Commentary: We still want these four iPhone features. Many of them have been on Android for years.
Apple showed off a preview of the developer beta of iOS 16 at WWDC 2022. The iPhone update brings a lot of changes. But despite numerous upcoming features, there are several things that we see on other Apple products and Android phones that don’t appear to be coming to iOS.
I don’t mean to discount the good highlights, like the new customizable lock screens, the ability to edit and unsend iMessage texts and the Apple Maps makeover, among many others. But a few of these features that the iPhone still doesn’t include aren’t new at all and are pretty easy to find when you look just beyond the devices that Apple makes.
What We Wanted: Always-on display
What We Got: It might be in the code
Many Android phones have included an always-on display over the past decade, which takes advantage of OLED screens by only lighting up the necessary pixels to show glanceable information like the time and some notifications. Even though Apple has been using OLED screens since 2017’s iPhone X, there hasn’t yet been implementation of this type of lock screen in iOS.
That could change though as according to a 9to5Mac report, the operating system makes multiple references to an always-on display within its code. While a code reference is far from any kind of confirmation that the feature is in active development, it’s possible that Apple is considering the feature in a future device.
What We Wanted: Better texting to non-iPhones
What We Got: A group texting improvement
Apple’s iMessage in iOS 16 is gaining the ability to edit and recall messages that haven’t already been viewed, but these enhancements are still largely iPhone-only features that aren’t advancing the overall state of text messaging within the phone industry. When it comes to texting any other phone that isn’t an iPhone, iOS still falls back to the decades-old SMS standard which lacks conveniences like typing indicators and smoother group texting.
While Google has been getting phone carriers to support the RCS standard that includes these features — admittedly over the course of several years with setbacks — the standard currently remains Android-only with Google claiming that they would be happy to work with Apple for interoperability.
The chances of that appear as bleak as ever, but there is some hope for group chats between the iPhone and Android phones. iOS 16 is adding support for message reactions sent over SMS, which currently arrive as a series of messages about how a person “Liked” or “Loved” a message.
Instead, the Messages app will now translate these into the appropriate icon, much like how it already does this when every participant in the group chat uses an iPhone. Google recently added a similar feature into its Messages app, translating iPhone reactions in the same way. This move isn’t going to massively improve these group chats, but as a convenience I’ll take it.