Expensive New Phones Aren't the Only Way to Upgrade

For its part, a chief new feature coming with Android 12 is a colorful and customizable design overhaul Google refers to as Material You, the biggest such visual change in the history of Android, the company says. The idea was to come up with icon shapes and a color palette meant to be consistent across apps. Buttons and touch targets on the screen are larger. It will have floating action buttons and the option to match the colors in apps to your device wallpaper.

Android 12 also has a new privacy dashboard that lets you track and manage which apps can use your device microphone and location, for example.

iPhone 6s and newer can benefit

Apple’s iOS 15 update can be used on devices that date to the iPhone 6s models that came out six years ago though not every new feature is compatible with a handset that — by tech standards anyway — might as well be from the Jurassic age.

A few additional caveats: While official iOS releases are generally stable, it is not uncommon for some bugs to surface in the early days of a launch. It’s why some people choose to wait for the inevitable update to the update. What’s more, while almost all the popular apps that may be on your phone should work with the new software, it’s possible some may not, at least initially.

Finally, not all of the features Apple is promising as part of iOS 15 will be included on Day One. That includes a previously announced but now delayed capability known as SharePlay, which will let people on FaceTime calls watch movies or listen to music in sync with one another during the call.

With the new iOS 15 upgrade some users will be able to store their driver's license in their Apple Wallet.

Courtesy Apple

Here are a few of the iOS 15 features that might entice you to update.

• Digital Legacy. What happens to your digital assets when you’re gone? With iOS 15, you can choose a “Legacy Contact” who can access your iCloud photos and documents upon your passing — but not your passwords. The designated contact must provide a death certificate to https://digital-legacy.apple.com and use a digital key that can be stored with your will or estate. This is another iOS 15 feature that’s delayed, and you probably would hope to say the same about the need for its use.
  
  
• Better focus. We rely on our phones for an awful lot: to exercise, play, work. It isn’t always easy to balance these conflicting interests. iOS 15 supplies a set of tools that aims to match your mindset at any point in the day. Depending on how you set things up in the phone’s Control Center and Settings, you can hide or surface certain apps, curtail incoming notifications, designate people or apps who can or can’t reach you except during an emergencies, and create different Home Screen layouts for work, unwinding from work, leisure time, etc. Focus settings can be shared across other Apple devices using the same Apple ID.
  
  
• Health Sharing. Your phone counts steps, resting heart rate and other metrics, and is a repository for lab reports, mobility data and a lot more. With iOS 15, Apple has added a Health Sharing feature that can help keep loved ones and medical providers in the loop, if, say, significant changes show up in your data. For example, you and family members may receive shared alerts of irregular heart rhythm notifications.
  
  Apple also has added a Walking Steadiness feature to the iPhone that uses iOS 15 and sensors to determine your risk of injury from falling, based on learning your gait or the way you walk over time. Your Walking Steadiness risk is classified as “OK,” “Low” or “Very Low.” The Health app includes videos of suggested exercises that may improve your strength or balance and thus minimize the chance of a spill.

• Live Text. Written text is all around us — in books, menus, photographs, signs and plenty of other places. Through the camera and the built-in smarts of the device, iOS 15 extracts and digitizes the text and makes it actionable, meaning you can add it to your notes, cut and paste it, look up a phone number and translate foreign words into English.
  
  The feature also can be used to recognize artwork, dog breeds, landmarks and nature. And yes, Live Text is roughly similar to the Google Lens image recognition and visual look up technology that has been around for several years. Live Text is one of the iOS features tied to hardware; an iPhone XS or newer is required.

• Memories. Apple has been automatically creating themed photographic memories around birthdays, vacations or a specific date or place, by scanning the people and events in your photo and video collections and adding a soundtrack. As part of iOS 15, Apple is generating a broader set of nostalgic memory types and mixes and doing so with more of a cinematic flair.
  
  That may mean matching the visuals with songs popular when the images were captured or faster and more energetic cuts and transitions to fit the mood. Or the slideshow and video collections could be set to slower tunes to create a very different vibe. If you subscribe to Apple Music, tracks may come from your library. Among the memories created during the iOS 15 beta period, were ones for “pet friends,” “tasty bites” visits to restaurants and “waterfalls.”

• Digital driver’s license. The Apple Wallet app already lets you store credit cards, debit cards, tickets, transit passes and such. (The information lives, encrypted, on Apple's servers, not in your phone's memory.) After all, Apple Wallet is a digital representation of your physical wallet. Soon you’ll be able to store your driver’s license and state IDs in the app.
  
  Residents of Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah will be among the first who can take advantage. You’ll be asked to scan your physical license, take a selfie, and be prompted to move your head and face as part of the verification process. According to Apple, Face ID or Touch ID also will ensure that only the person whose license is added to the phone can view or present it in the Wallet app, which the TSA will accept as proof of identify at airports.

This story, originally published Sept. 15, 2021, was updated to reflect the release of Apple's iOS 15.

Edward C. Baig is a contributing writer who covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune and is the author of Macs for Dummies and the coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies.