iPhone 6 and iOS 8: 16 hidden features

With the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus comes a brand new mobile operating system, iOS 8, available to download for older devices from today. Currently, iOS is one of the most popular operating systems in the world, playing second fiddle only to Android. Now upgraded to include a raft of new features, Apple will be hoping that the updated system will help in closing this gap. Here are some of the features that might not be immediately obvious, but could certainly help their cause.

1) ‘Send Last Location’ setting

A Send Last Location feature has been added to Find my iPhone so that your GPS coordinates are backed up to iCloud whenever your battery life is close to running out.

Just before the battery shuts down, the last thing the device does is pinpoint exactly where you left it, so there’ll be no need to turn the house upside down for your phone when it’s sitting pretty in the office.

2) Detailed battery usage breakdown

Is Kim Kardashian (or more specifically, her mobile game) responsible for running down your battery life? A new option in the usage menu under Settings will be able to tell you; it provides a breakdown of how much battery each app has used in the last 24 hours or seven days.

3) Leave Group Conversation option

Good news for those with already quite enough Whatsapp and Facebook group messages to contend with. Under Details in a group conversation on iMessage, there’s now the option to exit the conversation. Alternatively, if you’re not watching the same programme your friends are live messaging and fancy a little respite, you can also select the Do Not Disturb option to stay in the conversation, but silence it.

4) Grayscale mode

A little ostentatious perhaps, but for anyone interested in giving their device a vintage twist, the Accessibility menu now offers a ‘grayscale’ option, that gives the entire operating system a black and white hue.

5) Reply to messages without changing screens

Previously, if you were using an app and received a text message, you’d need to exit the screen you were on in order to reply. iOS8 eliminates this irritating feature; simply swipe down on the banner that appears when a message comes through, and enter a quick response without leaving the screen.

6) Self-destructing photos

Apple appears to have taken a leaf out of Snapchat’s book with this new feature. When using iOS 8’s messages app, holding down on the camera icon opens the camera app, and any pictures or videos sent from here will self-destruct two minutes after being sent.

7) Send multiple pictures at a time

If you tap on the keyboard’s camera icon, a preview of up to 20 recent photos comes up, giving you the option to easily choose multiple photos at the same time.

8) View all attachments from a conversation without scrolling up

Instead of having to scroll back through eons of messages to relocate a photo or video previously sent by a friend, with iOS 8, you can go to a ‘Details’ icon and scroll down to view all of the attachments that any conversations has garnered.

Press down on the attachment, and you can choose to either save or delete them too. This should save photos automatically cluttering your photo stream.

9) Share your location in Messages

iOS8 allows users to share their location directly through Messages. Under Details, you can choose the option to ‘Send My Current Location’, and a mapped image will be sent to the recipient – useful for when your friend asks where to meet you.

10) Faster access to contacts

Double tapping the home button will result in your most contacted people appearing as a line of icons. Clicking on one of the faces will provide you with the option to call, chat or FaceTime this contact.

11) Upgraded Mail

With iOS 8 comes gesture based message manipulation in the Mail app. Now, users will be able to swipe to the left to reply to a message or delete a flag, or, with a harder swipe, delete the message altogether.

12) Keyboard enhancements

The new iOS 8 software sees Apple upgrade its keyboard for the first time. It now offers context-sensitive predictive typing, which claims to pick up on how you write, and subsequently provide a list of words to make texting a lot faster.

Apple claims that this feature is sensitive enough to decipher who exactly you are talking with and adjust the suggestions accordingly, so should, in theory, be able to pick up on the differences when texting your boss, as opposed to your best friend.

13) Siri listens at all times

Not as creepy as this might suggest; Apple has upgraded Siri to listen constantly in order for it to be activated simply by you saying ‘Hey Siri’, and without the need to touch the home button.

14) Siri and Shazam have integrated

Siri will now be able to recognise songs being played in the vicinity, eliminating the need to open the Shazam app used for the same purpose. You will then be able to purchase songs from the results screen.

15) Quick access to apps according to your location

Apple has built subtle notifications into the lock screen, based on location, so that if you’re near to a particular shop or business, a tiny icon for this business will appear. If you pull this up, you’ll be automatically transported into the relevant app.

16) Easily recover deleted photos

In iOS 8, when the preview icon at the bottom of the screen in the camera app is tapped, it opens up a view that allows you to recover deleted photos. To clear this menu, you can simply empty the ‘Recently Deleted’ album in the Photos app.

Micromax Canvas Spark Review

Since a year or so Micromax has faced heavy competition from Chinese phone manufacturers but recently the Indian company has tried to turn things around and has been able to do so with the YU brand. While the YU brand and many other players tussle it out near the 7K price mark, Micromax has launched the Micromax Canvas Spark. The Spark tries to please the loyal customer base for whom the budget is much more important than performance. 

There have been cheaper phones in the past and to be very blunt, in our experience, smartphones under the 5K mark are not well equipped to handle resource intensive tasks. Thus, it is quite conventional to presume that at a price of Rs. 4,999, Micromax may have compromised on performance and quality. Thus, we tried to find how much of a smartphone you can get at this price.

Design & build: A smaller YU Yureka
The Micromax Canvas Spark touches all the right notes from a design perspective. The curved back, tactile and easy to reach button layout and a side trim with a metal finish which makes the phone look upmarket. I even liked the soft touch matte-ish plastic back. All these elements remind me of the Yu Yureka. However, I don’t like the unlit navigation keys which required some getting used to.

The phone has a plastic build and even though it may not be as robust as Microsoft’s Asha range of phones, it is satisfactory for the price. The use of Gorilla Glass 3 adds some confidence but the glass which covers the camera lens on the back will scratch eventually since it sitts flush against the surface and not in a protective depression. Overall, the Micromax Canvas Spark ticks almost all check marks I expect from a budget offering in the design and build segment.

Display & UI: Satisfactory for the price
The Micromax Canvas Spark is a budget smartphone and therefore I was expecting an average display and I was quite right. Sunlight legibility is poor and touch performance is not upto the mark. Saying that, the 4.7-inch 960 x 540p display is still good enough for the price. It offers decent colour reproduction and minimal colour shift but I believe Micromax could have done better.

On the UI part Micromax has stuck with the basics. The device runs Android Lollipop out of the box making it the first budget phone to do so. Micromax hasn't fiddled much with the stock Android UI and the phone’s UI looks blissfully spartan. However, the long press to multitask gesture is not well implemented and I often found myself on the ‘screen settings menu’ instead of the multitask drawer.

Performance: the average student
The budget phone is rather underpowered when compared to the 7K contenders. While it is powerful enough to tackle daily tasks, it often exhibits lag when you try to open multiple webpages. Same goes with performance intensive tasks like games which work for the most part with an occasional lag during gameplay. Needless to say graphic capabilities are not that ground-breaking either. As you can see below, the Micromax Canvas Spark settles considerably below the 7K budget segment smartphones in synthetic benchmarks.