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If You Upgraded: What Do You Think of iOS 10?

Input from designers, please

By Rain Noe - September 15, 2016

in UX

The new features of Apple's much-ballyhooed iOS 10 are supposed to be "more expressive, more dynamic, and more fun than ever. Thing is, I don't want my phone to be expressive, dynamic or fun; I want it to work for the things I need it to, and right now iOS 9 does, more or less.

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For those of you brave souls that did upgrade, what do you think of the new interfaces? Media reports are what you'd expect—love, hate, gushing, complaining—but we want to hear from our design-minded readership: Is losing the swipe-on a UX improvement? Does having to re-learn where Notifications is annoy you, or is it minor, and ultimately an improvement? Is Siri now as smart as they claim? Does the Maps integration finally live up to Jobsian standards?

I stopped being an early-adopter of iOS upgrades after bricking my phone twice, so I'll wait until the bugs are gone—and after hearing your crucial designer feedback. Please let us know!

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Chris Haar

8 years ago

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Here's my favorite design blunder with iOS 10.

Leave your phone locked, receive a call, then mid-call, get a notification of some kind (email, tweet, text, whatever), then try to end the phone call... you can't do it. The typical phone screen is gone and you have to wait for the other person to hang up their phone.

That's almost the worst UI mistake you can make for A PHONE.

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Gabriel Prero

8 years ago

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I find that this update requires some more new "learning" than previous updates, but that it will ultimately be beneficial. The fact that I can pick up my phone, it knows and turns on, I can view notifications and respond (to many of them) from that screen and be done, all without actually going "into" my phone is awesome. It means I have to break the habit of automatically pressing home though to wake my screen. Because now that will bypass notifications, since Touch ID is so blazingly fast (6s). It also means I'll lose my chance to shortcut the camera, which I use all the time. So I see why they changed from touching touch ID to unlock, to actually pressing home. The notion is pick up the phone and look: don't touch yet. See your notifications, do what you need to do. Then, touch, and go into the phone if you need to. It's actually quite intuitive, if we weren't all programmed to touch Home so quick. I think some apps need polishing to their notifications, but overall, once my behavior adjusts, I think it'll be a great improvement.

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- Ben Offer
  
  Gabriel Prero
  
  8 years ago
  
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  instead of swiping camera icon up in the lock screen you now swipe right (or maybe left) anywhere on the screen to go into camera mode.
  
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Joe Crane

8 years ago

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First, they should have underlined more the fact that this really was biggest change to the iOS they have done in the same version update.

I took the shot and upgraded my ipad pro 12,9" and my iphone 6s on the first hour of the iOS 10 roll-out (I wanted my hands on the new Swift Playgrounds app :)) The update rendered my ipad nearly dead but I managed to get through the procedure - home button functioned oddly on the lock screen and the settings dialogue after reboot took way too much time to finish. Two soft resets did the trick and I got my ipad back from the abyss. Iphone upgraded to the iOS 10 nice and fast.

The UI seems ok at first, BUT: Apple have upgraded its UI/UX in the past very incrementally when compared to the Android. I have loved this about the iOS for the learning curve of added features have been very bearable compared to the other mobile ecosystems. With the iOS 10 the balance was lost: it was way too much for what I was expecting from Apple. For example I immediately dropped the new Home Button functioning for the "Open with Touch ID" version.

The next issue is with the new iOS is the small instructional texts added all around the UI. Why add more text to the Control Center when the iOS 9 version was with good size vs. functions ratio? And what are the little texts on the lock screen informing you of the actions you perform when you can clearly witness them yourself. IMO good UI doesnt need this kind of things so is the new iOS bad UI? The new horizontal lock screen on the ipad is...well..new. The clock on the left side of the screen (25% width) is something you could easily expect from Microsoft or Google, but this is Apple and the off-center clock is not the Apple I know.

Its not all bad, I personally like the map locations feature showing me where I parked my car (I like this kind of intellect prosessing of information), little faster transitions from apps to home screen and back is nice as in the iOS 9 transition was little too slow for the computing power inside the new iphones. New floating Control Center was bad at first but showed some added usability in this form (reduced finger movement when using it on the ipad pro) so when I got over from the instructional text issue it was ok. The new feature where you pick up your phone and the screen wakes is something nice too - I missed this kind of "glance screen" feature from the days with the Windows Phone (really the only thing I missed).

Apple's design philosophy have been consistent and very well in line with my own, but the macOS Sierra and the iOS 10 are showing some elements I cant really reason with. Maybe I have to re-evaluate what to expect from Apple in the future.

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Jim Agosta

8 years ago

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I have an iPhone 6s Plus and it seems a lot slower than 9.3.5. I otherwise love it

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Armin Seltz

8 years ago

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I upgraded just after they released that bug fix to prevent you bricking from your phone. I have a 4G unlimited plan and was surprised you can still only download the over the air update using wifi. Its been running fine for the last day and until I just read it in another comment I hadnt even noticed that you cant swipe to unlock anymore - Touch ID seems faster now on iPhone6. What I did notice though, is that you can unlock your phone with TouchID, but unless you press down the home button, it will stay on the lock screen and just say unlocked at the top where the time is normally. That's strange for me, because normally I take my phone, press the home button to light up the screen and then just put my thumb on the home button to unlock.
Noticed that alarm clock has an automatic dark mode now, which is nice if the last thing you do in bed is set your alarm on your phone. Really like the widgets and surprised how many apps had widgets already - at least 30. Some really useful ones that will save me opening the app for a lot of things - calender, todoist, mail, etc.
I dont like control center swipe left to get to music controls, I never use airdrop and airplay mirroring and nightshift is automatic, but I listen to music all the time. Would be nice if you could just swipe those 3 buttons out of the way and music controls come in, especially since Siri is still pretty bad at music control and apparently has also never heard of the podcast app.
Notifications are too bright and big for me, although they seem more functional now, like being able to reply to a message, again without opening the app. It feels like iOS 10 is a lot more coherent and integrated than iOS 9 was.

But most importantly: after all those "shot on iPhone" commercials, amazing new cameras and a 1 GB update, they added just 1 new wallpaper! What a let down..

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Jacob Breinholt

8 years ago

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I upgraded w/o using iTunes and had no issues. TBH, I barely notice the difference from 9, aside from the notifications. The subtle aesthetic changes are kind of nice, and add to the look/feel of the UX in my opinion. I can't comment on Siri or Maps since I never use either of them (I'm a Google maps loyalist). I was a bit annoyed at having to click the home button to open the phone after unlocking. But that was a pretty easy setting to change back. One additional check mark in the 'cons' column is that my battery life doesn't seem to go as far on the new iOS. Or that could just be the built in subliminal messaging telling me to buy the new model.

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Pete Schirmer

8 years ago

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I feel the notifications are a little too 'in your face' and dislike the multiple pages in the control center, swipe up then left to get to music controls, the weird left aligned clock on ipad in portrait mode.. and the animations seem to take longer when opening / closing apps. And don't get me started on the mess the made with messages. There's a few nice things, I like swipe left from lock to get to the camera, All in all not impressed with the visual / motion updates. That said there's some solid technology improvements. Finally a home app for IoT, and thankfully they let you use an iPad instead of a appleTV as your home base. Deleting unused apple apps. Close all safari tabs.. Opening siri to 3rd parties...

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