Oliver Haslam on December 8, 2016, 5:27 am

iOS 10.2 Beta 7: What’s New?

As you may already know by now, iOS 10.2 beta 7 is now available. But what feature changes, if any, does it bring to the table?

To answer that, the answer is “not a lot.” In fact, Apple hasn’t cleared why did the company had to push as many as three iOS 10.2 betas in a matter of only six days time to both developers and public testers. At this point, it is important to note that Apple’s own iOS beta release changelog has this seventh beta carrying the same changes as the previous two beta releases, suggesting that this new update is a very iterative one, but regardless one that Apple decided needed to be released now rather than hanging fire for a little while.

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Thoughts as to what that could be is a little on the scarce side, but one theory that makes plenty of sense is that Apple wanted to make sure that new battery diagnostics are running on a number of devices to allow Apple to tweak what it is now set to use to identify iPhone 6s unexpected shutting down issue.

It’s likely that Apple needed to get its new diagnostics software onto people’s iPhones in order to test its effectiveness, and what better way to do that than to send it out as part of an ongoing beta program before rolling it out to everyone? Apple has already announced that it plans to release software update next week with battery diagnostics built right in to further analyze the aforementioned battery shutting down issue.

We believe that iOS 10.2 is the firmware that Apple plans to release next week to public with new emojis, iMessage effects, TV app, as well as built-in battery diagnostics. And while we stand by that, but with Apple believed to still be adding features to the release even at this stage, we wouldn’t want to bet anything on what Apple will do next.

If you are a registered developer or part of the Apple public beta program, you can download iOS 10.2 beta 7 via over-the-air update now from Settings > General > Software Update.