Apple has done it again, they’ve made our smartphone quality of life better. We mentioned their recent iOS 15.4 update briefly recently, but this update deserves a closer look and we’re here to take a closer look at it.
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Face ID Update
One of the best and most convenient updates brought to us from iOS 15.4 is the update to Face ID. You can now no longer need to take your mask off to unlock your phone with Face ID, it can now recognize you even with your mask on. A much-needed update these last two years, but still a welcome update, if a little late. Sadly this update for Face ID is only available for iPhones 12 and 13. Also, remember to take off your sunglasses, they’re just a little too much for the program to figure out alongside the mask.
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New Emojis
Because the best way to flavor our messages with emojis, Apple added a large number of new emojis for us to use. They have added 37 new emojis as well as 75 skin tones for an astounding 112 new characters for us to use. Some of these new emojis are various faces and expressions like a biting lip, a melting face, several new hand emojis such as palm up or palm down, shaking hands, pointing, index finger and thumb crossed together, and there are also several item emojis like beans, an empty battery, eggs, bubbles, and more. Having these in our repertoire is going to open up whole new avenues of memes and jokes and we can’t wait to see them.
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Apple Card Widget
iOS 15.4 is making it easier to keep track of our accounts for those that use Apple Card. We can now have a widget to easily see our remaining balance. You can also use it to keep track of your transactions as well. A great little tool for people looking to budget their spending to get the most out of their money. This widget can be found in the Today view and can even be added to your home screen if you like. I’m not sure if I will want to do that, but it’s nice to have that option.
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iCloud Keychain Notes
With this update, iCloud Keychain finally gets the ability for you to leave notes for individual passwords to help you remember them. If you’re a crazy person like me who has 20 passwords, it’s nice to know which password I used for a specific login and the best way to remember is with silly shorthand notes that only I would get. It’s a feature that’s been a long time coming and uplifts iCloud Keychain to a more expected level of convenience that we find in other apps that provide the same functionality.
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120Hz Animations For Third-Party Apps
This update is also finally bringing other apps to glorious 120FPS for a smoother, clearer experience. Sadly though, this is only for the iPhone 13 Pro. Those of us with the normal iPhone 13 or older models are just going to have to keep saving our money to buy one.
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Custom Email Domain
A nice touch I wasn’t expecting but am now surprisingly very excited to play with is tweaking my email for my own personal email domain. We’ll have to pay a small fee of $0.99 for custom domains, but we’ll get to enjoy up to 5 custom domains. What is a custom email domain? Well the domain is the second part of the email address, the part after the @. The guys at MacRumors had a great example of a custom email domain with “johnny@appleseed.com.
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Share Play
An unexpected though welcome addition to the update was a small update to the share sheet. If your app supports Share Play, you can tap it directly from one of available options on the share sheet instead of having to dig through the menu and a list of applications to find it. It’s a small thing, but it is a nice quality of life improvement.
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Emergency SOS
Being able to easily call emergency personal in an emergency situation is a crucial feature and I am very happy to see Apple making it easier with this new update. It is now possible to make an emergency call by just holding down the power button and the volume down button. Just hold these two buttons until a timer appears on the screen and then it will call emergency services after the timer is complete. For those that want to keep the original method of pressing the call button 5 times, you can keep this option by just going into the settings and toggling the Emergency SOS setting to that.
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Siri Updates
Siri got some updates as well in this patch. It can now be used without an internet connection to a limited degree, so far just helping to tell the time and date. It has also received some voice customizations so you can make your Siri more unique.
Believe it or not, these aren’t all of the new features or updates that came with the new iOS 15.4 update but these are the ones we were most interested in. Which parts of this update did you like seeing the most or think are the most helpful? Comment below. If you want to see the full list of updates, we recommend you check out this indept article from Macrumors on the update.
