Today Apple released iOS 17.4 beta 4 to register developers just one week after the release of beta 3. Now along with this update we got the fourth beta for ipad os 17.4, watch os 10.4, macOS Sonoma 14.4, TVOS 17.4 and then we did also get the third beta for Vision Os 1.1 for the Apple Vision Pro, but of course we’re going to be talking about iOS 17.4 beta 4 in this Article.
iOS 17.4 beta 4 Size, Build Number
you can see the size of this update came in at 571MB on 15 pro max, which is a smaller size than beta 3. However we do have more changes in this update, which we’ll talk about here in a moment. So, if you check out the build number for this new update, it is 21E5209B, so we do have ‘ b ‘ at the end of the build number, which indicates we are approaching a final release.
What’s New in iOS 17.4 beta 4 (Big Changes)
Now what’s new here in iOS 17.4 beta 4, and the first thing is something pretty major, and that is inside of the settings and into battery. you will notice right away that there is a change here when it comes to battery health and charging optimization and that now it does not show the battery health percentage, it just says normal.
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So, before you would get a percentage right once you went into the battery section and you would kind of always see that and lot of people would get anxiety over that percentage you know going down over time but now it just says normal. f charging optimization.
ISO 17.4 beta 4 Carplay 2.0 is Here
This beta also finally adds something that’s been hinted at ever since the first beta of iOS 17.4 and that is carplay 2.0. So, you can see from the release notes apple says that in ios 17.4 with supported carplay vehicles, apple maps will present new instrument cluster experience with information about upcoming maneuvers.
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Users will be able to swap the desired display type between the main and instrument cluster screen by tapping the map configuration button on the upper right of the map’s main screen. So of course, i do not have vehicle that currently supports carplay 2.0.
So, this is only limited at the time to 2024 and up Porsche and aston martin’s. however, this will be available a lot more regular vehicles that you and i can afford you know in the coming month. months in 2024, lot of manufacturers have already kind of pledged that they will support carplay 2.0 with their 2024 and newer vehicles.
iOS 17.4 beta 4 Other Changes
Also a bug that was in 17.4 beta 3 had to do with the wallpaper. So, if you go to add a new wallpaper and then you go down to the collections for the 15 pro series. it was much darker than before and you can see that has been fixed here in beta 4. So we assumed that that was a bug, but now we have confirmation that it was a bug because it has been fixed here.
In beta 4, you can see the styles are back to normal, whereas before on beta 3 over here on the left, they were the always on display style where it was just much darker than it should have been, and then something else noticed is if you go into your settings and into privacy and security. The sensitive content warning icon is missing for me, so it was missing at the beginning, but now it is there after a force quit out of setting.
So just the bug that you might run into here with this beta. Now also in iOS 17.4 we have podcast transcriptions, but for some reason in beta 4 they are simply not loading for most of the podcasts that i have, whereas they loaded perfectly fine beforehand, so if i go into even a short podcast like this, a 12-minute podcast. you can see that the transcriptions are not coming up, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that, and maybe fixed in a future release or even just after some time here on beta 4.
but I did just want to point it out because it is something that I noticed is not working as intended after installing this update. you can see pretty much none of the podcasts that normally have transcriptions have them now.
iOS 17.4 Beta 4 Performance & Battery Life
Now as far as performance goes, performance feels fine for me so far, i’ve not really had any type of issues with performance. Haven’t had any applications crash or any type of stuttering or anything like that, so i would assume that performance is going to be very similar to what it was in beta 3. I would not expect a major change here.
Now i am going to run a geekbench test just to see how it compares to the scores in beta 3, but again this is not fully indicative. The actual performance, i will give you more of an update on performance after using it for multiple days in my apple weekly episode on Saturday. Anyways, we scored a 2949 on the single core and a 7313 on the multi-core, and you can see how that compares to the previous beta release, so very similar scores really since really beta one, so not a huge difference in terms of geekbench scores here on beta 4.
Now when it comes to the battery life, I would expect pretty much the same thing I just said about performance. with battery life so you guys can tell me what i started this video with and what i’m at now so i’m at 49% now lot of times that’s you know one way of initially testing the battery life and so far it actually seems a little bit better than beta 3 for me just based off of the percentage just from shooting.
this article so i would not be surprised to see maybe slightly better battery life here with beta 4 but of course it’s really too early to tell and i will update you guys in that apple weekly Article.
iOS 17.4 beta 4 Release Date
Then finally let’s talk about what to expect next from Apple. so next up is going to be most likely ios 17.4 rc, so since we have a b at the end of the bill number and we are approaching what i assume to be the final release for ios 17.4. I would not expect any further betas after this one.
so i would expect the RC or release candidate build to be next, so that’s technically a beta, but it is going to be the final version just for beta testers, so i would expect to see that next week on the week of February 26th, most likely on that Tuesday, February 27th, and then after that, I would expect to see the final release of IOS 17.4 on the first full week of March, right there, most likely on March 4th itself.
if not we could see it sometime on the week of March 4th, and again as i’ve said before, this is going to be major release for those in the EU, it’s going to be nice update for those in the US and other regions, but in the EU, it’s going to be major, major change. the way that you use your iphone because of the whole sideloading deal, so that’s going to be interesting to see kind of how the media handles that as well.