iOS 8.1 was released a few days back and since the release of iOS 8, this is the third update to the OS with iOS 8.0.1 and iOS 8.0.2 being rolled out earlier to deal with the many problems the OS brought with it. And iOS 8 did indeed bring quite a few problems with it. iOS 8.1 fixes some bugs but it also rolls out some other features that require Yosemite to be running on Macs. Talks and speculation of bugs aside, here is the list of the new features made available with the update.
Apple Pay
Apple’s payment solution can now be set up on devices in supported regions. Users will have to set Apple Pay up first and this involves adding your card and its subsequent verification by your bank before you can use it. The feature is available on all devices that support Touch ID. This includes the new iPad and the iPhone 5S.
Camera Roll Returns
With iOS 8, you might say Apple did something similar to what Microsoft did when it pulled the Start menu in Windows 8. What is uncharacteristic of Apple is that with iOS 8.1, the company listened to users and camera roll is back. Granted the camera roll wasn’t as big a feature as the Start menu in Windows, it nevertheless had users complaining and Apple (uncharacteristically) decided to throw them a bone.
ICloud Photo Library
This is a new beta service introduced by Apple in iOS 8.1 for backing up photos. The service is supposed to keep all your photos synced across all devices. It also has a storage saving purpose to it; the photos you take with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will be large in terms of size and hence take up a serious amount of space on your device. With iCloud Photo Library, your real HD images will be saved to iCloud with smaller versions of the photo existing on your device. The feature is great, without a doubt, but it does run you the risk of accidentally syncing private photos to every device your Apple ID is signed in on.
Continuity
Continuity is now more functional with this update (and the release of Yosemite). One of the latest features enabled with this update is SMS relay which allows you to send and receive a text message on a Mac running Yosemite.
Lot Of Bug Fixes And Some New Bugs
iOS 8.1 addresses some of the bugs in iOS 8 and it seems to have introduced some new ones. iPhone 5 users are complaining about device crashes but this particular problem hasn’t been spotted much (so far). The update fixes some WiFi problems but is rumoured to be causing some new ones too. Both screen rotation and Bluetooth bugs have been addresses in this update as well.
