iOS 14 brings in some lovely new iMessage effects, better SMS spam filtering, and more India-specific features.
iOS 14 release time in India is 10.30pm on September 16
Gone are the days when Apple used to only design features for maybe U.S. and U.K. and some features that were targeted at the rest of the world. For the past three years, we've got iOS features designed specifically for India. This time around we have better SMS spam filtering, new fonts, new iMessage effects and much more. Here are the best India-specific features in iOS 14.
You are already aware that if we send certain keywords in iMessage, for example, happy birthday, happy new year, congratulations, or pew pew, you'll see full-screen effects on the app. Now these effects have been localised for India. For example, try typing जन्मदिन मुबारक and send it to someone on iMessage. You'll see a lovely little bunch of balloons popping up over on the screen. Similarly, typing Happy Diwali or Happy Holi in Hindi or English trigger these effects too.
SMS spam is a problem that plagues a lot of Indians. iOS 14 has made tackling this problem a little bit easier. We already had apps such as VeroSMS that would allow you to filter spam but now the Messages app is getting additional filters built-in to complement those apps. So if you tap at the Filters button on the top left, you'll see nice filters such as Known Senders, Unknown Senders, Transactional Messages, etc.
One of the languages supported for translation in iOS 14 is Indian English. Now, that's good to see because you can now translate from Spanish in English but what we really need is the ability to translate to and from Indian languages. For example, Chinese, Spanish, or Portuguese to Hindi, Marathi or any other Indian language, because that would be a game changer in India.
iOS 14 has support for 20 new document fonts and some even existing Indian fonts have got new styles such as bold and italics.
If you know somebody who has an email ID in Devanagari, you can now send emails to them via the Mail app. The app now supports Devanagari email IDs, apart from address in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Thai.
The next big feature that we want to highlight here is increased support for cellular data downloads in iOS 14. Apple now allows you to download software updates, Siri voices, and Apple TV+ downloads via mobile data, which is perfect for India where people use a lot of mobile data and broadband access remains relatively low.
The Indian English voice of Siri sounded a bit robotic in iOS 13, but with the latest iOS 14 update, it sounds much more lifelike. In case you like using the voice assistant, you'll hear a more human-like voice now.
Which is your favourite iOS 14 feature for India? Let us know via the comments.
WWDC 2020 had a lot of exciting announcements from Apple, but which are the best iOS 14 features for India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
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