iOS 15 – First Impressions and Review

The 15th generation of the operating system that Apple uses for their tablets and phones is now available to download! It is called iOS 15. With many new features, I am excited to review it and share my first impressions for it.

iOS 15 became available to the public on the 20th of September, at 16:00 British Time. I was so excited to download it, as I am with every new release. I downloaded it and…

1. First Impressions

I was immediately greeted with new notification banner styles! That was the very first thing that I saw when I updated. Upon unlocking my phone, I saw that the “Maps” and “Weather” icons were slightly modified to look more original. I didn’t lose any data after upgrading, which was a relief.

The Weather application was the first one that I opened, and it had a makeover. For my city, there were a lot of new features added, such as a map with heat levels, and a UV Index that was actively changing. I really loved the fact that the information was all sorted in separated squares with rounded corners. It made it feel a bit more informal and “cozy”. Kudos.

After that, I wanted to see if my Apple Pay was working. It did, which also made me feel relief, as I did not want to sign up for things again, as with my bank it takes extra steps to make Apple Pay work. There was a slight change in the Wallet app. All transactions had icons to their left, showing what was the type of store you bought something from. Also pretty kudos. I had to do a lot of things, so calling the bank wouldn’t be able to happen anyways. I pay for food with my Apple Pay, so it was kind of a necessity for it to work.

Apple briefly mentioned that they made a very significant change in their Maps app, so I went there too. My country was not supported for the new 3D models, and accurate highways, so I went to the highway next to Apple Park (not in real life) and was amazed. All of the markings were shown on the highway and it was pretty cool. I am also giving a lot of kudos to that, as well.

The Settings app now has rounded buttons, and has updated some of its setting icons. That’s also very kudos. I saw, that there was a new Safari layout. I wanted to see what it was. It looked a bit weird, but it was cool. I like it now. It is really intuitive and it reminds me of the Internet Explorer in the Windows 8.1 RT Start Screen. It also ran faster, which was good. I like it, kudos. I need to stop saying that.

FaceTime is now compatible with Android phones, well, not quite. You can now create a link, which you can share to either iPhone users, alokinOS users, Android Users and Windows Users. You can now meet them all, without the hassle, and no matter of the phones. That is really good. There are also some new video features, such as Background Blur and more. As of audio, there are three new features: Spatial Audio, Noise Cancellation and more. These are very cool features and are a really nice touch and a great addition to the iPhone. I also really like these features.

Compatibility wise, iOS 15 is supported by: iPhone SE 1 & 2, iPhone 6S and 6S Plus or newer.

2. Bugs

Since this is the first version, there were some bugs. The first one was with YouTube. Some of the buttons weren’t responsive, so I could barely load any videos. That kinda sucked, as I needed to see one, and the website was very bad. I also couldn’t open apps like Pinterest or Whatsapp, and games such as osu!. I was either greeted with the “App not available” message or was left on a black screen for 1 minute and kicked out of the app. I think the issue will clear up soon, though. These were all the issues I encountered.

3. Review

The alokinRate system is used to deliver accurate results. Every category will be rated from 0 to 100.

Simplicity: 95 / 100

Performance: 90/100

Ecosystem: 95 /100

Quality: 95/100

Overall: 94 / 100 – Spectacular!

Thank you for reading! I wish you a very good day! Goodbye for now!

Sources: Apple, 9to5Mac.com