Apple held its WWDC 2023 conference keynote today and it unveiled new Macs, a new chip for Macs and iOS 17 for iPhones. Among the new iOS features are Contact Posters and NameDrop which let you customize the incoming call experience and share contact details just by holding iPhones near each other.
With Contact Posters, you get a full-screen graphic of the person calling you. This will help users work out who"s calling them so they can decide if they want to answer. Contact Posters were shown using pictures of people and their Memoji.
“With iOS 17, we’ve made iPhone more personal and intuitive by deeply considering the features we all rely on every day,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
“Phone, FaceTime, and Messages are central to how we communicate, and this release is packed with updates we think our users are going to love. We’ve also reimagined AirDrop with new ways to share, autocorrect gets even better, and we’re introducing all-new experiences with Journal and StandBy, plus so much more. We can’t wait for everyone to try it.”
During the keynote, Apple also showed off NameDrop, you just hold your iPhones near each other and you"ll be able to share contact details such as your phone number, email address, and Contact Poster. This seems like a much more elegant way of exchanging details than rifling through your phone looking for your phone number.
You can also send photos and files to other users like this and if the file is larger, iOS now lets you move away from the other phone and the transfer will continue.
For those of you out there who like writing stuff down, Apple has introduced a new app with iOS 17 called Journal. With Journal, you can save various types of rich content including contacts, locations, music, photos, podcasts, and workouts.
As an example, if you went for a walk at the beach with your earbuds in, you could store a journal entry with the pictures you took and the songs you listened to so that you can relive the experience. Apple said that these Journal entries are end-to-end encrypted too, you they will remain private.
Other features include Live Stickers, Live Voicemail, better autocorrect and StandBy which displays information while the phone is docked and charging.