This is probably the most useful new feature that Apple has implemented in iOS 17. By placing your iPhone in Landscape mode when charging, the phone becomes a small intelligent console. It displays two contents in standby mode that can be personalized, choosing from 23 “widgets”.
For example, you can display the weather on the left and the calendar on the right, choose music or an audio book to broadcast while news from Apple News is displayed.
It’s easy to change widgets, just slide your finger on the screen from top to bottom. The display takes on a discreet red tint when ambient light is low. Finally, even in standby mode, new text messages are displayed full screen.
Calls between iPhones are much more entertaining with iOS 17. Instead of only displaying a name, you can now choose – for yourself and for your contacts – an emoji, a photo, a visual identity that will be displayed at the moment of a call.
iPhone owners can choose their own “visual identity”. For those who have an Android device, they will have to make do with the one added to them in the contacts.
Another clever idea that fans of “networking” will appreciate: simply stick two iPhones together so that the owners exchange their contact details. The same operation now makes AirDrop redemption much simpler. Once correctly configured, for example, display a photo on an iPhone, then paste it on another iPhone for the exchange to take place.
Finally, the Quebec application launched in 2015 by Martin-Luc Archambault AmpMe now faces fierce competition from Apple itself. SharePlay, which since 2021 has already allowed several iOS users to listen to a show together, is simplified. If you listen to a song on Apple Music, for example, all you have to do is bring your phone closer to another iPhone so that the latter plays the same song. The synchronization of the two devices is good, in our experience. Each user takes control and can then decide which song is played.
We thought that the “Next-Generation Portrait” presented last week, which allows you to redefine the focus of a photo in Portrait mode after the fact, was reserved for the new iPhone 15. Well, no. When we installed iOS 17, we were surprised to be able to perform this operation, bringing into focus a previously blurred person in the background of a photo. This modification is only possible with human subjects, we noted.
It is also now possible to leave an audio or video message when your interlocutor does not respond on FaceTime.