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Smartphones may have effectively killed off dedicated point-and-shoot cameras, but Apple is looking to them for inspiration with iOS 11. Developers have dug through beta firmware for the HomePod, and tucked inside the code for Apple's smart speaker, there are hints that the next version of its mobile OS will feature something called "SmartCam." iOS 11 (or the next iPhone) will have something called SmartCam. It will tune camera settings based on the scene it detects pic.twitter.com/7duyvh5Ecj — Guilherme Rambo (@_inside) August 2, 2017 If you've ever used a point-and-shoot camera, the feature should sound pretty familiar: different scene modes and photo settings depending on what you're shooting. So, one each for fireworks, foliage, pets, skies, snow, sports and others, as SlashGear notes. There's even one for documents. The "smart" in its name suggests that maybe machine learning will play a role here as well, potentially analyzing ...

This year's new redesigned iPhone is all but confirmed thanks to months worth of leaks and Apple's own slip-up with the HomePod firmware that keeps revealing more and more. So we're pretty sure what the hardware will look like, but what how will iOS 11 look on an iPhone with an edge-to-edge display and a notch at the top of the screen? Visual and user interface designer Max Rudberg decided to use his design skills to imagine what it could look like, and it's got us really pumped. The next iPhone (possibly called the iPhone 8, or iPhone Edition, or iPhone Pro) is expected to come with a 5.8-inch OLED screen that stretches edge-to-edge with rounded corners. The screen change would allow a larger screen to fit in a smaller physical form factor. As sweet as that is, it also means iOS 11 will have to work differently compared to an ordinary rectangle. How will Apple approach it? Rudberg mocked up three concepts that Apple could realistically introduce this fall. ...

Apple has released the first Public beta of iOS 11 to users. Unlike the Developer beta, the Public beta does not require a developer account and anyone with an Apple ID can download it. To download the update, head over to beta.apple.com/profile to download the configuration profile for your device. Once you install that, you will be asked to restart your iOS device. After the device restarts, head over to Settings > General > Software Update and you will see the public beta as an update just as you would any other iOS update. We installed the update on one of our devices and noticed some minor bugs and glitches in the interface, which makes it perfectly clear that it is nowhere near ready to install on your primary device. The performance is snappy but we did install the update on a speedy iPhone 7 and it's likely the performance won't be as good on older devices. So, the old adage still stands. If you have a spare device that's not too old then by all means go ahead...