I've just got my new Iphone 17, transferring from an Iphone 8.
I'm liking so far.
The slide thing instead of a home button took a little getting used to, but I think I've cracked it now, though I'm going to miss the finger print scanner, since facial recognition just plane doesn't work at all (yes, my phone doesn't like my face), possibly because I'm wearing glasses, which means going back to what I did on the Iphone 5 and having to type my apple id password for purchices and my phone unlock code rather a lot, which is a miner inconvenience.
Okay on to some questions:
First, is there a way to change voiceover's primary voice? It seemed really silly that I couldn't change this, and needed to download the voice I wanted (UK English Oliver enhanced as it happens), add it to the additional rotor voices, add the switch vo voice command to the rotor, then change the rotorr, switch the voice and take it off again!
This seems needlessly complicated when all I want to do is change the single voice vo uses, but there didn't seem to be a way to do it?
Second: Is the artificial intelligence actually any use? I like the idea of things like on screen descriptions, but I don't want it adding things to my phone. I initially enabled the Ai beta, but disabled things like suggestions on the home screen (no spam thank you), however I believe when I was downloading my first game to test out the app store, it also I believe downloaded some sort of image playground ap, and if it's going to do that, no way jose!
It's currently turned off, but I'm certainly not against turning it back on again if it'll be of some practical help.
Last question: Live recognition, this seems to work a little like seeing Ai and is rather fun when I tried in my living room.
However, I'm not %100 sure what all of the settings are for, EG point and speak vs seen. Any thoughts or suggestions?
I've used Seeing Ai for a long while, but the efficiency of that can be hit and miss.
Lastly, anything new I should know about? This is the bog standard Iphone 17, since a larger version or version with more cameras didn't seem to be necessary.
I am at this point going from Ios 16 to something like Ios 26 I believe, and while I'm noticing differences, I'm interested in any handy new features people could recommend, certainly live recognition looks handy.
Thanks in advance
Comments
Live recognition
To make yourself familiar with live recognition, it may help to turn on only one function at a time.
Scene automatically detects what you point the camera at. For example, when I point the camera across my study, the phone may say something like "bookshelf, cardboard box, suitcase".
Point and speak means you point with a finger at some text label, which is then read out loud. For example, if you point your finger at a bottle, it doesn't say "bottle" but reads out the label, "cleaning fluid" or something.
And regarding Face ID, maybe it works better for you when the "Require attention for Face ID" option is turned off. With the option turned on, you need to look straight into the camera. Turning off this option is less safe though, as it's easier for people next to you to unlock the device without your consent.
Point and speek and face ID
Hi.
with live recognition I have indeed been using the functions one at a time.
Seen and text seem to work well, but point and speak really doesn't seem to do much, even when it reads labels on food items fine when on text, if I point at them and then use point and speak the phone just makes weird noises and doesn't really say anything, so goodness knows.
with face recognition, I can't even get the phone to recognize my face when getting started.
When I begin the process it tells me to hold the phone away from my face, then says "higher", or "lower", then just gives up and tells me to "try again."
yes, my phone literally doesn't like my face :D.
So methinks that's probably something I'm going to have to live without.
For security, I would like to turn off the function that activates the phone when it's picked up, since it seems rather overly sensitive, and even activates when I put it in a bag, though I need to check where this is in settings.
I think you may have raised to wait turned on
I think you may have the raise to make feature turned on. That’s in the settings and then you go to display and brightness in one of the options is raised to wake and you can tackle it off with a double tap. As far as you’re being able to change your primary voice, you have to go into settings and then Accessibility, and then VoiceOver, and then you have to go all the way down to speech. You’re going to double tap on that and then you’ll have to swipe to place. It says Voice and then you’ll have to double tap on that and it will tell you what your current voice is whatever your primary current voice is and then you have to double tap on that and it has a thing to edit Voice and then you’ll have to double tap on that to edit the actual changing of the voice. Yes, they’ve made it much more complicated in iOS 26. Although I believe this features are actually came about an iOS 18 but since you’re coming from iOS 16, this would’ve been the first time that you would see this feature. They gave us a lot more steps to just changing a voice now and it’s kind of annoying. But I hope that helps. Good luck with everything with your new phone. I hope you enjoy it.