Apple finally took the wraps off iOS 10 today at the WWDC 2016 keynote held in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The latest operating system brings with itself major new features that redefines the way you interact with your iOS device including a revamped Lock screen, redesigned Apple Music, smarter Siri and much more.

Revamped Lock Screen

iOS 10 provides a whole new experience using the Lock screen. An amazing new feature is Raise to Wake. Whenever you pick up your iPhone, it will automatically switch on the display to show you the Lock screen without even requiring you to manually press the Home button to unlock it.

Another addition is the introduction of widgets on the Lock screen as well as rich notifications, which can be 3D Touched to view more options. As an example, you can 3D Touch on a Messages notification to peek at it as well as reply to the message right away, view the entire conversation as well as view inline photos and videos.

Lastly, you can slide your Lock screen to the right to launch the Camera app and shoot photos and videos right away. Sliding the other way will take you to the widgets screen, where each widget can be expanded to view more information by tapping on the More icon on the widget.

Siri SDK

Apple has finally listened to the requests of developers by introducing a new SDK for Siri thereby allowing developers to integrate features of their app with Siri. This means that Siri can be used to make queries related to third-party apps.

During the keynote, Apple’s Craig Federighi showed how Siri can be used to quickly send a message in WeChat. Likewise, other third-party apps can tap into Siri to offer their features to users.

QuickType

Next in the list is QuickType. In iOS 10, Siri is integrated with the keyboard making it capable of providing suggestions to share your location based on the context of the conversation as well as send a contact’s information, share your calendar availability and more. For instance, if you receive a text message from someone asking where you are, Siri offers to share your current location via QuickType.

The keyboard also switches automatically between multiple languages whenever appropriate.

Photos

Photos in iOS 10 has received several new features and improvements. First off, Photos is now powered with facial, object and scene recognition that uses advanced artificial intelligence to detect objects in photos locally on the device and search photos for Memories to provide highlights of an event, trip etc.

There’s also a new Maps view similar to the one found in iPhoto for Mac that lets you view your photos on a world map based on the location you captured them.

Lastly, you’ll find a dedicated Memories tab that searches your Photos library using advanced AI to put together a collection of photos taken from a recent trip and more.

Maps

The stock Maps app is now smarter in iOS 10 as it comes packed with a new feature called Quick Controls and has improved search capabilities and can display traffic information.

With Quick Controls, you’ll get quick and easy access to important controls while in Navigation mode. Additionally, when you slide up from the bottom of the Maps app, you can now view suggestions on the places that you might want to visit.

Search results are also more proactive and you can view live traffic information to see if there’s any major traffic jam ahead of you. The exciting news is that Apple is opening Maps API to developers allowing them to build extensions for the app.

Redesigned Apple Music

Apple Music now comes with a beautiful redesign in iOS 10 that provides a much better experience surfing the app. The Connect tab has been removed and the status bar issue fixed in the Now Playing screen.

The first tab in the app is Library which provides access to your local music and downloaded songs, followed by For You, Browse, Radio, and Search tabs. At the top of the For You tab, you’ll find a section for Discovery Mix, Recently Played songs, daily curated playlist and more. The Connect tab is now merged with the For You tab rather than remaining as a separate tab.

The best feature of Apple Music is that it now displays lyrics within the Now Playing screen.

News

As mentioned during the keynote, News now has over 60 million active monthly users and sports a new design in iOS 10 that’s simple and easy to use. You’ll find sections for Top Stories, Trending articles and topics that are curated based on what you read. The app now displays breaking news notifications right on your Lock screen.

Stock Home App

As if we already don’t have enough useless stock apps, iOS 10 comes with a new stock app called ‘Home’ that supports more categories of HomeKit devices such as automatic door locks and smart cameras. It’s also integrated with Control Center and can be accessed from the Lock screen of your iPhone. The new app is available for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch running iOS 10.

Phone

Starting with iOS 10, the Phone app will have the ability to automatically create a transcript of any of your voicemails so that you can read rather than listening to it.

The app also comes with a spam detection feature that can automatically inform you whether an incoming call from an unknown number is a spam. Notifications of spam calls will be shown right below the caller ID on the Lock screen when there’s an incoming call from an unknown number.

iOS 10 also allows developers of VoIP apps to integrate their voice calling feature with the Phone app so that incoming call notifications from their app fills the entire screen rather than appearing as a Lock screen notification. In other words, incoming calls from third-party apps will appear just like native phone calls on the Lock screen.

Messages

Messages app has received tons of new features and improvements in iOS 10. Links, videos and other media are displayed right within the app, Camera and Photos library is integrated within the app and emoji icons appear much bigger.

QuickType also supports emoji predictions and a cool new feature is that the Emoji keyboard now highlights words which can be replaced with a suitable emoji.

Additionally, Messages app comes with “Bubble effects” that allows you to add subtle animation effects to your message bubbles as well as the background screen of the conversation. Some examples include invisible ink that displays the message only when its swiped, smash effect, zoom, background animation of rising balloons and more.

Remaining new features including handwriting a message and opening the Messages API to developers.

Other Features

Apart from the new features mentioned above, iOS 10 comes with additional stuffs as well such as collaborative Notes, editable Live Photos, Split View in Safari for iPad, End-to-End encryption for Messages, Facetime, etc. and much more.

Compatible Devices

iOS 10 will be supported by the following iPhone models:

iPhone 6s & iPhone 6s Plus

iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus

iPhone SE

iPhone 5s

iPhone 5c

iPhone 5

As for iPads, the following devices will be supported:

12.9-inch iPad Pro

9.7-inch iPad Pro

iPad Air 2

iPad Air

iPad 4

iPad 3

iPad mini 4

iPad mini 3

And for iPods, the only supported model is the 6th generation iPod Touch.

Any device that is not in the lists above will not support iOS 10. This includes:

iPhone 4s

iPad 2

iPad mini 2

iPad mini

5th gen. iPod Touch

Release Date

The first beta of iOS 10 has already been made available to registered developers. However, the final build of iOS 10 will be released to the public in fall this year. The public beta test of iOS 10 will be made available from July.

These are all the new features and improvements of iOS 10 that were unveiled at the WWDC 2016 Keynote. What do you think about the latest iOS version? Let us know in the comments section below.