Phone News
Apple rolls out iOS 12.1 update, brings Group FaceTime and Dual SIM support

Apple has revealed a bunch of new products and upgrades of their line-up at an event in Brooklyn. The Cupertino giant has unveiled new iPad Pro models alongside the new upgrades of its products that include new Mac Mini and a refreshed MacBook Air. Apart from the hardware, Apple has also announced the new iOS 12.1 update to all its products portfolio.
Tim Cook announced that with iOS 12.1 brings Group FaceTime calls along with New Emojis – all iOS users have started receiving their OTA updates globally. Group FaceTime was one of the much-anticipated features that users were expecting ever since it has been announced during the WWDC earlier this year.
Group FaceTime
The iOS 12.1 brings a new option to add multiple members of up to 32 to join in an active FaceTime call. Users can also add stickers, filters, Animoji or Memoji during the call as well. Apple has added automatic detection of speakers in the Group FaceTime call, where it automatically highlights the person who is speaking and brings the user to the foreground and resizing of other users’ images in the call. The new Group FaceTime is also integrated into the Messages app on iOS, and lastly, Apple claims that all FaceTime conversations, both one-to-one and mullet-person, are encrypted end-to-end.
New Emoji
iOS 12.1 brings 70 new emojis to iPhones and iPads, which include new characters with red hair, grey hair and new smiley faces alongside other emojis representing animals, sports and food. These new emojis are also available on Apple Watch and Mac as well.
Depth Control in Camera
During the launch of the new iPhones – the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max, Apple has introduced new camera features one of them that took everyone to surprise was the Depth Control adjustment after taking a portrait shot. With the iOS 12.1, users will now be able to dynamically adjust the depth of field in real-time preview in addition to post-capture. It further allows users to adjust more background blur for portrait shots on both the cameras on the latest iPhones. This new update also helps in faster face tracking while using Memoji and Animoji.
Dual SIM
Apple has been quite reluctant until this year to bring Dual SiM phones, while the competition was into it for quite a while now. Apple now has stepped up the game and introduced the new iPhones with Dual SIM support. However, the implementation of additional SIM on these new iPhones is similar to what we have seen on the Apple Watch earlier; users need to activate the digital eSIM, with the respective carriers. With the iOS 12.1 update, Apple enables support to iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max and the iPhone XR users to activate their respective eSIMs paired with the current physical nano-SIM as well.
Apart from these new features iOS 12.1 also fixes the “beauty gate” issue where the new iPhone Xs and Xs Max users were experiencing smoothening of their skin while taking selfies.