“This spring, iOS 11.3 will deliver exciting new ways to experience augmented reality on iPhone and iPad, new Animoji on iPhone X and the ability to view health records in the Health app,†Apple said.
New AR Experiences
In addition to horizontal surfaces like tables and chairs, ARKit can now recognize and place virtual objects on vertical surfaces like walls and doors, and can more accurately map irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables. Using advanced computer vision techniques to find and recognize the position of 2D images such as signs, posters, and artwork, ARKit can integrate these real world images into AR experiences such as filling a museum with interactive exhibits or bringing a movie poster to life. The view of the real world through the camera now has 50 percent greater resolution and supports auto-focus for an even sharper perspective.
Messages Gets New Animoji and More
iOS 11.3 introduces four new Animoji, giving iPhone X users the ability to express themselves as a lion, bear, dragon or skull. Working with the A11 Bionic chip and TrueDepth camera in iPhone X, over 50 different facial muscle movements are captured, analyzed and then animated, allowing users to send Animoji messages as one of 16 different characters.
Battery & power management
As previously promised, iOS 11.3 includes outward-facing features that will make it easy for customers to see their battery health and adjust Apple’s controversial power management features to disable CPU throttling at will.
Available on iPhone 6 and later through the Settings → Battery section, you’ll now see your iPhone battery’s health and if it needs to be serviced. More importantly, this section will let you turn off the new power management feature which dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns that was first introduced in iOS 10.2.1.
The feature is available for iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The battery health and power management features will be coming in a later iOS 11.3 beta release.
iOS 11.3 availability
iOS 11.3 will see its public release sometime this spring.
It will release as a free software update for iPhone 5s and later, all iPad Air and iPad Pro models, the fifth-generation iPad, iPad mini 2 and later and the sixth-generation iPod touch.
The developer preview of iOS 11.3 is available to iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com starting today, followed by a public beta preview available at beta.apple.com.
