10 Excellent Features Introduced in the latest iOS 8

Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2014 has kicked off in style, with the Cupertino-giant unveiling it's upcoming mobile operating system dubbed as iOS 8. While the design is almost the same as iOS 7 except a few new animations, Apple has introduced many new features and enhancements to make the OS better than its predecessor. If you missed the Apple keynote yesterday, here's everything you need to know about the upcoming iOS 8:

1. Compatibility

Apple has a history of providing support for old devices. When iOS 7 came it out last year, it came with support for the good old iPhone 4 as well. And, this year, the latest iOS 8 will be compatible with iPhone 4S as above - sorry iPhone 4 owners, but you'll not get iOS 8. The complete list of devices include, iPhone 4S/5/5S/5C, iPad Mini, iPad Mini with Retina, iPad Air, iPad 2, iPad with Retina and iPod 5th generation. This is a handsome list of devices, meaning that all popular iOS devices will get the update.

2. Health and Fitness Dashboard

As rumored before, the new iOS 8 comes with a Health dashboard which give users the ability to measure fitness-related metrics, such as calories burnt, heart rate, cholesterol level, sleeping patterns, and more. What's even more interesting is the way the data is collected. Some of it comes from wearables such as Nike bands, while others come from apps and third-party sources such as Mayo Clinic. It also let users create an emergency card, which is displayed on the lockscreen for emergency purposes.

3. Improved Notification Center and Multitasking

The new iOS 8 brought some much needed improvements. One of the most notable ones is the interactive notifications, a new feature which give users the ability to respond to notifications from the Notification Center. This means you can reply to your emails, messages or texts without leaving the app you're using. You can even comment or like Facebook posts from the notification center.

In addition, the new operating system adds more content to the multitasking screen. Along with the opened applications, the multitasking screen on the device now shows your favorite contacts so you can contact them from the multitasking window.

4. Messages

There are some new features for the messaging app as well. Now, you can send voice notes, images, and even create groups where you can multiple contacts and get in touch with them - send images, voice notes, video clips and make calls. You can even share your location with the group of friends, to let them know where you are, or if you're waiting to meet them.

5. QuickType Keyboard

The new OS also comes with an improved version of the keyboard, which they call it QuickType. Personally, I feel like the existing iOS keyboard is already very good, but the new one makes it even better. The new keyboard suggests words periodically to complete the sentences - the prediction capabilities demoed during WWDC keynote looked pretty good. It even recognizes whether you're writing in the Mail or Messages app. At the moment, the predictive text is optimized for 14 countries, including US, UK, Canada,

6. Family Sharing

This is another interesting feature which give family members the ability to share their iTunes content, such as app purchases and iBooks with other members of the family. Once enabled, you can even access content from other family members. You can even set up a family photo stream where images taken by your family members on all devices. It's not just sharing content, you can even find out where you family members are on a map, which is similar to the Find My iPhone app.

7. iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is a cloud storage service which lets users save their files, documents and other media files online, and access them on any iOS device you own. It's not just iOS devices, you can even view and work with the files on your Mac or PC.

8. Handoff

The new Handoff feature is another notable one introduced in the iOS 8. The new feature connects iOS devices together so you can work in conjunction. This means you can start writing an email on your iPhone, and continue where you left off on your iOS device and vice versa. It even lets you check and reply to messages from your Mac, and you can even answer calls on your Mac or iPad, provided its running the latest OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, respectively. No need to find out where your smartphone is when you are working.

9. Spotlight

Spotlight is the new iOS search feature, which let users search for anything, such as their installed apps, iTunes content, and much more. It will show you everything, even from third-party sources such as Wikipedia or any news related to the searched query.

10. Touch ID And New APIs

This is another interesting access Apple is giving to third-party developers. Previously, Touch ID was only accessible for security purposes to unlock your device or to make iTunes purchases. But, with iOS 8, developers can create apps which can make use of the sensor. It's not just the Touch ID access, the new SDK comes with 4,000 new APIs for developers to explore the capabilities of the OS.

11. Release Date

The developer preview of iOS 8 is already available for registered developers so they can test their apps, and explore the new APIs for their apps, to make full use of the operating system. For consumers, the operating system will launch this fall, and possibly with the new iPhone. Apple is rumored to be working on two new iPhones which are expected to see the light of the day this fall, possibly with a bigger screen.

There you go folks. I think Apple has done a commendable job with the latest iOS 8 operating system, adding new features and enhancements, and much more. What do you think about iOS 8? Let us know using the comments below.

How can cars keep up with gadget innovation?

Welcome to Cars Technica, Ars' new dedicated auto section! Those of you who recognize my byline or have been following Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson's ongoing romance with Tesla will probably know that our move into auto coverage isn't such a shock. But if you're scratching your head wondering why vehicles have invaded your favorite tech website, it's actually a natural result of the auto industry encroaching into our traditional areas of coverage. There's a lot of technological innovation going into our vehicles, and much of it is silicon-based.

What we used to call convergence is now the 'Internet of Things,' and our vehicles are definitely an example of those 'things.' As Moore's law continues to double the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months, so the number of these chips in new vehicles continues to grow at a similarly exponential pace. Infotainment systems are increasingly permanently connected to the Internet, and car makers are using consumer-facing technology as a way to differentiate their products in the marketplace. Ars Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher has gone so far as to suggest that the automobile could be the first great wearable computer. After all, we spend a lot of time in our cars, and in the US or Europe, your car might be the second most-used computing device you own before too long.

It's not just infotainment, either. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, collision avoidance, and other semiautonomous systems are on their way, maybe even as a result of regulatory mandates, and they're going to be silicon-based. And then there's all the science and technology that goes into the design and manufacturing of new vehicles: materials that combine strength and lightness, advanced aerodynamics to boost fuel economy, factories packed with robots or energy-efficient manufacturing processes-it's all either here or arriving shortly. On top of all that, Ars is a community of enthusiasts, and like me, many of you are enthusiastic about your cars. We're going to bring to Cars Technica the same enthusiasm we've brought to the other beats we've been covering for years.

To kick off Cars Technica, we're going to take a look at some of the challenges cars face from the industry trends identified above. The tech sector, and especially the world of consumer electronics, follows a much more rapid development cycle than the automotive industry. How will car makers satisfy consumers who are used to getting new phones and operating systems every year or two? How long do companies need to support legacy systems? And then there's the thorny topic of privacy. What safeguards are in place to prevent your car ratting you out, whether it's to the government, your insurance company, or those nefarious data brokers?

How consumer tech rapidly iterates but cars cannot

Has the rapid adoption of the smartphone conditioned today's consumers to the tech industry's rapid cycle of development? Thanks to Moore's Law and the subsidies and incentives of the wireless industry (at least in the US), it's fairly common to change your phone every couple of years. But this trend poses a problem for the auto industry. Ford's Director of Electrical and Electronics Systems Jim Buczkowski told Ars that his customers are now used to faster and better technology on that cycle, and they want those experiences in their vehicles as well. The trick, he said, is keeping up with that rate of change while making sure the product remains both safe and usable.

When we spoke with him in February, Buczkowski explained the challenge that Ford and others face: car manufacturers' longer development cycles (compared to Silicon Valley) are driven by the need to sufficiently harden the technology to cope with the demands expected of vehicles. 'A phone is typically in your pocket, so there's less concern about extremes of temperature,' Buczkowski said. 'Sitting in Detroit, the temperature hasn't been above freezing for almost two months, and there have been many nights where it's subzero for many nights in a row, and cars have to sit out there with the snow and salt. Likewise, in the summer, the cars will sit out there and reach very high temperatures even when static and not running, and whether you turn the key in the middle of summer or winter, the vehicle has to run, has to deliver what its supposed to deliver, which is very different to consumer electronics.'

Coupled with those issues are different expectations from the consumer. Cars are the most expensive purchase most of us will make, aside from buying a house. If someone is replacing their phone every couple of years, a cracked screen probably just means replacing it a little sooner. But we're keeping our cars for longer than ever (now roughly ten years), so the design and validation requirements have to take that into account.

There's also the expectation of manufacturer support for new technologies to consider. It's no good bundling the latest and greatest technology into a new car if you can't replace or repair the tech several years down the road. This expectation influences what technologies are adopted in the first place. Buczkowski told Ars that Ford will work with suppliers to ensure that they'll have the parts for the duration of a vehicle's expected life. In some cases, this means buying a lot of components up front, but the company also wants to be able to remanufacture critical componentry to address parts failures, which helps with end-of-life issues.

Challenges of the increasing tech demands

Keeping a technology platform feeling fresh and bug-free can be a challenge even in the smartphone realm; just compare the different approaches Apple and Android take to keep their user base up to date. No one expects either platform to maintain support for a particular version nearly as long as the lifespan of an average car.

According to Anupam Malhotra, Audi's senior manager for Connected Vehicles, car systems evolve in around four years in the best case, but this timeline can stretch to as long as eight or even 10 years. Audi has developed a modular platform that's being introduced with the A3 that includes all the technology linked to consumer electronics product cycles, including the UI interface and entertainment systems. Malhotra told us that everything is built into a single PCB, which is a plug-in module. 'As we go from model year to model year, you can just change the card to advance through 3G to 4G and so on without messing with the entire infotainment unit,' Malhotra said, which compresses the refresh cycle to between 18 months and 2 years.

Beyond this modular plug-in approach, the complexity involved with major hardware upgrades means it's probably not feasible in the near future. As for software upgrades, both Buczkowski and Malhotra say that in the end, they are driven by what their customers demand. In the past, a new car would be feature-complete at launch. Now, thanks to those changed expectations driven by the tech sector, there's more understanding in the marketplace that certain features may be rolled out at a later date, adding functionality to a car that may have left the dealership months or even years earlier. More and more, this will be done with over-the-air updates, letting users avoid the hassle of having to make a special trip to the dealership.

This being Ars Technica, it would be remiss of us not to consider the twin questions of security and privacy. Until now, we haven't really needed to worry about our cars as targets for mischievous or malicious hackers. Why would we if they're not connected to the outside world? But as Internet-enabled-or even Internet-dependent-vehicles become the norm, that's going to change. If the only thing that's connected to the outside world is an infotainment system, having that system hacked would be annoying but probably not particularly dangerous beyond the potential for a driver being routed off the edge of a cliff. But with systems like vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication coming, safety-critical components of our cars are also going to be networked. That's going to require the auto industry to stay on top of their game, lest we suffer a plague of script kiddies who get their jollies shutting down random strangers' brakes or engines with disastrous consequences.

Then there's privacy. Location-based services and the like can create great experiences for the user, but Buczkowski says that companies now have to do an outstanding job of protecting personal information so as not to lose their customers' trust. This January, the US Government Accountability Office published a report on the topic. While it didn't find any evidence to suggest that auto makers were sharing or selling personally identifiable (PI) location data to data brokers or marketers, the report worried that some risks might not be clear to the public.

We asked both Ford and Audi about their privacy safeguards. Buczkowski said that Ford will always give people an opportunity to opt out of having their data used to personalize their in-car experience. Of course, opting out may mean being unable to use some of the services that rely on that PI data, but that's the same trade-off that we make with our smartphones. Ford responded to questions from Senator Al Franken (D-MN) that followed the GAO report with a detailed explanation of its data protection policies.

Similarly, Audi also takes the matter very seriously. Malhotra said that while Audi's new services are location based, the user requests don't contain PI data. When a request is made, the car's wireless provider knows where to send the results, but not what's requested. On the other hand, the content provider knows what the request is, but not where it's going. Audi acts as a pass-through, having access to neither. 'You can ping Google for a POI search and the results get sent to an encrypted IP address, which the carrier knows how to decrypt.' With the company's new modular platform described above, the car's MyAudi account can be connected to Facebook and Twitter, but it only stores a token that identifies your vehicle as having valid credentials.

It's good to know that our car makers are taking these kinds of problems seriously. The integration of consumer technology and our automobiles is on an upward trend as more manufacturers look to make their products more attractive to a younger generation that has grown up with smartphones but is often viewed as never having made a connection with the automobile the way previous generations have. Watching how the auto industry adapts to this brave new world is going to be fascinating.

HTC Desire 816 Review: The Big Picture

HTC's Desire series of smartphones had a decent run during the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) era. These mid-range devices catered to people who wanted a phone that would perform well and was reasonably priced. In the Rs. 20,000 - 30,000 range, these phones stood up well to competition from Samsung and LG, amongst others.

With the new HTC Desire 816, the company intends to rekindle interest in this segment and hopefully reverse its run of bad fortune. This phone has a large 5.5-inch screen - a crowd favourite - and the twin promises of great camera performance and great battery life. There is no doubt that this phone will be very popular if those promises are kept.

We review the phone to find out if the Desire 816 can actually live up to our expectations.

Look and FeelHTC has adapted the design it developed for the One (M7), which means thinner bezels on the left and right, and more space on the top and bottom to accommodate dual front-firing speakers. The Desire 816 is more or less consistent with this tall, elongated design, but differentiates itself with a large 5.5-inch display. This makes it wider and taller than the rest of the new crop of HTC smartphones. Coupled with a thickness of 8mm and weight of 165g, the HTC Desire 816 is solid to hold. On the whole, this is a sturdily constructed smartphone.

One problem with the polycarbonate body is that it involves both glossy and matte textures. As a result, you'll have to deal with issues inherent to both types of finish. In our white variant, we noticed that the glossy back attracted loads of smudges while the matte edges and front were dust magnets.

HTC decided to move all the physical buttons to the left edge, probably to make room for a flap on the right edge which houses the two Nano-SIM slots and the microSD card slot. The power button and volume rocker on the left edge are made of metal - a stark departure from the predominantly plastic body. The placement of the buttons is unusual, but not too difficult to get used to. The Micro-USB port for charging is on the bottom, and the 3.5mm audio jack is on the top alongside an additional microphone.

Features and SpecificationsOn paper, the HTC Desire 816's specifications are on par with those of the Moto G ( review) which retails at almost half the price. With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, it is evident that the HTC Desire 816 is not aiming for top-of-the-line specifications. We wish HTC had chosen at least the Snapdragon 600, which is more suitable for mid-range smartphones. Graphics are handled by an integrated Adreno 305 GPU. The phone has 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, of which only around 4GB is available for use. This is disappointing, but thankfully HTC allows expansion up to 128GB using a microSD card.

The HTC Desire 816 has a 13-megapixel rear camera with a flash, and can record 1080p videos. It also has a 5-megapixel front camera that can be used to capture even the pimples on your face with great clarity in the Selfie mode. The phone accepts two Nano-SIM cards, both of which can connect to 3G networks.

The 5.5-inch screen has a resolution of 720x1280, which means a pixel density of 267ppi. Many of the current crop of 5.5-inch smartphones have the same specifications. The screen is crisp enough, but is dull even at maximum brightness. This in turn amplifies reflections and affects sunlight legibility and viewing angles. We think the Samsung Note 3 Neo's ( review) screen is marginally better.

SoftwareWe are glad that HTC has decided to ship the Desire 816 with the latest version of Android - version 4.4.2 (Kitkat) - and the new HTC Sense 6 skin. It looks identical to the software running on the new HTC One (M8) ( review). This skin has the same Blinkfeed news reader on the extreme left homescreen, and a vertically scrolling app drawer.

Blinkfeed trumps Samsung's Magazine app by a long shot. HTC also provides users with two other interfaces that can be used for specific purposes - Car Mode and Kid Mode. In the Car mode, there are a few often-used icons for easy access, and the Kid Mode lets parents lock down settings and available apps. HTC bundles the Polaris Office 5 suite and an app called Scribble, which allows users to take notes. The HTC Setup Mode is available whenever you want it, and is probably the best way to customise the phone.

HTC has pre-installed Zoe, a special camera app that it claims can 'capture life like no other smartphone can' on the Desire 816. Unfortunately, it is not available, and you'll only see a 'coming soon' message when you launch it. Till that happens, we'll just have to settle for capturing life with the default camera app.

CameraUnlike the Ultrapixel camera on the HTC One series, the Desire 816 has a standard 13-megapixel camera and it is surprisingly good. We give full marks to HTC for advertising it right.

Pictures shot in broad daylight are crystal clear, and have very little noise. There is very minimal loss of detail, though on closer inspection, we noticed different shades of green were slightly mismatched. The camera tries hard to latch on to any source of light in low-light shots and the captured images, after struggling with the focus, have a watercoloured effect to them. Then again, the results are definitely much better than what's possible with all the other phones in this price range. In fact, at times, it performs better in low light than some higher priced phones too. The only negative point is that recorded 1080p video loses some details.

If the rear camera was surprisingly good, the 5-megapixel front camera came as a revelation. We did not dare to upload the selfies captured by this camera on a social network as all the pores and pimples on our oily skin were captured perfectly. Images are well detailed and better than those taken with some phones' primary cameras. It would have been great if the lens had been a bit wider for group shots taken at arm's length.

The camera software is mostly minimalistic with a lot of manual settings, but HTC goes bonkers when it comes to offering different picture modes to shoot in. There are 16 modes in total, some of which are quite unnecessary. For example, the Mono mode lets users choose a colour cast, which makes the dedicated grayscale and aqua modes redundant. All said and done, we had the most fun with the Depth of Field mode where the camera artificially creates an illusion of depth by blurring those parts of the image which are not within the focus area. Despite this artificial illusion, images looked stunning with only a slight loss of detail.

With all this power to play with, we don't think users will miss Zoe.

PerformanceDuring the testing process, we got so caught up with the great camera performance that we almost failed to notice how buttery smooth the Desire 816 was to use, and how little lag we encountered. This is mostly due to the 1.5GB of RAM under the hood. It is almost as fast as the Moto G, if not faster.

After playing around with the phone, we were confident that the benchmark numbers would be pretty good. Here are some of them for your consideration: In Antutu and Quadrant, the phone scored 21,182 and 13,332 points respectively. Graphics performance wasn't as impressive, with scores of 11 fps in GFXbench and a total of 5087 in multiple 3DMark Ice Storm tests. These scores might not compare well to those of other phones in this segment with Mediatek's octa-core processor under the hood, but they are still workable. The Desire 816 is not ideal for playing intensive games like Asphalt or Shadowgun which require better graphics capabilities.

Media playback on the Desire 816 was a breeze. It played all the video files we threw at it without any skipping or drop in frame rates. Also, watching videos is great fun on the huge screen. The dual front-firing speakers are not as loud as the BoomSound speakers on the HTC One series, but channel separation is good. The music quality on our reference headphones was top-notch and the driver inside the phone works overtime to enhance the quality of sound. During calls, the phone performs admirably in latching on to network but the person on the other end couldn't hear our voice clearly. On the battery performance front, the 2600mAh battery lasted us 11 hours and 7 minutes before it needed to be charged. We expect it to easily last for a day and a half of regular usage, which is more than what normal smartphones can manage.

VerdictAfter playing with the HTC Desire 816, we really wanted to head outdoors, headphones on, and take photos of all the scenic beauty surrounding us. The best part is that we wouldn't have to worry too much about battery life either.

Priced at Rs. 23,990, it is very easy to recommend this phone. It feels premium, and has a far superior camera, battery life, higher internal memory capacity and better performance compared to the Moto G, which feels worth the price difference. If raw performance is the need, we suggest taking a look at the Gioone Elife E7 ( review) instead. Any which way, it looks like HTC's efforts are not going completely unnoticed since some reports suggest that the company is forecasting a profitable quarter based on the sales of the One (M8) and the Desire 816.

HTC Desire 816 in pictures

Samsung Debuts Tizen In… Russia, Of All Places

Handset makers have been worried about the dominance of Android for a while. It's not so much the quality of the service, but rather the fact that it's Google-centric, and they would much rather you use their services instead of Google's. Samsung's effort to make that work will be Tizen... but Samsung isn't showing a lot of faith in its would-be Android killer.

To Russia With Hope

Tizen will be debuting on the Samsung Z. Yeah, they're not appending any 'Galaxy' or other title to this. On paper, it's actually pretty good, albeit with one glaring flaw: 2.3 GHz quad core CPU, 2GB RAM, 16 and 32 GB internal storage with the traditional microSD slot for more, 8 MP and 2.1 MP cameras (front and rear respectively), sensors that include an accelerometer, gyroscope, fingerprint scanner and heart rate sensor...and a 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 display.

Yes, you read that correctly. This phone is not HD.

Beautiful On The Inside

Which is a shame because Tizen actually has some virtues to go with that vice. The most obvious is that it's designed to be HTML 5 friendly, so you're better able to use various web gadgets and the like on the operating system. That will help make up the app gap that so often confounds new operating systems, and can even trip up the old ones: BlackBerry had an easy conversion system to put apps on their software, and few developers bothered.

A Galaxy Killer?

This is going to be, at first, a budget smartphone. It's largely designed to keep costs down, hence the unimpressive screen, and we suspect that when it inevitably arrives elsewhere, it'll arrive with a lower price that Samsung's high-end Galaxy phones. Still, we'll be curious to try out Tizen and see how it stacks up to Android; if nothing else, it'll show us what Samsung thinks Android should be.

5 Things We'd Love To See At WWDC Today (List)

Today is Blogger Christmas, otherwise known as the Worldwide Developer's Conference keynote speech. This is where Apple rolls out new software, new toys, and other fun stuff that we'll spend most of the rest of the year covering. And, just like any other Christmas, we've got a wish list.

1. An Improved, More Open Apple TV

Apple TV is, well, kind of a mess right now as a product. It's been lapped by Roku and Sony, of all companies, in the fight to control what you use to stream stuff to your television. But the Apple TV is, despite its limitations, a good product that deserves a real chance, and to be broken free of the shackles of iTunes. We hope Apple makes the call and sets the little box free.

2. Apple And Amazon Improving Their Relationship

OK, so this is profoundly unlikely, for a wide variety of reasons. Apple and Amazon are competitors in some respects, and Apple is rumored to still be bitter Amazon dragged it to court over price-fixing and won. But by the same token, it would be nice if Apple and Amazon buried the hatchet and started working together to offer better services on Apple products. Amazon Instant Video needs work, for example. These two taking down walls would be a nice touch.

3. An iPod Refresh... Or Send-Off

The iPod is more or less dead. We all know this, and it's largely thanks to Apple itself and the rapidly expanding iDevice universe. What is the 'iPod Touch,' aside from sad and unloved, except an iPhone with the cellular radio stripped out? Apple is going to be shutting down the iPod line sooner rather than later, especially with sales of the device so low in the first place, and those decreases rapidly accelerating year over year. Apple should either salvage it or give it a Viking funeral.

4. Something Weird

Apple has been a bit dull and predictable since the iPad. Honestly, it hasn't really had reason to try and shake things up. It's one thing when you're the scrappy competitor nobody's really taking seriously, and quite another when you're the biggest company on Earth. Apple just basically hasn't been having any fun, or trying anything really new, and honestly, it's beginning to wear on the company a little bit. It'd be nice if Apple introduces something out of left field, an attempt to intercept and bring forward the future like it used to do.

5. Some Rumor Control

Apple is like a tabloid in that they'll never deny anything. Is Apple working on a television? Maybe! How about a smart watch? You never know! Maybe a thermostat? Sure, why not?

It's true there's only so much the company can say about its costs and what it's doing, but still, torpedoing a few rumors would be a welcome change of pace. If nothing else, it would shut up Apple's fanboy ecosystem on a few points, which would practically be a public service. And no, Apple fanboys, your magic television is not coming this year. Or ever.