Apple announced iOS 14 during the WWDC 2020 developers conference. The new version of iOS brings lots of new features, such as new Siri UI, a smaller call screen, new home screen layout options, widgets on the home screen, improved Messages and Apple Maps apps, and more.
While iOS 14 is one of the most exciting iOS updates we’ve seen in the past few years, we did notice similarities between these new features and some regular android features.
App list view or the App Library
The App Library in iOS 14 looks very similar to the app drawer on Android – which is basically a list of apps found on Android devices.
The difference here is that while the Android version is just a straight list of all the apps, Apple’s App Library automatically sorts apps into different categories, like social, entertainment, productivity. But then again, this can be achieved manually on Andeoid devices.
Home Screen and Widgets
With iOS 14, the iPhone home screen will look a bit more like an Android device. iPhone users will soon be able to pin widgets, or shortcuts to features found inside an app, to their home screens. Widgets have long been a part of Android devices, as well as on Windows phones.
Translate
Apple introduced a new Translate app that’s designed for use in real-time conversation. It can translate about 11 languages, including English, Mandarin Chinese, French, German and Korean. Smells like Google translate.
Picture-in-Picture
Oh the famous picture-in-picture! You can use this feature to watch videos or view video calls even when you’re using other apps. Samsung Galaxy phones have been able to do this for years. But Apple turned it up by making this version resizeable.
Smaller call screen
Apple users have complained for years that calls usually take up the whole screen and they become ‘un-ignorable’. But with iOS 14, calls will now take only a small portion of the screen, just like on Android devices.
Emoji search in keyboard
Not sure why it took this long but ios14 now comes with a search interface for finding emojis inside the keyboard app. Looks familiar, or is it just me?
Discreet Siri
On iOS 14, Siri will appear with a small icon at the bottom of the screen, instead of taking over the entire display. Results of queries appear in smaller windows at the top of the screen, without blocking the rest of the display. This is also similar to how Google Assistant works on Android, although its results are shown in a small window at the bottom of the display, not the top.
