Apple has released iOS 8.3 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It includes performance improvements, bug fixes, and a tweaked emoji keyboard with more than 300 new emoji.
iOS 8.3 allows you to start speaker phone calls via Siri commands. The “personal digital assistant” also now recognizes languages like Portuguese, Russian, Thai, and Turkish.
The operating system update removes the need for account passwords when downloading free content from the iTunes Store and Apple App Store, and adds new filters to Messages. Apple has added filtering to cull unknown numbers in iMessage, and you can report messages as junk to Apple.
Other iOS 8.3 changes include wireless CarPlay (so you can connect an iOS device to a CarPlay systems without a Lightning cable), support for Google two-factor authentication (which lets you add Google accounts with no need for specific passwords), and Apple Pay support for the China UnionPay network. And, of course, there are bug fixes.
iOS 8.3 is available via iTunes, or as an over-the-air software update. There’s also a 7.1 update available for the Apple TV.