Apple Releases iOS 9.2

Today Apple released iOS 9.2 to iPads, iPhones, and iPods worldwide. The update is another incremental release, improving on features and removing bugs that are still lingering since the release of iOS 9 earlier this year. This time around, Apple’s change log is fairly substantial, and it looks like there’s a bit more detail on some of the major bugs and stability fixes being made, which are often not highlighted in the list included with the OTA update.

One notable feature addition in the update is support for Mail Drop in the Mail application, which allows you to send attachments that are several gigabytes in size by storing them in iCloud. It’s a bit surprising that Mail Drop has taken so long to make its way over to iOS, but the relatively small size of the files that iOS users would have been attaching in the past may have played a role. With support for recording and editing UHD video on newer devices the feature has become more relevant.

The Music app sees a number of improvements relating to Apple Music as well. You can now download albums or playlists to local storage from your iCloud Music Library by tapping the iCloud button next to their listing in the app. There’s also an indicator to let you know whether tracks are stored locally or being streamed from the cloud. Apple has also improved the display of metadata for classical music, with listings for works, composers, and performers, along with a few additional UI and functionality changes.

Other notable changes include support for 3D Touch in iBooks on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, a new Top Stories section in Apple News, and support for Siri in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

As for the bug fixes and improvements, there are a great number of them and I can’t list them all here. Some of the ones that stand out to me are a fix for a bug that would disable alarms when updating iOS, which is something that caused a number of people who rely on their phone alarms to not be woken up when iOS 9.1 was released. They’ve also fixed an issue where the iPad keyboard would randomly trigger the text selection mode, which is something that I’ve encountered myself. Other fixes include layout changes to the calendar app to fix a bug that prevented all seven days of the week from showing up in the week view, 

On the hardware and software side, the update brings one final change which is support for Apple’s new USB Camera Adapter. This product was just released today, and it improves on the older camera adapter by supporting USB 3 transfer speeds on the iPad Pro, and bringing support for iPhones which were previously not supported. The old lightning camera adapter should now also work with the iPhone 5 and up, but it appears that the 30pin version is still limited to iPads, and all versions of the iPod Touch are left off the support list.

iOS 9.2 is rolling out now, and by the time you read this you should be able to download it to your device by visiting the software update section of the iOS settings application. The size of the OTA update on an iPhone 6s is 271MB, while on an iPad Mini 4 it’s 260MB. When updating, you can view the full change log for the update by clicking on the learn more button underneath the update highlights.

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Samsung Announces Updated Versions of the Galaxy A3, A5, and A7

Today Samsung announced that updated versions of their Galaxy A3, A5, and A7 smartphones are about to be released. The original Galaxy A7 launched at the very beginning of this year, and both it and the other Galaxy A smartphones represented Samsung’s attempt at bringing quality smartphone construction and design to lower price points than what you would pay for a flagship phone like the Galaxy S6. With it being nearly a year since the original announcement of the Galaxy A7, it makes sense that Samsung would want to refresh the lineup. Below you can find the specs for all three of Samsung’s new smartphones.

As you can see, all three devices have a degree of similarity. The Galaxy A5 and A7 in particular seem to be the most closely related, with many of the differences simply coming down to the difference in size between the two, and the drop to 2GB of RAM on the A5. The Galaxy A3 is clearly the more low end device, with a 4.7″ 1280×720 display, no 5GHz WiFi support, and additional reductions to RAM, the SoC, and the cellular connectivity. Because the Galaxy A3 omits the fingerprint scanner present on the A5 and A7 it’s also unable to use Samsung Pay.

Of course, some details like the specific SoCs in use are unknown, although one can speculate based on the limited number of offerings on the market that fit the descriptions. Whether or not the Galaxy A3’s display uses a PenTile subpixel arrangement will also be an important detail to consider once it’s revealed.

As for the design of the phones, they take inspiration from the industrial design of the previous Galaxy A devices but adopt some of the changes made with Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note5, such as the use of glass on both the front and back of the devices. All of the phones are quite thin, and both the design and materials used mean that these definitely won’t be targeting the sub-$100 part of the smartphone market. Samsung is also introducing a pink gold color which wasn’t available with the last generation models.

While I don’t think any of these phones are going to have extremely low prices, it’s clear that they’ll be competing at price brackets lower than the one occupied by Samsung’s flagship phones. The launch prices for the Galaxy A3, A5, and A7 are currently unknown. According to Samsung, the phones will be launching in China later this month, with an expansion to global markets coming in 2016. We’ll have to wait and see how much the phones go on sale for in the Chinese market before we’re able to guess how much they’ll cost elsewhere, and interested buyers will have to wait and see when their availability expands to their country.

Source: Samsung