With 2023 winding down, Apple has rolled out iOS 17.2 as the year’s second major iOS 17 refresh, brings useful changes like the new Journal app, Apple Music improvements, enhanced camera features and spatial video capture support, added functionality for the iPhone 15 Pro’s unique action button. Let’s dig into the most notable upgrades making their iOS 17.2 debut.
Journal App Provides Motivation to Write
iOS 17 first teased the upcoming Journal app for logged reflections and memories at 2023’s WWDC event. After months of waiting, the new app finally lands in iOS 17.2, delivering a built-in space to journal on your iPhone.
The Journal app greets users with a timeline view of entries, plus a shortcut to pen new ones. Tapping the prominent “New” button summons suggested topics if you’re struggling for inspiration. Or you can ignore the prompts and free-form journal about your day, flexible formatting options add images, audio clips, location tags and more to enrich entries.
Bookmarking and date adjustments help organize your swirling thoughts, while deep Photos integration enables stored media to illustrate major life events, app even supports reminders to journal daily through iOS notifications. It’s a thoughtful inclusion bringing motivation and consistency to journaling – no third-party app required.
Apple Music New Favourites playlist
iOS has long allowed liking songs in the Apple Music catalog to improve recommendations. But actually reviewing your adored tunes required tedious playlist creation. Finally, iOS 17.2 automatically aggregates liked tracks into a dynamic “Liked Songs” playlist.
The new playlist frees users from laboriously crafting custom collections when they just want a simple playlist of favorites. As you heart songs across genres, the unified playlist updates accordingly, creating an automatically evolving record of beloved songs in one place. It’s a handy quality of life upgrade making it easier to re-find and re-listen to music you enjoy.
Next-Level Spatial Video Capture Arrives for iPhone 15 Pro
Ahead of the hotly anticipated Apple Vision Pro, iOS 17.2 plants the seeds for next-gen immersive capture modes. Exclusively on iPhone 15 Pro models, the update introduces Apple ProRAW for Spatial Video at 1080p and 30fps.
Leveraging both rear Ultra Wide and Wide sensors, this special capture format stitches stereoscopic 3D footage with depth and parallax effects, provides a sneak peek at more advanced video applications once Apple dives into virtual and augmented realities, Spatial Video toggle in Camera settings enables the new mobile 3D footage experimentation.
While niche for now, Apple ProRAW for Spatial Video paves the way for wild future creations meshing digital renderings with life-like depth and environment mapping. Even in normal 2D playback, the dual-lens capture better directs viewer attention via depth.
Faster iPhone 15 Pro Telephoto Focus Boosts Distant Shots
Complimenting the video upgrades, iOS 17.2 also sharpens up the iPhone 15 Pro’s telephoto prowess specifically. Apple notes enhanced autofocus speeds when snapping distant subjects using the 3x optical telephoto lens.
So if you rely on seamless telephoto zoom to capture wildlife, sports, or landscapes, shots should lock focus faster than ever before. The combination of rapid focus and Apple’s class-leading image processing should make the iPhone 15 Pro’s zoom lens more versatile across shooting scenarios. Set to maximize detail at a distance!
Added “Translation” Action for iPhone 15 Pro’s Special Action Button
Exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro/Max lineup, dynamic island housing the front camera and Face ID hardware morphs into a customizable Action button when pressed. Out the box, it triggers shortcuts for frequent tasks like selfies, Apple Pay, fitness tracking and toggling accessibility features.
Thanks to iOS 17.2 though, a new “Translate” action now directly invokes the system translation utilities with a press, makes real-time foreign language interpretation more convenient, reducing the usual app navigating taps. Whether you’re traveling abroad or brushing up language skills, quicker access to Apple’s trusted dictionaries and translators comes in handy.
It’s just one of many possibilities for the adaptable button as developers tap into its potential down the road. But surfacing translation tools signals the diversity of use cases on Apple’s radar.
While mostly stocking stuffers sized upgrades, iOS 17.2’s blend of creative encouragement, music tweaks, bleeding edge camera technology and timesaving shortcuts add up to keep iPhones competitive as 2024 closes down.
