Beta Testing iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 on Mid-Age Devices: The Cosmetic Changes, App Updates & What’s Missing

iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 brought us some really exciting and much awaited updates and features. If you are thinking about installing the beta on your primary device, let me help you decide that in this story…

Aditya Darekar
Mac O’Clock
30 min readJun 13, 2024

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Source: Author | iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 Beta Features Thumbnail

As soon as WWDC’24 (Day 1) came to an end, I turned on automatic updates on my iPhone and iPad and installed the developer beta update. For me it was a no-brainer since I loved all the new updates they announced. But deciding to install the betas, especially the developer ones on your primary device, is not as easy. There is always the risk of experiencing uncountable bugs, crashes, battery drains, and whatnot.

Which is why I am writing this story. I decided to go all in with the Betas and discuss the prominent changes — both cosmetic ones and functional updates. Also, I have installed iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 on my iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Air 4 (2020), respectively.

The iOS 18 Developer Beta 1 came in 6.91GB on my iPhone 13 Pro and 6.44GB on my iPad Air 4th Gen.

Source: Author | My iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Air 4th Gen

These are mid-age devices: not the latest and greatest but not too old, either, just 2–3 generations behind. So it should make my experience a good benchmark for you to decide how safe it is to install these updates on your devices and what features and updates are available as of the first beta update.

Feel free to skip around the story and read what’s most interesting to you. Here’s an index that could help you better:

👉 INDEX 👈

🆕 Cosmetic Changes

Customizing Home Screen & Lock Screen
Control Center & The New Control Gallery

📲 App Updates

Settings
Phone
Notes
Calculator & Math Notes
Reminders x Calendar
Photos
Messages
Freeform
Health & Fitness
Journal
Books
Podcast
Passwords App

🧑‍💻 What Isn't Here Yet

🔋📊 Battery Life and Stability

🙌 Conclusion

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🆕 Cosmetic Changes

Customizing Lock Screen & Home Screen

This year, Apple did not introduce any revolutionary new wallpapers with iOS 18. Just the basic thematic iOS 18 ones and they come in four different colors — Pink, Yellow, Purple, and Azure. Simple and Elegant. On iPad, the colors differ a bit — Indigo, Blue, Green, and Purple. There is Light Mode and Dark Mode for each and you can set the Depth Effect for them on both your iPhone and iPad.

Source: Author | New iOS 18 Wallpapers

But what’s changed on the lock screen is that Apple now lets you change the two controls at the bottom of the lock screen that were reserved for Flashlight and Camera alone. When you customize your wallpaper, you can tap on your lock screen and choose a new action to be set up for these two buttons — ranging from opening any app to launching a shortcut, to toggling an accessibility setting or any other control. Thank You for listening to us, Apple!

Source: Author | Customizing Lock Screen Controls

The Home Screen also is customizable such that you can place the app icons wherever you want on the home screen.

Source: Author | Rearranging app icons on iOS 18

However, if you have a widget on the screen then this doesn’t work well because the widgets tend to snap in the corner and not in the middle of the screen. This feels like a real bummer.

Talking of widgets, they now can be resized more easily.

On your iPhone, you can long press any app and if the app supports widgets then you can choose the widget form (small, medium, or large) directly from the menu to replace the app. This works the other way round too — so you can long press a widget and turn it back into a app.

Source: Author | Toggling Widgets from Apps and vice versa

On your iPhone or iPad, simply going into Jiggle Mode and trying to resize them by pulling the corners of the widget with your fingers does the job.

Source: Author | Changing Widget Size on iPadOS 18

A big update to home screen customizing fanatics is that you can now color the app icons according to the theme of your wallpaper or system appearance (light mode or dark mode). On your iPhone or iPad, first, go into Jiggle Mode, then tap ‘Edit’ on the top-left corner and choose ‘Customize’. You can now choose between Automatic, Light, Dark or Tinted. Automatic changes the theme according to the system appearance while Tinted allows you to choose from the Color Palette.

Source: Author | Customizing Home Screen on iOS 18

You can even choose to make your icons larger now — this will enlarge the app icons and remove the app name or widget name that usually appears below them on the home screen. This was a much-needed feature as most app icons are enough to recognize the app. There is also a dark mode setting on the extreme left if you notice — this will further darken the wallpaper in the background.

Source: Author | Small and Large App Icon Options in iOS 18

You can also choose to hide certain apps and lock them now by long pressing the app icon and choosing ‘Require FaceID’ (or TouchID). A new pop-up will ask if you want to simply lock the app using biometrics or hide and require biometrics. Once you hide the app, it then moves to a Hidden folder within your App Library that requires your biometrics to see your hidden apps. All your notifications and calls from that hidden app will now be obscured. Even Spotlight or Siri will not be able to show or access this app.

Source: Author | Hiding Apps in iOS 18

This is a great way to stay away from social media addiction instead of deactivating your account or deleting the app.

Control Center and the New Control Gallery

Control Center also got a much-needed update. The last time it was updated was probably iOS 9 or 10. Since then a lot of new features have been added to iOS and it’s only fair that they get their space in the Control Center.

Accessing the new Control Center is the same as swiping from the top right corner of your iPhone/iPad Screen. What’s new is that the individual controls are now circular and not square. This is probably Apple trying to familiarise everyone with the visionOS language by adopting a similar theme across the board.

Source: Author | Control Center in iOS 18

On the top right corner is the Power Button — a new quick and easy way to turn off your device.

Also, there are multiple pages in the Control Center. Apple is calling them ‘Control Groups’. You can access them one by one by tapping on the favicon for each Control Group or simply sliding your finger down with a long press, right from the beginning.

Source: Author | Control Groups in iOS 18

Long-pressing right below the Control Group (Jiggle Mode for Control Center, I guess) and tapping ‘Add a Control’ allows you to add new controls to the Group from the new Control Gallery — these controls range from launching the app (using Shortcut) to audio/visual accessibility features to media playbacks and much more.

Source: Author | Control Gallery

Resizing a control is similar to resizing a widget now. You just have to pull the corner of the control, once you are in Jiggle Mode of the Control Center.

Source: Author | Changing sizes of Controls within the Control Center

The word on the street is that iOS 18 makes your iPhone look like an Android. Or a Jailbroken iPhone. And the memes are only going to go up as people try out the public beta soon. The dark mode home screen with dark app icons looks good but is limited only to first-party apps. It’s going to be a while until all the apps you use, start offering dark app icons as an option. Till then, the asymmetry is going to rule and break your home screen’s theme.

These were some of the cosmetic changes I noticed in the first beta of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. Some of them were long overdue and though it’s been just a few hours since I am on this beta, I can’t believe how I went so long without them. For me, the Dark Mode theme for the home screen along with larger icons (with no app names underneath) is one of the best cosmetic changes on iOS 18.

And for iPadOS 18, the functional updates are more revolutionary than these cosmetic changes. So let’s dive deeper into them in our next section — App Updates.

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📲 App Updates

Settings

As soon as you open Settings, the first thing you are about to notice is that some of the settings within have been moved around, regrouped, and hidden under menus. I know this feels like a cosmetic change and probably is but the Settings app is way too important to classify as non-functional.

You will notice that Battery is now regrouped and appears in the first settings section. Also, all your app settings are now regrouped under ‘Apps’ instead of appearing at the end in a huge list format. This new Apps group is categorized alphabetically and you can even search for them at the top.

Source: Author | New Regroupings in Settings App

Another update within Settings is your iCloud page. When you open Settings tap on your name at the top and then tap iCloud, you notice that this page has been redesigned. Different apps taking up your iCloud Storage appear as tiles showing the items each of them has. Under ‘Manage Storage’, when you click on a certain app, you can see a breakdown of what percentage of iCloud Storage it uses.

A New ‘Sign in with Apple’ tab is also present under profile that shows you all the apps that are using your Apple ID for login.

Source: Author | New ‘iCloud ’ & ‘Sign In With Apple’ Page

Heading to ‘Privacy & Security’, you will notice that it has been revamped too. A lot of regrouping and when you tap on a certain app to check its privacy limitations, you will notice a cleaner-looking UI compared to what was there before.

Background Sounds under Settings >> Accessibility >> Audio & Visual, now have two new sounds — Fire and Night. Unfortunately on my iPhone and iPad, I was not able to make the new background sounds work. They were probably downloading in the background but showed no progress of completion.

Phone

The phone also received some good updates this year.

T9 Dialling just made a debut on iPhone with iOS 18. Start typing a number on the keypad and you will start seeing suggestions for the contact you are trying to dial.

Source: Author | T9 Dialing in Phone

The Recent tab in the Phone app has now been updated to show the contact photo along with the contact name.

Source: Author | Redesigned Recents tab in Phone (names hidden for privacy concerns)

Call Recording is another feature that has debuted with iOS 18. However, I wasn’t able to get this working as it requires both devices (caller and recipient) to be on iOS 18. I guess this would be a privacy concern for the recipient if they aren’t notified about the call being recorded so being on the same iOS update is mandatory. Also, I happened to check the footnotes of iOS 18 Preview on Apple’s website and this feature seems to be compatible only with iPhone 12 or later.

But the most exciting update is to Voicemail notification. You can view a transcription of the voicemail as a notification just like an iMessage.

Source: Author | Voicemail Transcription (named hidden for privacy concerns)

Notes

Notes have received some worth of updates this year. Notion users might like this even more. Apple Notes now allows you to create collapsable sections within your notes. If you already have headings formatted as Header 1 or Header 2 then you will notice a small down arrow on it’s left. Tapping on it should collapse the body below it under that header.

Source: Author | Collapsable Headers in Notes

It is also possible to change the color of your text in Notes now from your iPhone and iPad. This is available under the format tool that says ‘Aa’. However, you can only choose from a list of five colors — Purple, Pink, Orange, Mint, and Blue. On your Mac, you could always change the text color and also choose from the entire color palette. Hopefully, Apple will give us more color choices with upcoming betas or by public release.

Source: Author | Changing Text Color

Another great update is the addition of Recording Audio as an attachment. You can now record a voice memo and save it within the note. You will also see a transcription for the audio you record.

Source: Author | Recording Audio Attachment (and its Transcription)

There is also Smart Script on iPadOS 18 which promises to learn from your handwriting and when you lean away from your handwriting skills and write haphazardly, the OS takes care of correcting it. You can even copy text from other sites and paste them into your handwriting. However, when I tried to turn on this feature (using the Markup settings), it told me it hadn’t downloaded completely so I wasn’t able to test this as of the first beta.

Source: Author | Smart Script seems to be unavailable

Also, there are two more brush/pen options in Markup — A Calligraphy and an Airbrush tool.

Source: Author | New Markup Tools

But one of the best Notes features is something that has been very well integrated between the Calculator and the Notes app. I was confused whether I should be covering it within Notes or not but this next one needs a section of its own.

Calculator & Math Notes

Introducing Calculator for iPad. Let the memes drop.

The first few moments when they discussed the Calculator app on the iPad, I was a bit underwhelmed because it seemed a lot like the iPhone or Mac app. But then our dear Craig lifted his Apple Pencil (Pro, obviously) and tapped on a menu within the Calculator app that went straight to something they are now calling ‘Math Notes’. And since then I just can’t get over how mind-blowing this thing is.

Source: Author | Trying out Math Notes on iPhone

Write down a simple math expression along with an “=“ sign and within a second your device will suggest the answer. Tap on the suggestion to insert it and there you have the answer written next to the ‘=‘ sign, in what seems like a handwritten annotation.

Source: Author | The handwritten results that appear in Math Notes

I have had so much fun playing with this as soon as I updated to iOS 18. Yup, you heard it right — Math Notes works on iPhone too. For simple math equations, I had no problems with it. You can use the alphabet “x” for multiplication instead of the asterisk and now it quickly recognizes it as a multiplication sign and converts it into one. The same goes for division too when you try to use the ‘/‘ sign.

However, when I went a level higher and tried out algebraic equations and tried to plot a graph, it seemed to have a problem with my handwritten variables. And I can understand this. If you notice, the red boxing or lining around the variable or number probably signifies that it is not able to recognize the numeral properly. The blue boxing/lining probably indicates what it can recognize well.

Source: Author | Graphing in Math Notes on iPhone (too much error)

This is only the first beta and writing with your fingers on your iPhone is a bit tedious so I can understand this shortcoming. But, if you want to realize the full potential of Math Notes, then you need to use this on an iPad with an Apple Pencil.

I threw in a bunch of equations at it using the Apple Pencil and this time it did not disappoint. The graph turned out right. Tapping on the graph gives you more control over its settings. You can change the color of the graph line, look at the graph equation, and duplicate the graph.

Source: Author | Graphing in Math Notes on iPad

It also allows you to zoom into the graph and have a look at the points of intersection. The best part is that Math Notes is dynamic. Try changing the equation and you will notice the graph changing correspondingly. Annotation works on the graph too. Here’s an example of how I used it:

Source: Author | Annotating Graphs in Math Notes

Apple also demoed another way you could use Math Notes — to keep a tally of the score when you are playing some game with your friends. It not only adds up the scores very well but also gives you control over changing an individual number (score) by sliding left or right to increase/decrease its value. The final tally also changes dynamically when you change an individual number.

Source: Author | Using Math Notes to keep score during a game of Scrabble with friends.

You can also mention a bunch of variables and then mention an equation to perform an operation like addition and get the results within seconds. The demo they showed off for Math Notes during the WWDC event was nothing short of Brilliant and I have to say, even in its first beta, it works like MAGIC!

But that’s not all there is for Calculator. The app also has a History tab to show you previous results that you may need. There is also a ‘Convert’ option in the Menu that mentions Basic, Scientific, and Math Notes. This is essentially a unit converter within the Calculator app that helps with the conversion of Angle, Area, Currency, Data, Energy, Force, Fuel, Length, Power, Pressure, Speed, Temperature, Time, Volume, and Weight units. All these features work on the new Calculator app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Source: Author | The History page (left) and Conversion options (right)

A few years back, in an interview with Marques Brownlee, our Hair-Force One leader, Craig Federighi (Head of Software at Apple) had said that Apple never did a Calculator app for the iPad because they just hadn’t reached a “WOW” moment with the iPad Calculator app design. It was clear they were in no mood to just scale the iPhone app for the iPad and were planning something huge. A lot of jokes were made about the way Apple thinks and works but now when I look at Math Notes… I understand what Craig meant. They were probably training machine learning models for this feature for years now and waiting for their hardware to be powerful enough to support it.

Verdict: The Calculator App for iPad was worth the wait.

Reminders x Calendar

This has been long overdue too. I wrote about it just a month or two ago mentioning how Apple Notes, Reminders, and Calendar need to be deeply integrated. Well, we didn’t exactly get a “DEEP” integration but we did get somewhat of a cool integration between Reminders and Calendars.

Source: Author | Setting a Reminder in Calendar

You can now add, edit, or delete a reminder right from the Calendar app. Your reminder appears on your Calendar so that you don’t have to switch between two apps before confirming a new appointment or creating a new event in the Calendar. However, when you receive the notification for the reminder, it comes from the Reminders app only.

This isn’t everything I asked or wished for but after watching the demo of “Apple Intelligence”, I can only hope that things move in a better direction with all these app integrations and context-sensitive actions they plan for future updates.

Photos

One of the biggest redesigns that any app got this year is the Photos app. I am not sure if it was required but I am not complaining about the new update either. It looks very clean and minimal at the forefront while tucking in all the maximality below.

When you open the app, you realize that your Recent Photos are right in front of you, taking up 70% of the screen. When you swipe down on this carousel, it changes to Library mode wherein all your photos are arranged chronologically allowing you to switch between Month-wise and Year-wise collections.

Source: Author | Swiping from Recent Photos to Library Mode

The best part — you can now filter the photos based on recently added, date captured, or type of media (videos, screen recordings, favorites, edited). You can even choose to turn off screenshots so you don’t see them in your Library.

Source: Author | Filter Options in Photos are crazy good

Swiping up from the Photos on the landing page, you see a new ‘Recent Days’ section that shows moments from the past few days by excluding screenshots and other unnecessary media from them. A new ‘Trips’ section shows you highlights of your recent outdoor trips.

Source: Author | Trips within Photos

Another great change within Photos is the ‘Utilities’ section which indexes your photos based on media type like receipts, QR codes, documents, handwriting, illustrations, recently shared, recently saved, etc. This makes finding certain things in your library much easier.

Source: Author | Utilities categorizing photos as different types of media

There is even a wallpaper suggestion section at the bottom of the app that automatically curates wallpaper-worthy pictures from your library. Another great change within Photos is the ‘Customize’ option — you can choose the sections you want or don’t want to see in your Photos app. Say, you might want ‘People & Pets’ but not Wallpaper Suggestions or Trips.

Source: Author | Customizing Collections in Photos

You can even customize the carousel view at the top. When you swipe left or right on the Photos carousel, you can view other things such as Videos, Features Photos, Featured Memories, etc. These can be customized and you can add as many carousels as you wish such as People & Pets, Trips, Albums etc.

Source: Author | Swiping through carousels and customizing them

Tapping on your profile icon on the top-right corner of the screen, you see all Photos app settings and they look very much like how they do on Mac. If you notice more closely, the profile icon also has a blue ring going around it that shows the progress of the iCloud Sync. Love the detailing and minimality of the design.

Source: Author | New iCloud Photo Sync Progress Bar

Beside your profile is the Search button which launches the redesigned Search tab. It even gives you certain prompts to get started with searching and all of the ones I saw in my Photo Library were extremely contextual. It would be great to see what Apple Intelligence does on top of this to create a better experience.

Source: Author | Search within Photos just got better

I love how Apple went all-in on customizability this year with iOS 18.

Messages

The year that Apple adds RCS support for iMessage is also going to be the year Apple complicates iMessage for Android folks.

At least, that’s what they thought about before announcing emoji tapback wherein you can choose any emoji you wish for a tapback instead of the four mentioned. Not just this but they also devised a way for iMessage users to create emojis of their own with text prompts. These newly created emojis can then be used for tapback with inline messages or even as stickers.

Source: Author | Emoji Tapback in iMessage

Though the Genmoji feature hasn’t debuted yet in the first beta, we are yet to see how the Messages app on Android handles this. What has debuted is the new text effects that include eight different types of effects apart from bold, italics, underline, and strikethrough.

Source: Author | Text Effects in iMessage

You can also schedule messages to send at a later date or time. This only works for messages you want to send within a fortnight (two-week period). You can modify the date/time of a scheduled message even after you are done scheduling and sending.

Source: Author | Scheduling messages using ‘Send Later’ in iMessage

Freeform

Freeform is one app that I am getting in the zone of using now and then for some other purpose. I love its flexibility and with the new iPadOS 18 update, it adds a new ‘Scene’ feature that allows you to zoom into certain areas within your board’s infinite canvas and save them.

This can be helpful with presentations when you don’t want your audience to focus on the entire board at once. You can event export a scene as a document or get it printed.

Source: Author | New Scenes within Freeform

A new diagramming tool has also debuted allowing you to make better connections of your ideas on the board with different types of lines.

Source: Author | New Diagramming Tools in Freeform

Just a quick detour… if you like such kind of tech stories, consider signing up for my email newsletter. It’s 100% FREE and will remain for all my lovely audience.

Health & Fitness

A much-awaited and needed redesign is that of the Fitness app. It looked way too boring but now since iOS 18 is all about allowing users to customize what they want to see, the Fitness app has become its biggest benefactor.

You can now choose the tiles with the metrics you want to see and hide the others in the Summary. For the workouts you do the most, you get a separate streak tile to see how long and how much of the workout you did in the past week.

Source: Author | Customizing Summary in Fitness

You can even choose to pause your activity rings now or just customize your move goal for each day of the week. This way you can choose your days of activity and recovery without worrying about breaking your streak.

Source: Author | Pausing Rings and Changing Move Goals

Two new features coming to Fitness are Vitals & Training Load.

Vitals uses the data collected from your Apple Watch such as HRV, Wrist Temperature, Sleep Duration, and Blood Oxygen Level to determine how you feel overall and whether it’s in the typical range or below or above that range. This is still nowhere near apps like Athlytic Pro that offer much more in-depth reviews of your vitals and recovery level.

Source: Author | Vitals in Health App

Training Load is another great feature that comes as a savior for many athletes and marathon trainers. It works on manual input wherein after every workout, you rate it on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being too easy and 10 being extremely difficult) based on the level of your perceived exhaustion. This is later clubbed with your Vitals data and used to understand your fitness level for future workouts.

Source: Author | Rating your effort after a work in Training Load

There are even new widgets in both Health and Fitness — the Vitals widget (Health), Cycle Tracking (Health), and Training Load (Fitness).

Currently, I am reserving my thoughts on these two new features because I don’t have enough data to get them working. I plan on writing a story next month focusing just on the Fitness features of iOS 18 and covering these two features in much more depth.

Journal

The Journal app has also received some noticeable updates.

When writing a new journal entry, you have now options to format the text as a quote, bullet points, dashed lists, or numbered lists. Apart from this, you can also choose a color from the color palette to change the text color.

Source: Author | Rich Text Formatting in Journal

The title of the journal entry now appears distinct from the rest of the body and you can choose to not have the title in the first place itself.

The Journal app now allows you to log your ‘State of Mind’ directly from within the app instead of the Health app. In fact, writing in Journal now logs as Mindful Minutes within your Health app too (You can turn this off in Settings >> Health >> Data Access & Devices >> Journal >> Mindful Minutes).

Another great and much-needed integration.

Source: Author | Health x Journal integration

Another great win for the Journal is that you can now export all your Journal entries within the Settings app. When you export all the journal entries, these are saved as a ZIP file. It is also possible to export a single journal entry as a PDF by first choosing the print option and then sharing it to save as a PDF in Files.

Source: Author | Exportng all journal entries through Settings (left) and exporting single journal entry by printing (right)

You can also view your Journal Insights now allowing you to see your Weekly Streak and Longest Streak of how many words you wrote, on how many days, and in all the different locations. There are also some interactive widgets available for the home screen that allow you to view a writing prompt or start a new journal entry.

Source: Author | Journal Insights in iOS 18

However, it is still disappointing to know that the Journal app has still not made it to the iPad or Mac with the latest update. The iPad would be a great device to log journal entries on. I have a feeling that Apple is trying to do something great behind the scenes for the Journal experience on iPad & Mac just like they did for the new Calculator app on iPad. Probably something that would make handwritten journal entries possible too. I hope the wait will be worth it, this time around too.

By the way, if you are looking for a guide to get started with Apple’s Journal app, this story could help you with just that…

Books

I was disappointed when Apple once again ignored this underrated first-party app during WWDC. While Books hasn’t completely missed out on redesigns in the past few years, it still lacks the attention that Apple Music or Podcast gets.

This year, I could notice only one new feature. While reading a book, you now have the option to turn on Line Guide. This highlights one line on the page at a time and you can choose the level of blurriness you want for the background when the line guide is turned on.

It’s like having the Theatre Mode in YouTube. Crazy Thought — Did they do this to enhance the experience of reading books on the Apple Vision Pro? This does seem something on the lines of blending into a virtual environment…

Source: Author | Line Guide in Apple Books

I can see this being used by those who tend to lose focus and end up reading a plot twist mentioned on the same page or paragraph, a few lines away.

Podcast

The podcast got a transcript update sometime during the iOS 17.4 update. However, it was difficult to copy the selected text from the transcript and paste it elsewhere. I was hoping iOS 18 would fix it but there has been no mention of it.

Instead, I see a new option to share the podcast from the transcript from a certain time stamp. Just a link. I hope by the time of the public release or in some future beta, they work this out so that sharing Podcast transcripts becomes easier.

Passwords App

With every new iOS update, there is a new app launch too. iOS 16 brought us Freeform, iOS 17 brought us Journal and now iOS 18 has brought us a Password app. Wait not just any, but the Apple Password app.

Source: Author | New Passwords App in iOS 18

They have taken out iCloud Keychain from the settings of our iPhone/iPad and put inside a beautifully designed app authenticated by the biometric available on your device (FaceID or TouchID). The app looks clean and shows you how many Passkeys, Family passwords, Codes (for Authentication), and WiFi passwords you have stored in iCloud. It also shows you the passwords that are at a high risk of security breach because of their appearance in a data leak.

It’s great they finally did this. Keychain Access was always a separate app on Mac and a very good one at that. It’s great to see that the iPhone and iPad have got it too now and users don’t have to keep digging into the Settings app every time to search for a password.

Even though it may seem that everything Apple talked about in their WWDC event seems to have materialized in the first beta, we are far from it. There are a lot of features that are only coming later this year and some that don’t even have a certain release date.

🧑‍💻 What Isn’t Here Yet

Source: Apple | All the Announced Updates that didn’t make it to the First Developer Beta of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 for me.

🔋📊 Battery Life and Stability

The reason why this story did not come out within 24 hours of the WWDC event is that even though I had installed the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 developer betas on my devices, I wanted to test out how stable they are and what the battery life is like. That is only possible if I have more than 24 hours of testing data.

So, let’s keep this short. You can read the verdict right here:

Battery Life: 8/10 for iPhone and iPad

Stability: 7/10 for iPhone and 4/10 for iPad

If you want to know more about the ratings I just gave, keep reading:

The Battery life on my iPhone 13 Pro running the iOS 18 Developer Beta 1 is not bad at all. It feels very similar to the last version — iOS 17.5. The battery didn’t drain too much even though there was a lot of background activity in Photos and some other apps that were indexing data after the new install. I averaged around 6 hours of screen time in a single charge cycle. Even on my iPad Air 4th Gen running iPadOS 18, the battery is pretty good. A 9-hour screen time after using 125% battery indicates that I was able to use the iPad for almost 7 hours in one charge cycle.

Source: Author | Battery Life on my iPhone (left) and iPad (right)

Stability is a bit concerning, as they should be for the first developer beta. On the iPhone, I have had zero system crashes or app crashes in the past 24+ hours. However, I did notice some app icon bugs while trying to customize the home screen. Opening the app once and closing out of them, solved the issue. There have been no WiFi, Cellular Data, or Bluetooth connectivity issues either. But the story is a bit different for my iPad Air. The display froze when I tried to go into Jiggle Mode to rearrange app icons on the home screen. Also, Freeform has crashed on me more times than I used it. I even had issues with the Magic Keyboard connectivity once. A quick restart of the iPad solved all these issues.

Source: Author | A few moments before the screen froze and the iPad had to be restarted

I would recommend staying away from iPadOS 18 developer beta for now. If you have important banking apps on your iPhone, I would suggest staying away from iOS 18 Developer Beta too. Waiting for the Public Beta would be the best alternative if you don’t have a secondary device.

🙌 Conclusion

This year’s WWDC was one of the greatest ones in a long time. I don’t remember the last time I went like ‘WOW’ every few minutes. Some of the apps got a straight-up redesign while others got meaningful updates.

Source: Author | Beta Testing iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 on primary devices is risky. Always proceed with backup(s).

The word on the street was that the first few betas for these OS updates were going to be super buggy and unstable. But I was prepared for it. I had taken up backups right before WWDC started and after my recap story of the event, I put both my iPhone and iPad down for the Developer Beta install. This story was aimed towards providing a benchmark for how certain new features are working on mid-age devices like my iPhone 13 Pro and iPad Air 4th Gen. This would help you decide if your device would function better or worse on the new beta.

But I am sure I have missed a bunch of stuff in my limited hours of usage and testing. If you feel, I missed out on something notable that you would like me to test out, do let me know in the comments below. I will be sure to reply to all comments and let you know how it works in the beta.

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Originally published on adiexplains.wordpress.com on June 12, 2024.

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Aditya Darekar
Mac O’Clock

23 | IT Graduate | Tech Enthusiast | Digital Artist | Bibliophile | Love to write what I read 📚and watch 📺