How is ios 7 different

Pocket-lint is supported by its readers. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. Pocket-lint - Apple announced two new iPhones at an event in September, comprising the iPhone 7 and the larger iPhone 7 Plus.

In previous years, the two iPhones - the standard and the Plus - have been almost identical aside from their physical size and the inclusion of optical image stabilisation on one and not the other, but this year the difference is, well, different. Which iPhone 7 model should you choose? Here is how the standard iPhone 7 compares to the iPhone 7 Plus and what that difference now is.

The Apple iPhone 7 measures As you would expect, the standard iPhone 7 is, therefore, smaller and lighter than the Plus. They both see the antenna bands on the rear move to just the top and bottom for a cleaner look than their predecessors, and they both see the removal of the headphone jack. Both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have stereo speakers on board, and they both add IP67 water and dust proofing to their builds.

Where these two differ in terms of design other than size, is the iPhone 7 has a singular lens on the rear, while the iPhone 7 Plus has a dual camera setup - more on that in a minute. Apps that haven't been designed for iOS 7 yet are going to look a little bit odd compared to the stark new Apple apps. The lock screen benefits from a parallax effect: move your phone and your wallpaper appears to move.

Where the iOS 6 lock screen has two swipeable bits for unlocking your device or launching the Camera app, iOS 7 has four: unlocking, Camera, and two new swipes: swiping down from the top of the screen to see notifications, and swiping up from the bottom to bring up Control Center. Speaking of which It also provides media playback controls, Airdrop file sharing, and quick access to the phone's LED light and the Clock, Calculator and Camera apps.

Notifications have been given a major revamp: there are now three sections swipeable left to right headed Today, All and Missed. Today tells you what's on your schedule and includes cute details such as "it would take you about 9 minutes to drive home right now" and a summary of the weather forecast. All collates notifications of app updates, messages and so on, and as you might expect Missed tracks notifications of missed calls and notifications you didn't deal with.

You can customise which apps can access Notifications in the Settings app. Apple's iOS 7 gave the mobile operating system a radical new look as well as some first-for-Apple features for iPhone and iPad fans, like quick-access system controls and notifications, automatic app updates, Apple's AirDrop file-sharing system, and the excellent iTunes Radio streaming music app. The visual overhaul is a clean sweep that changes absolutely everything, from the typography and color schemes to multitasking and the typical icon and button shape across the entire platform.

And we mean the whole thing -- from the Safari browser to the photo app, and even the design of the system settings screens. While there are a few notable new features in iOS 7, the revamped interface is by far the most deeply felt and most profoundly changed of the batch. Apple's other new features do little to innovate beyond what competitors already have done, but make many everyday smartphone actions easier, and -- once people get used to the new look -- should breathe new life into a once-"stale" OS.

With the release of iOS 7. I've added the info to the appropriate sections in this review. Design By far, the most notable change to iOS 7 is the overall look.

Gone are the skeuomorphic interface elements that make icons and apps look like leather or paper or felt. Gone, too, are the 3D bubble-shaped icon effects. Flat graphics and a dappled, pastel color scheme bring an elegant look. New zooming animations feel sleek as you open and close apps. When you move your phone or tablet, 3D parallax effects make your wallpaper appear some distance behind the icons.

The design takes some getting used to, and not everyone will agree, but I like it. It makes my iPhone feel new and -- like a new wristwatch -- makes me want to keep looking at it. One thing to note is that some people have complained that the new interface zooming features make you feel dizzy. I haven't experienced it, but it's easy to turn off. This will replace the zooming effects with a smooth dissolve animation comparable to the way that iOS 6 worked.

Also new for iOS, circles enter the design language, along with visuals that look nearly transparent, like a pane of glass. There's not much in the way of customization or themes, but your passcode and phone dialing screens take on the color of your background, which successfully ties the look together.

The most important part of any deep design work is that it feels smooth and connected from screen to screen, and after some time spent with iOS 7, I do think it delivers an elegant overall experience. One word of warning is that the overall look is completely different across the board, from the core Apple apps to more minor interface elements, and some will probably find the changes jarring at first.

The important thing to note is that even though it looks completely different, it's still easy to pick up and use right away because the core functionality is largely the same. In other words, browsing in Safari is as easy as ever, but it looks a little different, and there are now extra tools on hand for sharing via AirDrop, and a smooth, tablike browsing interface.

Control Center and notifications One of the few actually new features to come to iOS is the Control Center, which finally finally! In iOS 7, you can swipe up from the bottom of the display to bring up quick-access tools, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access, brightness, Airplane mode, and music controls. Control Center also integrates a small flashlight tool, signaling the death of so many third-party flashlight apps, but you also have quick access to setting an alarm or opening the calculator or camera.

In the Notifications pull-down menu, three tabs show you all your alerts, the calls and messages you've missed, and a new "today" pane that tracks what you have scheduled for the day. It's a small but useful expansion of the current notifications pull-down. One thing I noticed that is a little annoying is that notifications take up more space, so you'll need to scroll to see everything, whereas before you might have been able to read all your notifications at a glance.

It's not a big deal, but it's a casualty of the design scheme that favors open space over jamming as much as possible onto one screen. The fact that past versions kept the two separate for some time was a usability thorn in our side.

The long overdue update that combines them into one is therefore both gratifying and enraging, since it was such a small tweak that every other mobile OS and desktop Web browser has been taking advantage of for years.

There's more flexibility with open browser windows as well. Instead of swiping left and right to view open windows, they now preview as vertically scrolling rectangular cards think Cover Flow from Mac OS X and look similar to what we've seen on some Android phones.

You're no longer limited to just eight, and you can swipe them away to the side to close them, just as with Android. Scroll bars also disappear until you need them, a feature we've seen in many browsers before, and swiping left or right takes you back or forward a page, which is really useful -- until that moment you accidentally swipe away from the window you wanted to be on. To note a few other useful additions: a new filter sorts out links from people you follow on Twitter, and makes it easy to retweet them.

You can now bring up the bookmark screen to see three tabs for your bookmarks, Reading List, and Twitter followers across the top. In the Reading List, you can now scroll from one story to the next simply by scrolling to the bottom of a story, then making one extra swipe to seamlessly move to the next one.

These relatively small additions to Safari make the browser useful in more ways than before. AirDrop iPhone users will cheer the iOS 7 addition of AirDrop, a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that will support all versions of the iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad, and iPad Mini. This is a feature that was already part of Mac OS X.

AirDrop works by creating local ad hoc networks among nearby users. So if you want to share a photo, you'll hit the share button, and automatically see others around you who are also on iOS 7 and who have the feature turned on. From there you just tap a friend's picture and iOS 7 uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to send your photo and the recipient can accept or decline. It also offers the option to make yourself invisible to nearby iOS 7 users from the Control Center.

Sharing files with people nearby is nothing new and is even a feature Samsung has pointed out in television commercials as a reason to get a Galaxy phone. Camera and Photos apps Apple did a lot of work reorganizing both the camera app and how images live in the photo app. The camera app surfaces all your shooting modes so you can swipe and then tap them to frame your shot, such as still, panorama, video, and a square, Instagram-like configuration.