Apple Includes Even More New Features In Public Beta 6 As iOS 14.5 Is Further Delayed

iOS 14.5 Public Beta 6 has been released to public beta program members in what’s become one of the most drawn-out late cycle iOS releases I’ve seen in a long time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however. The additional development time has given the Cupertino Crew time to finish up additional features and include them in the upcoming release. 

What’s New

While iOS 14.5 Public Beta 5 didn’t have much in the way of new features (it was supposed to be the final release, after all) Public Beta 6 give us not one but two new features!

First off is the new Battery Recalibration feature. This is marked as a “resolved” issue in the official release notes. That makes sense given that it’s not something you can manually trigger. Instead, iOS 14.5 will automatically recalibrate your battery if Battery Health discovers inaccurate peak performance or unexpected drain. You’ll see a message in Settings > Battery > Battery Health giving you the heads up that iOS is doing internal maintenance on its battery algorithms. 

The second feature is a major shake-up for Apple. Now the iconic Siri voice isn’t the only U.S. English voice available! With iOS 14.5, you’ll have an additional female voice, plus two male voices to choose from. 

These two features join an already bursting new feature list. 

• Dual-SIM 5G is now available. 
• You can now give Siri directions as to what app you’d like to default to for certain media like podcasts and songs. This isn’t the “default apps” feature that a lost of us (including me) thought it was, but it’s a step in the right direction. 
• The Find My app has an Items tab! What’s going there? Any Bluetooth finders you have, plus whatever Apple is revealing next week. 
• Emojis! Lots of emojis. 217 of them to be precise. 
• Unlock your iPhone with your Apple Watch (click here to see how).
• You can now swipe to add songs to your queue in Apple Music. 
• The Shortcuts app has a few new tricks to enable and disable orientation lock, change cellular modes, and take screenshots. 
• Now, when you launch an app that collects your activity data or tracks you around your iDevice, you have the option of disallowing that intrusion (as you should). Some companies, like Facebook, who’ve made their money off selling activity data that consumers unknowingly agreed to share in the legal agreements that no one ever reads are rather peeved. Personally, I fully support it as it gives folks who might not have realized what they were agreeing to a chance to change their minds. 
• The new Software Update splash screen (with the current iOS version as well as notification of when you last checked for a software update) has been tweaked slightly to remove the green check. 
• Testing on an iPad? iPadOS now has a horizontal boot screen when your iPad is connected to a Magic Keyboard. 
• For some carriers like T-Mobile, there’s a 5G only switch (but only use it if you absolutely know what you’re doing). 
• Worldwide dual SIM support is available with this release. This means that you can get 5G coverage when available even if you have both SIMs activated. 
• You can now add the Apple Music “Made for You” mixes to your library in the Music app. The Music app also now includes the exact release date for albums and tracks. And scrolling metadata for the Now Playing lock screen widget is back! 
• The Podcasts app also gets some love with a Music app-like redesign. That’s most evident on the Search page. Also, tapping on a podcast entry will take you to the details page for the podcast rather than start playing immediately (there’s now a dedicated smaller button for that). Extremely helpful for when you’re trying to find a specific episode for a podcast with a long title. Each podcast gets new headers in the library as well to make them really shine. 
• Fan of Apple News? There’s now a dedicated search tab in the News app. 
• You can finally sort your reminders due date, creation date, due date, or a manual sort of your choosing in the Reminders app. You can now print reminders as well. 
• Have a PS5 or XBox Series X? Lucky you. Now those controllers will work with your iDevice. 
• Great news for those of you with a smart TV! Apple Fitness+ now has AirPlay 2 support. You won’t see your live Apple Watch data like you do if you’re connected via an Apple TV, but it’s better than no support at all.
• Map app guides get a huge glow-up in iOS 14.5 with spiffed up images and headers and much more polished looking content. 
• Type to Siri no longer pulls you out of your current location when invoked, just like it does when you’re not using the type interface. It’s a nice bit of consistency. 
• Responding to a message with Siri has the same type of upgrade, maintaining context wherever you are when it’s invoked instead of pulling you into a greyed out screen. 

What’s Broken/What’s Fixed? 

Other than the somewhat oddly “resolved” battery recalibration feature, the official release notes don’t list anything about the new Siri voices or have any fixes. The page jumps right from Public Beta 4 to Public Beta 6 as well, further cementing the idea that Public Beta 5 might have been the original end of the line for iOS 14.5 

What’s Next?

Well this week isn’t the week. Maybe next week will be the week? The week after that? What’s most likely happened, as we’ve seen several times in the past year, is that the Spring press event had to be delayed and, with it, the release of iOS 14.5.

There are rumors of an April 6th event, but they’re fleeting at this point. More likely is something around the middle of the month. Of course, with iOS 15 already being discussed ahead of the recently announced 2021 WWDC in June, it’s going to be a bit harder to drum up excitement for the fifth release of iOS 14. 

That said, iOS 14.5 will provide iPhone and iPad users with enormous quality of life features like watch unlocking, app activity tracking notification, battery recalibration, and more. If anything, this release proves that late-cycle development can be just as fulfilling as brand new iOS releases. 

So maybe we’ll finally get iOS 14.5 released to the public next week. And if not, maybe Apple will slide a few more extra features into the build. We’ll just have to wait and find out.