iOS 8: New Features

Unannounced changes and improvements to iOS 8, which will be released this fall.

AT A GLANCE

Our collection of hidden and undocumented features found in Apple's upcoming iOS 8. See our iOS 8 roundupfor the official features.

FEATURES INCLUDE

• Safari Credit Card Scanning
• Battery Usage by App
• Wi-Fi Phone Calls
• Time-Lapse Camera Mode
• Hide Images in Photos App

While our main iOS 8 roundup focuses on the major changes announced by Apple, this iOS 8 roundup highlights some of the more interesting but smaller additions and refinements made to Apple's mobile operating system throughout the beta testing period. Apple has thus far released five developer betas of iOS 8. Though developers have only seen five beta versions of iOS 8, Apple's carrier partners reportedlyreceived iOS 8 beta 6 on August 19, hinting at an upcoming golden master release.

Many of the tidbits noted below have been culled from the MacRumors forums, where our readers are discussing and sharing feature enhancements and tweaks in the "iOS 8, All The Little Things thread." Here is a collection of the more interesting ones, followed by a more comprehensive list. If you find any to add, please contact us at tips@macrumors.com

Cool New Features

Send last location to Apple before your battery dies - If you've ever lost your iPhone, this new feature allows your iPhone (or iPad) to send its last known location to Apple when the battery drains to a critical level. iCloud presently holds this information for 24 hours, but this new setting will allow Apple to access location information for a lost device for a longer period of time.

Identify songs - Siri now includes Shazam integration. If you ask Siri, "What song is playing?", it will cause her to listen to the ambient sound, using Shazam to identify music.

Credit card scanning - In iOS 8's web browser (Safari), you can utilize the camera to scan in credit card numbers when making online purchases, rather than manually entering your credit card number.

Hide images from Photos app - Images and videos in the Photos app can now be hidden from the Moments, Collections, and Years view in the Photos app. Holding your finger on a photo will bring up an options menu and selecting "Hide" will keep it from being visible in those sections. Hidden photos are still visible in the albums view, however, in new "Hidden" album.

Phone calls over Wi-Fi - iOS 8 includes an option for WiFi calling, allowing you to place phone calls over WiFi when connected to a WiFi network, which is handy when your carrier signal is low. Several carriers,including T-Mobile, have already announced support for the feature. As of iOS 8 beta 3, this feature is available for T-Mobile users. In beta 5, when WiFi calling is enabled, it is labeled T-Mobile WiFi at the top of the iPhone screen.

Find which app is using the most battery life - iOS 8 includes a new Settings option that allows you to view battery usage by app, monitoring the battery drain of specific apps so those that draw a lot of power can be shut down. As of beta 2, it also displays how much battery is drained when there's no cellular coverage.

Get Tips on Using iOS 8 (beta 4) - iOS beta 4 brought a new Tips app, which was first hinted at during WWDC. The Tips app offers iOS 8 users information about all of the new features in the operating system.

Real Time Talk-To-Type (beta 4) - In iOS 8 beta 4, the Talk-to-Type option on the keyboard used in apps like Messages and Notes began displaying spoken text in real time rather than waiting for an entire spoken line to be completed before displaying text.