iOS 9.3.2 has a nasty surprise and my upgrade guide recommends you skip it for now. But if you have already installed the update (or will do regardless) there is good news: it hides a great secret feature…
‘Great Features’ and ‘Nasty Surprises’ are my regular columns investigating operating system updates for the best features / biggest problems hidden behind the headlines.
As with all the best secrets, you won’t find the new feature listed in the official iOS 9.3.2 changelog. But surprisingly Apple has finally fulfilled of one its users biggest requests: the ability to use both Low Power Mode and Night Shift as the same time.
Apple iOS 9.3.2 has caused some users a lot of problems, but it does have a great secret feature...... [+]
Why is this surprising? Because until now Apple had been in doing its best to stop this functionality from happening.
It all started Night Shift (a Bluelight filter) was introduced with iOS 9.3 in March and it couldn’t work alongside Low Power Mode. This seemed to make little sense as users were most likely to need Night Shift at the end of the day and this is also the time your device is mostly likely to have little battery left and require the Low Power mode.
As such confused users found a hack which could enable both modes by asking for them using Siri. Yet just 10 days later Apple released iOS 9.3.1 which removed this workaround. Amusingly users then found another workaround and now with iOS 9.3.2 Apple appears to have relented in its game of cat and mouse and the dual functionality looks set to stay.
So why would Apple keep such a popular (and logical) change under wraps?
My guess is either the company didn’t want to publicise a climb down or it remains keen to uphold its reputation for burying useful ‘Easter Eggs’ in its releases. Cynics and optimists will obviously know which option they’d pick.
Needless to say, this discovery doesn’t make up for the reports iOS 9.3.2 is bricking some devices and I suspect an emergency iOS 9.3.3 release will have to be issued in the near future.
That said the discovery of a much requested feature hidden in iOS 9.3.2 does give this dark cloud a silver lining…
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