iOS 26 - Did It Again!

0:00 Hi everyone, Aaron here for zolotete and iOS 26 beta 2 has been out for a few days and iOS 18.6 beta 1 has been out for a couple weeks at this point, but there's even more to talk about since the iOS 26 beta 2 is out what's new video. We'll talk about the latest Apple news and updates as well as some new features and updates in iOS 26 and the overall experience since I've been using it full-time on the iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPad Pro. but we'll talk about not just my experience, but your experience based off the YouTube community poll on the post page where at the time of this video, there's over 23,000 votes and 243 comments. I've gone through all the comments to determine what the overall update is like so far. So, be sure to stick around toward the end of the video where I'll read some of your comments as well. Apple's Long Island Roosevelt

0:45 Field store is going to be reopening after long renovations, and they're currently in a temporary store that's still open. Apple updated their page today saying, "Get ready. Great things are in store. A brand new Apple store is coming soon." Until then, please visit us at our temporary location on the west side of the mall, main level. So, we should see this open very soon. Apple also updated a few apps this week. They updated the sports app. So, if we go into the app store, you can see it here where it says, "Home is your new game hub. See your leagues in one place and line them up your way." So, you'll see it has a little bit of a different home experience. And now we have tennis on here as well. So it says men's tennis is now on Apple Sports along with women's tennis. So we have that. And if we go back over to the app, it says view pitcher and batter matchups at the top

1:32 of every scoreboard. We have live activities with this as well. So it's a pretty significant update where you can have live activities on your home screen with the latest scores. Apple also updated the invites app and they updated this with some new event backgrounds if you're using the app. So, when you go into create a new event, you can change the background that you have and update it how you'd like. So, you can modify this however you'd like. Go into the app backgrounds and you'll see a bunch of different options this time around. Apple Podcast is now 20 years old and Apple celebrated this in a post on apple.com highlighting some of their favorite podcasts over the past 20 years. You can see it in their newsroom release from 2005 to 2010, a bunch of different ones that they list. But one of the most clever things they did was on apple.com. If you scroll down, you'll

2:18 see there's two microphones that are perfectly lit to show the word 20 or the number 20. So 20 years of podcasts, 20 unforgettable shows, and you can explore the list. So if you've podcasted in the past or listened to them, it's crazy that it's been 20 years so far. CarPlay Ultra is something that Apple has been talking about for quite some time, just renaming it to Ultra, and we saw the first version on a demo from Aston Martin. However, it looks like quite a few people or different companies are pulling back and saying they're not going to utilize this anymore. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Volvo, Polestar, and Renault have decided to go in their own way. After seeing CarPlay Ultra myself, I'm actually pretty glad about this as I like the analog dials on previous Aston Martins and seeing everything sort of in Apple's own

3:04 interface with just a hint of green for Aston Martin or some slight customizations with logos here and there. I don't really want everything looking the same. I like the uniqueness of the different UIs across different companies such as BMW and Audi and other companies, and I'm glad they're sort of sticking to their own thing, allowing maybe CarPlay on the side, but not having it take over the entire interface. This is great for some people, and it will still be available in companies such as Hyundai and Genesis and Kia that all sort of work together, and we'll see it across other country or companies in the future as well. So, that's something that's being updated, but again, I'm glad to not see it on every car. But, let me know what you think of this in the comments below. Now, as far as new features, well, one feature this week that's already available is Apple Wallet will now let

3:50 you add Japan's My Number card in iOS 18.5 and newer. So, this will allow users to print official documents at stores in Japan and have access to online portals that the government services offer. So, those are things that'll be available in Japan right now. and that's available in the wallet app if you're using that. Now, when it comes to new features in iOS 26, there's quite a few more. One of them has to do with the Apple Music widget. So, if we go ahead and we'll turn this down, maybe go into Apple Music. We'll hit play, scroll home, and then if we go to the lock screen, let's go ahead and tap on the album art. We'll bring it up here, and you'll see there's some changes. Let me go ahead and clear the notifications. And if we go back into it, you'll see that it changes here. And then some of the widgets disappear now. Now, the animation is not completely fluid, but

4:36 the widgets below sort of go away to give you more room to show the overall album art. So, I think this is a nice look. Within the clock app, if we go ahead and maybe start a timer here for 20 minutes, we'll go into our lock screen here, and you'll see they've made some changes to go along with liquid glass this time that they did in the control center. Timers on the lock screen now have more transparency and look more like liquid glass. So you can see that here as I scroll up and down it just is a little bit more translucent or transparent and you can see behind it. So I like that change overall. Also something else people have noticed is if we press and hold you can see customize here where it just has more of sort of a glass look to it if you can see that. So if I bring down the wallpaper it does have that liquid glass design behind it. Also you may have already noticed my

5:22 widgets are at the bottom and this didn't work for me really well at least in beta 1. It looks like they've fixed it where we can just maybe scroll those up here, scroll them down here, and place them wherever we'd like. So, I know some people can have this work already for them in beta 1, but it wasn't working for me. Also, there's a new widget here when it comes to widgets that are available for Apple Music Search. So, you'll see that here. We can add it, and then we can quickly go in and search Apple Music. So, we'll go ahead and hit done now. Go back in, hit search, and it goes right into Apple Music search. So, that's something that's available now. Now on the home screen, quite a few people have asked me about the dock at the bottom. If you press and hold and maybe we remove music here, so we'll remove it from the home screen. You'll see everything is left justified in the dock. You can't move

6:09 them over. So if you have less than four apps, it moves to the left. I don't think this is intentional. I think it's a bug as if I go to try and add music back, sometimes it doesn't cooperate. So we'll go ahead and go to music here. We'll see if we can easily move it back and without creating a folder. Last time I did this, one of my apps disappeared and then it actually put music here on the home screen. So, I think it's still a bug. Not a huge deal. And hopefully they'll allow us to sort of center align this instead of to the left. Now, if we go into Spotlight search, this also has more of a translucency to go along with liquid glass, but you can see it a little bit better. So, you'll see that here where they've changed the search icon or the search bar to be a little bit more translucent. Something else I think a lot of people will appreciate is

6:54 if we go into settings and then we go to general and then we go to our keyboard. So if we go down to keyboard and we go into our keyboard, if you add the Arabic transliteration keyboard, this has been updated in the keyboard itself where it now has the number row at the top. If we go into an app such as notes, you'll see this is a new note. If we go to the global icon here, we'll go to the Arabic transliteration keyboard. Now the number pad is at the top. This is something I know a lot of Android users appreciate. Personally, I don't really care about it. You can just hit one button to get back. But now, if you want to get into your numbers and you use the transliteration keyboard, it's available here. So, we may see that change throughout. We don't really know yet, but that's a nice change for a lot of people that wanted it. Also, when you long press this globe here, again, it

7:41 has more of a liquid glass design. It's a little bit hard to see on this page, but if maybe we go to Safari and then we go to liquid glass, long press on the globe, you can see it's more of a glass look than it was before. Also, something new has to do with when you're using maps and the phone gets too hot. Now, if the phone overheats, it will actually give you a message saying it needs to cool down. But a user on Reddit showed a different image here where it says, "Maps will no longer keep your screen on to allow your iPhone to cool down." So, maybe you're using it for navigation. It can turn the screen off, cool it down a little bit. maybe turn it back on. Of course, that's a problem if you're using it to navigate. So, hopefully that's something that maybe we can control or just cool it down when you're using maps or we don't know if that's when it's using CarPlay as well. Now, within accessibility, if we go down to display

8:26 and text size, I showed previously for those in beta 1 that didn't like liquid glass, if you turn on reduce transparency, it reduces the background transparency. Now, it's even more severe in this update. So, if we go home, you'll see it completely eliminates the background and makes it easier to read those. So, if you don't like seeing that, you can, of course, turn that on and it'll help you out a little bit. Also, if we go into the App Store again, scroll down, you'll see that there's actually a placeholder now for accessibility. So, you'll see accessibility. The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. This is something we'll see updated more and more once we get closer to a final release or once the final release is out. but there's now a placeholder for it where developers can add that. Also, if you're using assist of touch, one thing that's not working properly in this update is

9:12 screenshots. So, when you activate that, it sort of disappears and does nothing. So, it's not screenshotting properly. And that's true of using backtap as well to take a screenshot. So, that's something that they've sort of need to fix in this update that probably will be fixed in the next one. Within live captions options and accessibility, instead of saying transcribe calls, it now says save call transcripts. And they've given a little description about what it does where it says this allows you to use live captions to transcribe and save a transcript during the call. An audio notification will automatically play before a transcribing begins. If we go into notes, you can see the toolbar down below. If we tap here, you'll see it expands. But now, if we select text, it will change on its own to give us formatting options. So you'll see it switched automatically to give us bold,

9:59 italics, underline, strikethrough, and other options. So it's nice that it just automatically changes in beta 2. If we go into music and down here, I'm not sure I like this interface where you have to tap multiple times. But if we go into our library, maybe go to an album, scroll down, and then maybe we'll go into an album. So let's just find something here random. We'll go into this one. And if we scroll up, you'll see that the album art switches up at the top. So instead of just giving the information about the album, it switches to the icon itself. That's true of pretty much anything here. So if we scroll up, you'll see it switches to the album art. So it's a nice little update there. Now, if we go into photos, you'll see we have a new CarPlay splash screen with a liquid glass design when you start up CarPlay in your car. So this is what it looks like. The last time I

10:45 started it, I took a screenshot and you can see what it looks like here. Also, if you're using CarPlay with the new widgets in beta 2, you no longer have three widgets available. it shows two instead of three depending on the display size. Also, if we scroll down in photos here, you can see as I scroll, the menu bar at the bottom changes instantly and has a really nice liquid glass design on it. So, I think that looks pretty good. If we go into mail, you can see if we slide over here, we have a nice animation for delete or trash. So, this is true of the animations. Depending on what you have set, they sort of expand out and give some haptic feedback as well. While we had a little bit of this in beta 1, it's nice and smooth now and working properly here in beta 2. Another thing that's been updated has to do with our settings. If we go to general and then we go to about again with beta 2,

11:31 they've updated it. So, if we long press on IMEI or other options here, it now says share device identifiers. Before it was just copy and barcode. Another thing that's been updated in beta 2 that some people aren't happy about is if we go into our settings and we go down to our Siri settings, they've reverted the icon back on older devices that don't support Apple Intelligence. So, it has sort of the old Siri icon. Whether or not they'll change this, we don't know, but it looks like it's something they've reverted at least on devices without Apple intelligence right now. Also, another thing that was found in iOS 26 beta 2 is it looks like it confirms the iPhone 17 Air or the existence of an ultra thin phone. So, you can see this was posted on Mac World where they found it in the code or at least hidden where it looks like we're going to get that iPhone 17 air or something like that in

12:19 the future. We've talked about it in different videos. This is supposedly what it looks like. And the camera bar on the back I wasn't really thinking was accurate as these are typically accurate, but with the new designs with liquid glass and the new radiuses, you can see that it looks pretty much the same as maybe the do not disturb button here. So, definitely could have that sort of design to it. Now, as far as releases, this week, Apple released a new AirPods beta firmware update, beta 2. If we go to their Apple release note website that's public facing, you can see the new version here, AirPods firmware beta 2, build 8A5293C. If you have iOS 26 installed, you can install this. Go to your AirPods firmware. Scroll down and you'll see AirPods beta updates. You can enable this or turn this off. I have this

13:04 enabled for my AirPods Pro 2, but not my AirPods 4. So, if it's available, you can do that here. And it tells you how to update it basically by setting them nearby. Now, of course, releases this week. I'm pretty surprised we haven't seen a couple other things such as iOS 18.5.1. Many people say iOS 18.5 is very buggy, myself included, my family included, and I'm very surprised we don't have one. There's still no sign of it, but if we do have one, it would be this coming week, I would think. Maybe we'll see it. Or maybe they're just waiting for iOS 18.6. And iOS 18.6 beta 2 I would expect to be out on the 30th of June here with typically every other week it looks like they're releasing it. Once we get to beta 3, it's usually a weekly cycle. And then iOS 26 beta 3 I would expect on

13:51 July 7th. Then after that we could see iOS 26 public beta 1 and then of course betas throughout the summer and a public release in September. It seems like time's flying. We've only got a few more months until we have a public release of it. And so far with their progress from beta 1 to beta 2, it's been very solid and I think they're doing a good job here. So, it looks like it will probably just get better and better. Now, when it comes to the overall experience, while we already know iOS 18.5 has a lot of issues, I've talked about it at length in different videos, and Apple really needs to fix some issues, specifically with connectivity, touch bugs, rebooting, and more. When it comes to iOS 18.6 beta 1, well, the experience is much better according to most of you that are running it. There are some issues with random screen dimming. The

14:36 wallpaper bug still exists. So, you can see that here where it sort of desaturates. Also, there's an issue with the weather widget if you're using the stock weather widget. I'm using Mercury weather here. So, you can see that. And there's some odd charging bugs for some where you need to reboot it for it to charge. So, that looks like it wasn't fixed so far with iOS 18.5. However, Apple did fix a lot of things with iOS 26 beta 2. Beta 1 had a lot of issues. Beta 2 still has some issues, but beta 1 seems to have many. Beta 2 fixes a lot of them, and many people say there's still some issues, but much less compared to what we had before. Camera options are now working. So, if we go in here, maybe go to video, go into our camera options, we can easily change it maybe to 30 frames per second, 60 or 120. And those options stick now when

15:23 you go back in. So, it looks like those are working properly. And most say liquid glass is much nicer in beta 2. Some people say it's too dramatic of a reduction, but Apple will continue to work on this. But I think it's notable that Apple is listening again and are listening to concerns, feedback about iOS 26 and really adjusting things much faster than I thought they would already. Just from beta 1 to beta 2, they adjust it. Maybe we'll see some more liquid glass or some changes with beta 3. And I think they're really working to get this to be the best update in a long time. Now, the experience in iOS 26 beta 2 is a significant improvement over beta 1 with better performance, reduced heating, and improved battery, but still quite a few bugs and inconsistencies. For example, I'm hearing more and more people say that banking apps aren't working. Games

16:10 are lagging. People using WeChat are seeing it crash. Also, connectivity with AirPods is buggy for some where it will just drop or they're on calls and they'll drop or just Wi-Fi will drop in general. You may have seen earlier this will change sometimes. And also, I've had a couple random rerings where maybe you're using it, the phone rerings, you get the little spinning circle in the middle and then it comes back to life. So, that's definitely an issue. As well as voice over not working properly sometimes for people. When it comes to overall heat, well, using it regularly, it doesn't get too hot. But then showing you the different features in this video, it seemed to heat up quite a bit. Let me show you that. On iOS 26 beta 2, you can see here we're at about 38° C or so, maybe a little bit warmer. On iOS 18.6 beta 2, we're at about 33.5°

16:58 Celsius. So, again, much warmer right now. I'm not sure why, but it will randomly heat up at times. It's completely normal. Things are going on in the background, but definitely something that seems a little bit distracting at times where you might need to actually reboot the device and stop that from overheating. So, right now it does feel like it's cooling down, but it will heat back up just randomly. As far as performance, while I mentioned some of that before, and performance is generally good, but sometimes it will get a little bit laggy and sluggish. If we go into music, for example, you'll see it loaded okay there, but then some of the scrolling isn't as smooth. You'll see iPhone 11 just sort of really slowed down right there. And I'm sure they'll improve this. Again, we're on an early beta, but things such as promotion, they're just not super smooth. They're

17:43 getting better, I think, from beta 1, but again, if we scroll, you'll see the overall speed is a little bit slow. So, sometimes it may not be at 120 hertz. And again, launching different apps, of course, which is important, such as the camera seems to be okay for the most part, but again, you saw it was a little laggy swiping home. So, definitely some issues they need to work on, but again, it's an early beta. When it comes to battery life, well, that's something many of you want to know. And this time around, 50% of users said battery was good or better than beta 1. Last week on beta 1, 70 to 80% of users had a poor experience. So, it looks like it's improving some, but again, it still needs some work. If we take a look at battery health, I'm at 100% with 244 cycles. I would expect that to drop

18:29 soon, but you can see more details here with coconut battery. And usage wise, it's not great. So, if we go to view all battery usage yesterday, 2 hours and 18 minutes of screen active time, 3 hours and 48 minutes of screen idle time, and I used 87% of the battery. The day before, only 2 and 1/2 hours. I'm getting about 3 hours of screen on time. So, definitely not good. We should be well over 6 hours. As far as benchmarks, well, I did run those and the first benchmarks weren't great, but this time around after waiting a few days, it's definitely improved. So before we had 2,87 for single core, 8,87 for multi-core. Now after running it, 3,458 for single core, 8,477 for multi-core. Well within the margin

19:15 of error. It can go up and down. If I ran this again, let it cool down. We'd probably hit the maximum benchmark. So overall, pretty good when it comes to this update. As far as the overall experience and what you had to say, let's take a look at some of your comments. PC LIL359 said, "Beta 2 is a vast improvement over beta 1. It's nearly releasable. Very few major bugs. It does still get warm easily, and I do see some issues filling out text fields. They don't expand or disappear behind the keyboard. The camera also can be slow to load, but compared to beta 1, which was a disaster, it's a huge improvement." IsaacMan 1870 said, "It stinks that they changed the Siri icon in settings on older iPhones. It was modern in beta 1, but with beta 2, it's back to the previous look. My iPhone 13 Pro Max rerings way less than it did on

20:01 beta 1. So, I'm happy for that and the experience is way better and I cannot remove addresses from my contact card. Hopefully, they fix that in beta 3. I told Apple that in the feedback app, so hopefully they look into their look at that. CNO2 says 26 beta 2, iPhone 15 Pro Max. Phone still heats up substantially, but overall it's not as laggy as beta 1 was, especially during low power mode. Phone doesn't seem to want to charge all the way up to 100%. However, it gets to 98 at least. Dan Spid says, "iOS 26 beta 2, iPhone 16 Pro. Pretty good. It looks much better. Sometimes the keyboard freezes. Battery is terrible as never compared to the older betas. Other than that, I like it." TTS292 said, "iOS 26 beta 2 has been working flawlessly on my iPhone 11 and no issues

20:49 so far except for voice over bug, especially where the voice over voice I selected basically won't apply. So, ever since then, I've sent this feedback to Apple and made them aware. Other than that, battery life, opening apps, everything else is working great and I'm looking forward to beta 3." Shik Sadi Hassanabil 5404 said 18.6 is the smoothest among them all. It's better than 18.5. So, is iOS 26 beta 2 stable at this point? No, and it won't be this early on. This is completely normal, but by beta 3, we're around public beta territory, and it gets much better. So, it's definitely an improvement over beta 1 like we would expect. And beta 3, I'm sure, will be much better as well. But don't install it on your main device if you're wondering about that. So, if you're wondering if you should install iOS 26 beta 2, I would wait until at

21:36 least the public beta before you try it out on your main device or maybe even later if you're worried about bugs and battery life. So, I would hold off for now on that. So, that's it for iOS 26 beta 2, iOS 18.6 beta 1, and of course, hopefully we get an update for iOS 18.5 soon. If you found any additional features or things that have been changed that you think are much better, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Of course, I'll link this wallpaper in the description like I normally do. And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like. As always, thanks for watching. This is Aaron. I'll see you next time. [Music]