With all of the new features soon to come our way with iOS 15, it’s easy to forget that Apple baked some compelling new features into its iOS 14.5 update this past April. While Apple, historically speaking, has typically shied away from introducing significant new features this late in the year, the company in recent years mixed up its release strategy amid a flurry of criticism concerning incredibly buggy iOS releases.
So while Apple has traditionally packed as many new features as it could into a brand new iOS release, the company now takes a more measured approach. The overarching goal in this respect is to make sure that new features are completely polished and ready to go when they arrive. And sometimes this means that some features won’t debut until a few months after a major iOS release.
The April release of iOS 14.5 is a perfect illustration of this strategy in action. Aside from some updates to the company’s Maps app and a ton of new emojis, iOS 14.5 also introduced new voice options for Siri. Additionally, the default Siri voice is no longer female when setting up your iPhone for the first time.
You can listen to what some of the new voices sound like over here.
If you want to enable or play around with Siri’s new voices, the process is pretty straightforward. To get started open up the Settings app and scroll down to the Siri & Search section. Upon selecting that, tap Siri Voice whereupon you’ll be able to pick between four distinct voices. Predictably, tapping each voice will play a preview of what that voice sounds like.
Recall that back in iOS 13, the only two Siri Voice options were between Male and Female. With four options to choose from, users should have an easier time finding a voice that works for them.
Looking ahead, an iOS 14.7 update is likely coming soon, but there’s no denying that the more exciting update is slated to happen in September once Apple rolls out iOS 15. Though iOS 15 may lack a singular “killer feature,” the update is nonetheless stacked with several new and exciting features that should significantly improve the overall user experience.
A quick selection of three iOS 15 features we’re especially excited about — which you can read about fully over here — include the following:
Better text selection – The magnification loupe for text selection on iOS is finally back.
Find lost devices even when turned off – Thanks to the ‘Find My network’, it will soon be possible to track and locate a missing iOS device even if it happens to be turned off.
Portrait mode for FaceTime calls – This one is pretty cool, and hopefully the impending iPhone 13 release will include Portrait mode support for video across the board.