The iPhone environment is considered to be exclusive but there are features in iOS 15 that allow Android phones to integrate if you are using an iPhone with the A12 Bionic chip or later. That is iPhone XR and later iterations. For iPad users, it is iPad Air or iPad Pro third generation or iPad mini fifth generation.
FaceTime with Android
With the newer iPhones, you can now FaceTime with Android and Windows 10 users. But wait, it is not as easy as you may think. There is still no FaceTime app that allows you to call just anybody. The calls can be initiated by only iOS 15 users.
Open the FaceTime app on your iOS device. At the top of the screen, tap on “Create Link”. Tap “Add Name” and add a name you want to FaceTime with. Next, you will see the name appear on your “Upcoming List”. Tap on the “i” and it will take you to the link page. Tap on “Share Link” and you can share the link via messages, mail or any other installed app or copy the link to share later.
Your contact has to tap on the link on his Android or Windows 10 device. A notification will be sent to you once your contact joins the call, at which point you have to allow them to enter the call by tapping the green tick button that appears next to their name.
Do not disturb
Another great addition is Focus in iOS 15. In addition to “Do not Disturb” iOS 15 offers multiple Focus modes to help you focus on the work at hand. For example, under your Work Focus, you can mute incoming messages from all but your work colleagues and silence social media notifications across all devices.
You can let others know you are working with a status that says you have notifications silenced through iMessage.
To set up your Focus modes head to Settings. Scroll down to “Focus”. There will be preset modes for “Do not Disturb”, “Sleep”, “Personal” and “Work”. You can set them up according to your requirement.
Video call background
If you have the required phone, swipe down from the top right-hand corner of your phone to launch the Control Centre. You will see two new options, Mic mode and Video effects right on top. All you have to do is tap on video effects and you will get a pop-up saying FaceTime and below it Portrait. Tap on it. The blue icon will be turned on. Now when you get on a FaceTime call, before your contact picks up the phone turn on Portrait mode and your messy background will be blurred.
Scanner and other tips
The lack of a back button in Calculator must have frustrated many. Now all you need to do is swipe right or left on any part of the calculator and the last digit will be erased.
Apple has a scanner built right into the Camera app. Head to “Notes” and open any notes. It can be any old note or a new one. Tap on the Camera icon at the bottom and from the pop-up, choose “Scan documents”. Line up a page to scan, click and then crop. You will be given two options “Retake” or “Keep scan”. Tap on “Keep scan”. Your camera will be ready for the next scan. Don’t save as yet. Scan other pages one by one, keeping each scan. Then finally save all the scanned pages together.
One of the wonders of iOS 15 is Live Text OCR in the camera app. OCR stands for optical character recognition. It recognises the text in photos and turns it into text that you can interact with. One way of using this option is to use the Camera app. If you line your camera to anything with text in it, a little icon appears at the right-hand bottom. Tap it and it pulls out the text and copies it as text, not as a picture. You can copy, share or translate it as you will.
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