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IOS Apple

Apple Plans To Turn Locked iPhones Into Smart Displays With iOS 17 (bloomberg.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Apple is planning a new interface for iPhones that shows information such as calendar appointments, the weather and notifications in the style of a smart-home display, part of a flurry of new features coming in its iOS 17 software update. From a report: The view will appear when an iPhone is locked and positioned horizontally, operating similarly to dedicated displays offered by Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, according to people familiar with the project. The idea is to make iPhones more useful when they're, for example, lying on a person's desk or nightstand. The move is part of a broader push to embed live information in more parts of the company's software -- an approach that also includes the Apple Watch's interface. The new view is one of several changes planned for iOS 17, codenamed Dawn, which will be released to consumers later in 2023. Apple plans to unveil the software alongside its mixed-reality headset at the Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5.
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Apple Plans To Turn Locked iPhones Into Smart Displays With iOS 17 More

Apple Plans To Turn Locked iPhones Into Smart Displays With iOS 17

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  • information such as (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:44PM (#63548227) Journal

    information such as calendar appointments, the weather and notifications and advertisements

    ftfy

  • I suppose this might be mildly useful (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:51PM (#63548243)

    But my phone is typically in my pocket when I'm not using it.

    It sure seems to me like these companies are flailing when it comes to thinking of new "features" to add to phones. They're desperate to avoid people thinking about the devices as commodities - but really, we've basically been at that point for years.

    • Funny, mine is typically on my desk when I'm not using it during the day. And it's rather convenient to have a glance at it to get a digest of what's coming up.

      As it turns out, different people have different usage profiles. And mine may not be the same as yours.

      Weird, right?

    • But my phone is typically in my pocket when I'm not using it.

      All the time? I typically put mine on the desk when I am focusing at work or on the nightstand when I go to bed. With a charging dock, like the magsafe ones, this could be marginally useful. The screen is a bit small for my tastes, but seeing my upcoming appointments as well as a customizable dashboard of messages and a weather forecast could come in handy. With the right customization, this could be extremely useful.

      It sure seems to me like these companies are flailing when it comes to thinking of new "features" to add to phones. They're desperate to avoid people thinking about the devices as commodities - but really, we've basically been at that point for years.

      So...Apple does something to try to provide unique value and make their device more tha

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        but they seem to be ahead of everyone else

        Really? I'm still waiting for everyone to catch up to Blackberry. No one has come close to what they were able to achieve with BB10. Using iOS and Android feels like a punishment. It's like they're designed to destroy productivity.

        • The UI was such a joy to use...consistent operation and features, text/message/object sharing, and the most useful virtual keyboard in the business with a well thought out predictive. I find I'm at least 25% slower on an IOS keyboard.

      • Not sure how an observation gets interpreted by you as a complaint, but oh well.

        Different strokes for different folks, of course. It just seems that using your phone for most of that stuff when you're sitting at a desk with a computer connected to a nice big monitor is... suboptimal at best. My calendar is right there on my computer, as are the popup reminders for meetings and other upcoming events. My text and iMessages are also on my computer - and I'd much rather respond using a full-sized keyboard.

        I can

    • But my phone is typically in my pocket when I'm not using it.

      Mine's on my desk in it's charger throughout the workday. It's useful because it shows me email notifications etc without obscuring my workstation. If Apple wants to add more stuff then AWESOME!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Android has had this for some years now and it's useful.

      When listening to music the current track display and controls are always visible, so you don't need to wake the phone just to skip a track, for example.

      At home you can have a wireless charger by your bed or on your desk, with the always on display showing a clock/calendar and offering some controls if you have smart home devices. You can also see notifications and decide if you want to ignore them or check them now. Of course Android has a feature to

  • Because that's what I want (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:56PM (#63548247)

    I want total strangers to be able to see the details of my daily schedule.

  • Amazon and Google fucked this up by spying (Score:3, Funny)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @12:59PM (#63548257)
    These are a good idea, although tablets are a better device to do this on, and the current solutions FAIL because Amazon and Google are dirty spying bastards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      I bought a portable monitor a few months ago for ~$100. It's thin, light, and the display is high-quality.

  • can it be disabled? (Score:3)

    by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:02PM (#63548261)

    I look forward to the day a cell phone is as feature complete as a toaster.
    i don't want random updates, i don't want to be pestered to try some new feature. I just want a smartphone that 'works' without constant pestering and nagging.
    can it browse the web?
    can it check email?
    that's roughly it. what few apps I do wind up using shouldn't need to be constantly updated every time apple shits out another incremental update for fluff features like this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spudnic ( 32107 )

      You just haven't thought of the next cool feature we can't live without.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      Software based products reach a point of maturity. Then it's time for the developers to justify their jobs. Once that point is reached, software just gets worse and worse.

    • The TDP isn't quite high enough. Runaway failure of the lithium might get the bread toasted though.

    • Soon your toaster won't work anymore with out a cloud subscription and an active license.

      Your settings will randomly change, it will just stop working whenever it feels like it, and you will thank fucking God you no longer have to think about toast settings because that was taking up far too much mental space and required too much skill and dedication to manage (/s) - just keep that sub active serf, now get back to work.

    • I look forward to the day a cell phone is as feature complete as a toaster.

      I look forward to the day a cell phone can be used *as* a toaster.

      Mine can get pretty hot now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kwack ( 98701 )

      Hello rogoshen1, you can switch off automatic updates if they bother you. You can switch off OS updates too. You can choose to keep security updates on only. When the battery is dead, you can have it replaced for $100 instead of buying a new phone. So what you want is already there, I believe?

  • Not exactly a game changing feature, but still nice to have.

  • Advertisements and personal always-visible data (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pierre Pants ( 6554598 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:12PM (#63548285)
    I love it when companies add features that everybody wants which make life better.

  • On a nightstand? (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @01:20PM (#63548297)

    The view will appear when an iPhone is locked and positioned horizontally, ... to make iPhones more useful when they're, for example, lying on a person's desk or nightstand.

    So... display information when it's lying flat on a nightstand, while the owner is probably *also* lying flat in bed. And how are they suppose to see anything w/o picking the phone or themselves up?

    • Even the always on don screen is bright as fuck in a pitch black bedroom No thanks this is a terrible idea

      • Agreed. I can't even have the "message received" light active on the Samsung. It's like having a lighthouse in the room with me. BING....BING....BING....

      • Even the always on don screen is bright as fuck in a pitch black bedroom No thanks this is a terrible idea

        OOhh...wow, I'd not thought of that.

        I (obviously) don't have an iPhone model with always on screen yet.

        Can the "always on" feature be deactivated at night when sleeping?

        • I havenâ(TM)t bothered to check . I used it for a few days and decided i actually Like being able to press the power button and turn my phone screen off. Always on is of no value to me any time . Protip set the screen off timeout to maximum this improves UXP of these devices tenfold

    • If the separate sensor that detects the phone is next to your head and turns the screen off isn't a good enough ambient light sensor then the front facing camera definitely is. With OLED, the black can be at least black. If you still want clock display, it will probably be dim white but I would prefer a dim red like alarm clocks of old so it doesn't mess with night vision or circadian rhythm.

      • Black? Apple displays the wallpaper on the always on screen

        • When the lights are out? This is a solved problem with things like the Nest Hub Max (and probably the Pixel Tablet now too). While they're busy copying, hopefully they can copy the right way to do it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      I think the summary is probably just worded stupidly. "The view will appear when an iPhone is locked and positioned horizontally" is most likely the key takeaway here. So in a dock or stand, oriented horizontally. The Apple Watch has a similar feature and it does works when the watch is not lying flat but propped up.

    • You know there are wireless chargers that feature a mostly-vertical orientation of the phone, right? Many of them are meant for desktop or night stand use...

      • You know there are wireless chargers that feature a mostly-vertical orientation of the phone, right?

        Sure. You saw the word "horizontally" in my post quoting TFA, right? :-)

        • I did.

          Did you catch my inference that there's another whole dimension in which to orient the phone while charging so that you *can* see it while laying horizontally in bed?

    • So... display information when it's lying flat on a nightstand, while the owner is probably *also* lying flat in bed.

      I love how you went to all the effort to quote some text and then ignore most of it instead focusing on an edge case which allows you to complain. Yep people can't see their phones from their bed, that is your issue with this. The feature is certainly not supposed to be used while people are at their desks with their phone in easy sight (for example in the text you quoted), no sir-ee, it's all about sleep scheduling.

  • iPhone uses an OLED screen. All OLED screens suffer from burin-in problems. Maybe it's better to turn it off simply.

    • Or, like basically every implementation of always-on-display on OLED devices, they can just shift what is displayed a few pixels every 30 seconds or so in order to completely prevent burn-in...

      As it turns out, a whole lot of people's knee-jerk bitching about this have been solved for literal years.

  • Yes I know, they call it something else, but will burn in be a problem? I have had this feature with my Motorola for years. Tried it - went meh - and preferred to keep my display and battery use down by turning it off.

  • I'm shocked that they didn't already have that.

  • This is to make it more like the new Pixel Tablet where it acts like a Nest Hub when it is docked. Not really innovative or alarming new advertising vector, just keeping up with the Jones's.

  • They could try making it so that when I come back to my phone, I still have most of my battery life!

  • here [archive.is]

  • When I read this headline, what I _thought_ was going on was "There are loads of completely legitimate iDevices on the secondary market that the previous owner never bothered to un-own, and which are now essentially bricked because they are user-locked. Apple is now preventing these from becoming e-waste by adding an OS feature to turn them into (say) USB-connected external displays. Oh well.

  • Another case of Apple being way behind.

    For the naysaysers in the comments.

    I had AOD on a Samsung A50, 2017 for 5 years and never had any sign of oled burn in.
    Having the time showing all the time is really useful.
    Having notification icons is also useful so I can see if I have missed teams and SMSs.
    I set the AOD to turn off at 10pm and back on at 6am.
    It barely effects battery life (but only if you use the Samsung AOD, if you use a 3rd party AOD, it chews battery)

  • Seriously, take the refresh rate way down if you must
    Let me use it as a PC screen

    see what people make for that resolution then?

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