety feature, or if you just want to use it and make sure it's working properly. So I'm glad that they've added that. Now the next feature is specific to the iPhone 12 series phones. So the iPhone 12 mini the iPhone 12, the iPhone 12 pro and the iPhone 12 pro max they've now given a notification, if your camera module is not original or not an Apple camera module, now, I'm not sure if this has to do with the aftermarket sort of refurbishing of iPhones. But right now, if you try and swap a camera from say an iPhone 12 pro to an iPhone 12 pro max, or, or just a similar phone, it won't allow you to do it.

So Apple will now give you a notification. If it's not a genuine camera. Now we saw this with batteries. So they're letting you know, it's not a genuine battery. However, with cameras, I'm not sure why they're doing this, but it's just something that they've changed and it will give you a notification.

If you have that. Now, now the next feature has to do with home pod. And if you have a home pod mini, for example, and you update it to HomePod OS 14.4, you'll now have the option in a U one equipped iPhone for it to actually transfer just by being near the home pod, transferring your music for example. So on the iPhone, you can see already it's bringing down home pod mini, right? I have a home pod here as I bring my phone closer to it. It vibrates more and more as I get closer and then jumps the song to the home pod.

And so it's a really great way to transfer music from your phone to a home pod, but it only works on you. One chip equipped iPhone. So basically the iPhone 11 series and 12 series where they have a directional chip in them to allow it to see this. So this works really well. And as I bring the home pod away, it goes away, bring it close.

It comes closer and then gives you more information about the music at the top. So you'll see right here, it says home pod mini, right? And then it's got information about the song. And again, as I bring it close, you'll see it flash. And then it jumps. So we have that as an option.

Now that works with phone calls as well. And it's a great way to transfer music instead of just tapping the home button. So as you get close, I think you'll enjoy it. Once you get a chance to use it now, to go along with music, if you have AirPods, max, they've added the ability to use Siri by using the word Hey, in front of it, and then you can activate it. So I tested this by actually putting my iPhone down.

Then I went into another room with my AirPods. Max on playing music, went into another room, shut the door, and then actually said, Hey, and then Siri activated. I asked for what the weather was. It responded and gave me the weather information. So it works now with AirPods max, it worked prior to this with AirPods pro for example, but now you can use, Hey, and then your keyword and you'll get a response.

So there's not really a audio response. You just have to ask a question and Siri will respond. So that's been added to iOS 14.4. Now the next new feature has to do with exposure notifications. If you're in a local area that has exposure notifications and you have one of the apps installed that enables it.

You can go into your settings now and then go to exposure notifications, tap on the app here and then tap on it again. And you'll see, we now have a new option for automatically notify others. It says your public health authority can ask you for one time access to your random ideas. If you're diagnosed and positive, this will allow them to notify others who have been exposed. So these notifications don't identify you.

And this has to be enabled you. Don't just have it enabled by default. So if you install one of those apps and you enable exposure notifications, then you'll have the option. Otherwise it won't be here at all, but it's something nice that they've put into this update to help others around you. Now, the next thing has to do with tracking or anti-tracking, I should say now in all of the betas and the release candidate version or GM version of this update, there was the ability to have anti-trafficking features in iOS 14, that Apple talked about earlier on that apparently is here.

Whether or not they enable it, they haven't said, but that feature is here. And basically it stops things like Facebook or Instagram from actually tracking you across different websites. And here's what the notification looks like. So you don't have to allow this, but you now have the option to, and so if you'd like better privacy, less access to what you're doing on your phone, this will keep you, keep you protected and keep everything private. So they've added this.

Hopefully we'll see it enabled everywhere soon. So as far as new features, that's everything they've mentioned and a few that they haven't so far, I'm not aware of PS five support, as far as the controllers or Xbox series X controller support, some have gotten the PS five controllers working supposedly, but they have not officially added the controller support. So it may be in a future update. Also many people wanted to know if they've resolved the green tint issue that some people have on iPhone 12 series. I've only seen it on one phone out of about nine that I've looked at.

And what that means is if we go into this is sent to me by someone named Juri on Twitter friend here, you'll see there's a little bit of a green tint to the display, uncertain situations in certain darknesses or brightnesses. So some phones have this iPhone 11 series phones had this last year and they fixed it via software. I would expect them to do the same. They just have not addressed it in this update, according to Apple. So it's not anywhere to be found in the documentation, nor does it seem to be fixed.

So hopefully they'll fix that in a future update very soon now, as far as what they've actually fixed, though, that they have talked about, the first thing has to do with the iPhone 12 pro specifically, they did not say 12, 12 pro max. They just say 12. And that has to do with image artifacts, appearing in HDR photos. So if you take a photo, you have HDR enabled. Maybe you take a photo like this, you had some artifacts in here, things that just didn't look right, that should be resolved in this particular update.

So you shouldn't see those anymore. If you were seeing those prior to this. Now the next thing that they've fixed has to do with the fitness widget. So if you're using your iPhone with an Apple watch, and then you're using the fitness widget before this update, sometimes the activity data was not updated properly. So now it should be updated in real time or close to real-time with all the accurate information.

We had this issue a little bit with other widgets prior to this update, they fixed them in previous updates. Now they've fixed the fitness widget. Now the next thing they fixed, I think a lot of people who have been looking forward to, and that is the lag with the keyboard. So if we go into notes and I type, hi, how are you today? You'll see that the keyboard was nice and fast. It also gave me suggestions, which won't work working 100% all of the time before now this is fixed and the keyboard should no longer lag, not just in notes, but throughout the S including messages.

So if you had issues in messages, they'll now work properly, there shouldn't be keyboard lag anymore. So that's a great thing to see. And they've also fixed the issue where when you're in messages and you have multiple languages enabled the language that you're using may not show up properly. It may switch to a different language. So now that should be fixed.

So if you're using English, it should show up English if you're using Spanish, Spanish and so on. Now, the next thing has to do with the news app using CarPlay, if you're using news plus, and you have the audio stories enabled, and maybe you're trying to listen to one of these stories, it will now work properly after you've been given spoken directions or use Siri before it might not resume. It would sort of just pause and hang there. You'd have to start it yourself again. Now it should resolve or resume properly unlike before.

And then finally, the last thing that they've mentioned that they've fixed has to do with switch control and accessibility. So if you go to your settings and you go to accessibility and maybe you're using switch control prior to this update, switch control may prevent phone calls from being answered when you're on the lock screen, if you had this enabled. So if you have switched control enabled, and you're using it, it may give you some errors. Now it shouldn't. So it should work properly.

We'll turn that off, but it should work properly now. And you should be able to answer calls like you could before. Now, also in this, there are security updates. So there's a bunch of security updates that should make your phone more secure and fix any known problems. I'll link those in the description.

If you want to check out all the different security updates and they have CVE numbers, which you can check out and see exactly what they've fixed now with the iPad with iPad iOS 14.4, Apple has only fixed a couple of things and added a couple of features. The only things that they've mentioned are the option to actually recognize those small QR codes with the camera, as well as classified Bluetooth for audio issues. So those are the only two things they've mentioned with the iPad that they've updated as well as fixed the issues with the keyboard that we had on I-phones as well. Now, prior to this using iOS 14.3, an iPad has 14.3 battery life on my iPad was not great. It seems to be better.

I don't know that it's a hundred percent back to where it was before, say 14.3, but right now it seems to be better. And yesterday I used it a couple hours and it went down quite a bit. So in standby, it seems to be using a lot of power on the iPad still. I'm not sure why that is. I did use it for a lot of YouTube, but you'll see two hours and 41 minutes of screen on time, an hour and 10 minutes of screen off time yesterday.

And the battery is way down to 31% and it was plugged in. So this update while I have seen good battery life, I think it's an app using it, but on the iPhone battery life has been pretty good. So let's take a look at it. Under settings, we'll go to battery here. And my battery health is 100% updates.

Don't affect the battery health. They're just rechecking the actual physical battery capacity or capability after the update. So you may see that number adjust. I wouldn't worry about it. It just adjusts as needed, but yesterday I didn't use it too much, but you'll see.

Two days ago I had five hours and two minutes of screen on time, a one hour and three minutes of screen off time and use 50% of my battery. This puts us right back up to what we would expect 10 to 12 hours with the iPhone 12 pro max. And so I've had really good battery. By the time I go to bed, I have 50% left. I've been using it all day, usually, and have no issues.

So I'm really happy with this update, at least on my iPhone. And I've seen a lot of people in the initial beta updates that have been using this say the same thing that most of the battery issues they were having were fixed. So that's great to see now performance is good as well. Even on the older devices, such as the iPhone success, plus performance seems to be fine. Scrolling is nice and smooth going into different apps.

So we'll wait for music to load here once everything's loaded. It's nice and smooth. If we go into say, you'll see, there was a little bit of lag, but the camera seems to be fine. Snapping a picture is fast. So it really shouldn't be any different than 14.3 as far as performance. And that's true on all of these devices.

So whether that be the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 pro max, iPhone 12, or an older phone, like the iPhone success plus or iPhone SE now, should you install iOS 14.4? I would say absolutely. At this point, it's definitely something that I always recommend for security updates, a few additional features and bug fixes, especially that keyboard lag that people were having. There will be more fixes in the future. No software is perfect, but at this point with the battery fixes that most people are seeing over 14.3. I would definitely recommend it.

Now, if you're looking for future updates, such as iOS 14.4 0.1 or 14.5, whatever Apple decides to do, we should see those updates within a day or so. Usually Apple pushes out early beta testing versions very quickly after the public releases. So of course, I'll keep you updated as soon as we see that, but we're not sure exactly what they're going to do as far as version number, because this time, last year, Apple pushed out iOS 13.4, but not until March. So we're in a little bit different territory here, but I'm glad to see they're pushing out fixes quickly and hopefully we'll get one for the green tint, as well as I know, some people are not really liking the yellow tint that they're seeing on their iPhones. The yellow tint really is just the phone being more accurate as far as I can tell, generally, when you color calibrated display, it seems to be a little bit more accurate, but as you can see next to the 11 pro max, the whites do look a little bit different.

They look a little warmer on the 12 Promax and I would like the ability to at least shift to that a little bit more than you can do already. So maybe we'll see something in the future about that, but Apple has not addressed it with this one either. So that's it for iOS 14.4. Now, after a couple of days, I am seeing that lag again. So when you're going to close apps, sometimes it will lag you swipe up.

It closes the app, but sometimes it stutters a little bit along the way. So hopefully they'll address that in future updates. For some reason, that's still present. Some people have it, some don't. So hopefully Apple can fix it as it's sort of an intermittent problem that some people are seeing, but that's it for iOS 14.4. Hopefully we'll see some new updates fairly soon for beta testers.

And of course, I'll keep you updated as soon as those are released. If you'd like to get your hands on this wallpaper, of course I'll link it in the description like I normally do. And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like, as always. Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next time.

Source : zollotech