The first major update of iOS 9 has been released, following two minor updates that arrived shortly after the initial release of iOS 9 back in September.
The main feature update is for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus Live Photos functionality – Apple’s new photo-based short video clips. In iOS 9, new Live Photos will be automatically trimmed if movement is sensed. An issue some users faced was instinctively moving the phone down after taking a photo blurring the resulting video clip which continues to record for a second and a half after shooting the image.
Read more: Live Photos – will they take off?
Elsewhere, Apple has added support for a huge number of new emojis, and expanded the presence of its News app, which is now available in more countries, including the UK.
Apple’s also prepared devices for the launch of the iPad Pro – Apple’s 12.9-inch device expected to ship in November – with the introduction of new APIs that offer support for the Apple Pencil, a stylus-like device that can be used with the new iPad.
The update is available to download on iOS devices over-the-air, or via iTunes. To download, head to Settings > General > Software Update.
iOS 9.1 is compatible with the iPhone 4s or newer, and the iPad 2 or newer, as well as the 5th and 6th-gen iPod Touch.
The full list of updates per Apple’s release notes is as follows:
- Live Photos now intelligently senses when you raise or lower your iPhone, so that Live Photos will automatically not record these movements
- Over 150 new emoji characters with full support for Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 emojis
- Improved stability including CarPlay, Music, Photos, Safari, and Search
- Improved performance while in Multitasking UI
- Fixes an issue that could cause Calendar to become unresponsive in Month view
- Fixes an issue that prevented Game Center from launching for some users
- Resolves an issue that zoomed the content of some apps
- Resolves an issue that could cause an incorrect unread mail count for POP mail accounts
- Fixes an issue that prevented users from removing recent contacts from new mail or messages
- Fixes an issue that caused some messages to not appear in Mail search results
- Resolves an issue that left a gray bar in the body of an Audio Message
- Fixes an issue that caused activation errors on some carriers
- Fixes an issue that prevented some apps from updating from the App Store
Read more: Everything you need to know about Apple’s News app