iOS 18 RC Released - What's New? | iOS 18 Features, Changes, Performance & Battery Life
Apple just released iOS 18 RC to registered developers & Public Beta testers - both are exactly the same and will likely be the same as the final release next week. So in this video, we discuss the new features and changes, bugs/bug fixes, the performance & battery life, along with when to expect iOS 18 and 18.1. Enjoy!
Apple just released iOS 18 RC to registered developers & Public Beta testers - both are exactly the same and will likely be the same as the final release next week. So in this video, we discuss the new features and changes, bugs/bug fixes, the performance & battery life, along with when to expect iOS 18 and 18.1. Enjoy!
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TechTranscript
00:00What's up guys, my name's Brandon and today Apple released iOS 18 RC or Release Candidate
00:06for beta testers. Now along with this iOS release, we also got the Release Candidate build
00:12for iPadOS 18, WatchOS 11, macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, and VisionOS 2. And this update came in at
00:21just under 7 gigabytes on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is a typical size when you go from a beta
00:28to an RC or a final release or vice versa. So that is a big size, it will take a while to download,
00:35but that's what we have here. Now let's go ahead and check out the build number for iOS 18 and our
00:40settings general about. It is 22A3354. So this should be the same build number as the official
00:48release when that launches next week. And we'll talk more about that near the end of this video,
00:52but unless we get an RC2, this will be the final build of 18.0. And then going back to the modem
00:59firmware, that remains the same yet again. It's still at 2.16.06 on the iPhone 15 series.
01:08Alright, so now what's new here in iOS 18 RC? So first off, I want to give a quick shout out to
01:14everybody who joined the live stream earlier. So I did do a live stream for the iPhone 16 event,
01:19so shout out to the live stream gang. And anytime Apple does an iPhone event, we always get the RC
01:25build afterwards. So usually we get to see some new features added that were announced alongside
01:30the new iPhones. And that appears to be exactly what happened this time around as well, because
01:35we got a really big change in the camera application, specifically under the video
01:42section. So I'm going to start playing a video and you guys tell me if you see something new here.
01:46Notice it? Well, it's this right here. You can now pause video recordings and this does not require
01:53the iPhone 16. I'm on the iPhone 15 here. And if you pause that, you can see what it looks like.
01:58We also have a little badge up here that says paused. And you can see that behind the number
02:04right there, the length that you are into the video, it is kind of like blinking. It's kind
02:08of flashing that gray color. And even while it's paused, you can turn a flash on. So maybe if you
02:15realized a shot was too dark and you wanted to pause it and then turn flash on, you can now do
02:20that. And if you want to resume or if you could take a screenshot as well, and you could adjust
02:24all of your settings here as well, including the zoom. So if you want to resume, you just press
02:29right here and it will resume that video and you can carry on. Now, when you do this and you stop,
02:35if we go into our video, you can see that if we go to the 11 second mark, you're not going to see
02:39like a jump or anything like that. It basically just perfectly stitches together the video. Now,
02:45if something is moving, obviously you'll be able to tell a difference, but that is pretty cool. And
02:49if you swipe up, there's no indication that it was ever paused or anything like that. There's
02:54no badge for that. And here's another example I'll do. So I'll be going side to side and let's just
02:58say I pause it when I'm over here and then I resume when I'm over here. Here's what that
03:03will look like in a video. You can see that you will see a little bit of a jump here. So there
03:08we go. You can see there is a little bit of a jump, obviously, you know, if you move the position,
03:12but you can see it does still work properly. Now I know Android's had this forever. iPhone
03:17has been needing this forever and it's finally here, but that's not all. We also have another
03:21change in the camera. So now if you go to shoot in 4k 60, for example, let's just shoot a quick
03:26video in 4k 60. Now, what if we did not mean to shoot that in 60 FPS, or for some reason,
03:33we just want to change a certain part of that video to 30 FPS? Well, before iOS 18, that was
03:39not possible. But now if you go into the edit view, you'll notice that we have a new icon up in
03:45the top right-hand corner. And when you tap on that, you can change the playback speed. And you
03:50can also change this on a per clip basis. So for example, we have 60 FPS. So if you want to play
03:56this at 30 FPS, you can select that. And now you can choose what part of the video you want to be
04:02in 30 FPS, as opposed to 60. So it's similar to what we saw with slow mode before, but now you
04:09can do this with regular videos without having to go into a special mode or anything. It's very
04:15awesome. And this will be extremely helpful when the new iPhone 16 comes out, which can shoot in
04:21120 FPS. And you can go in here and tweak your settings as well for this feature. So that is
04:27pretty awesome. And that is new in iOS 18. Oh, and you can see that you can also have an undo
04:32slow-mo edit button. So if you tap on the three dots, you'll now see the undo slow-mo edits and
04:38redo if you undo it. We also have a small change to the flash up here. So if you want to quickly
04:43adjust your flash settings, you can now tap and hold on that menu and it will prompt you to turn
04:49on, off, or set your flash to auto before you had to tap on that to be able to do anything. Actually
04:55before, even if you tapped on it, it would just turn it on or off. You had to actually go down
04:59here to get those settings for flash, but now it's built in to the top flash button. You just have to
05:05haptic press on that or just long press on it and it will give you the options. Now we also get the
05:09new watch faces with this update. So you do have to have an Apple watch running watchOS 11 RC,
05:15but you can see that we do also have new watch faces here. The ones that were just announced
05:20now, as far as Apple intelligence goes, we did not get any new Apple intelligence features for
05:25iOS 18.0. So I know a lot of people are wondering if Apple is going to launch any AI features ahead
05:32of, you know, 18.1, but that is not the case. We do not have any Apple intelligence in 18.0.
05:38Those will all be coming. All those features will be coming in 18.1 next month. Now also the control
05:44center seems a lot better and more fluid here and at the RC build, especially when switching pages,
05:50I had some stutter before, but that appears to be better. Also, when you move these icons now,
05:55they move so much more smoothly. You can see that I'm not having near as many hiccups as I had
06:00before on these iOS 18 builds. It's very smooth and you can absolutely tell it's an RC now. And
06:07I think that the control center is going to be one of the best features that people really love
06:11with iOS 18. Once they see how robust you can make this, like if you go in here and add control,
06:17you have so many different controls you can add to the control center. Now in iOS 18,
06:22including shortcuts, and you can have multiple pages. You know, the music is separated,
06:26your home section is separated, and then your connectivity section is separated. It's really
06:31well done. And I think everybody is going to love this change to the control center. Now for the
06:36photos application, I don't know if the same can be said because photos is going to take some
06:41getting used to. If you've not used iOS 18, the betas, you will have some figuring out to do
06:46with the photos application. But I think the main key here is to go all the way down to the bottom
06:51and go to customize and reorder and just select the albums or you know, the collections, I guess,
06:58that you want to actually see on your main view and move them around. Like if you don't want to
07:02see certain things at all, just unselect it. But if you want to move something around,
07:06just move it around. Like for example, if I don't even want to see recent days, I can just remove
07:10that. If I don't want to see albums until after trips, I can move that and everything updates in
07:15real time. So once you realize how customizable photos is, I think that you will kind of change
07:20your mind after your first impressions are probably going to be negative. Now, if you tap on search,
07:25you also get a much improved search here. So you can search your recently viewed, you get some
07:30prompts here, and you can also search for very advanced things that you couldn't search for
07:34before. Like for instance, if I search for cat on a chair, it will show me cat on a chair, whereas
07:39before an iOS 17, it wouldn't show anything. And then of course, another one of the big changes
07:44that a lot of people are going to love is the ability to have a dark mode icon. So if you
07:48haptic press on your home screen and then go to customize up here, you can now choose between
07:53light and dark mode. So you can see, I don't know how we lived with light mode icons for so long
07:59after seeing how good the dark mode icons are. So you can see what those look like. And you can
08:03also tent these to be whatever color you would like, which is pretty neat and a big, big fan
08:09of that feature. Now, if you're wondering about all of the iOS 18 features, I will have a separate
08:13video coming on that next week. Once iOS 18 gets released to the public, I will show every single
08:19detail, every single feature, every single change included with iOS 18. So if you're not subscribed
08:24already, make sure you get subscribed. So you don't miss out on that video. It's an annual
08:28tradition video here on the channel. Anyways, as far as the release notes go for iOS 18 RC,
08:34there's actually nothing changed in the release notes from beta eight. So everything that was in
08:38beta eight is here in RC as well. And that includes the issues that were outstanding. Now,
08:44as far as the overall performance goes, iOS 18 RC feels fantastic. I mean, ever since I first
08:50unlocked the phone, I could tell that it was a little bit quicker than a betas seven and eight,
08:55which both were kind of the same in terms of performance for me. So I would expect to see
09:00a minor boost in battery life. If you're on iOS 18 beta eight, or even previously,
09:06especially if you're on a previous beta, you will see a nice increase. So let's see what the
09:09geek bench scores tell you. So we scored a 2736 on the single core and a 6721 on the multi-core.
09:16And my phone is really hot, like going into this. So the scores are not the best. You can see it
09:20compared to previous ones, but that's expected when we have an RC release and a lot of stuff
09:25going on and the background, but so far for me, just real world usage, it does feel very nice
09:31and smooth. Now, as far as the battery life goes, I don't know that battery life is going to improve
09:35with the RC build as opposed to beta seven and beta eight. I think it's probably going to be
09:40in line with what we saw with beta eight, especially since the release notes are the same,
09:45you know, that's not really telling everything, but I would just assume that battery life will
09:49be very similar to what we saw with beta eight. And we might see improvements come with like
09:54subsequent updates, like 18.1 and 18.2, for example. Now, for those wondering if you should
09:59update to iOS 18 RC, or if you should just wait until the final release next week, I would say
10:05that that's all personal preference. Like if you want to turn off beta updates, you can just go
10:10into your settings, general software updates, and then go into beta updates and then just simply
10:14turn this off instead of being on a public or developer beta. And then you will not get beta
10:19updates anymore. You will only get the public releases. But again, the RC build is likely
10:24going to be the same as the official build next week. So if you install the RC, you are unlikely
10:29to see an update next week when everybody else is getting theirs if they're not on the beta
10:34program. Okay, so let's talk about when we can expect to see that iOS 18 release. So Apple has
10:40confirmed now that we are going to see iOS 18 on Monday, September 16, the exact date that we
10:47predicted months ago. So we will be seeing that on Monday, the 16th, along with it looks like for
10:53the first time potentially ever, we could be seeing macOS Sequoia on that same day as well.
10:59So next week is going to be very exciting for software updates. But aside from that,
11:03as far as 18.1 goes, we're not expecting to see that until sometime in mid to late October,
11:10most likely towards the end of October. So that is iOS 18 RC. Again, stay tuned for my big iOS 18
11:18movie that's coming next week where I show off all of the new features and changes. So
11:23anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, I would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs
11:26up. Also be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on my future iOS 18 coverage. But anyways,
11:32guys, thanks again for watching, and I'll see you soon.