Just last week, Apple launched an iOS 17 beta with a controversial change, one that saw the end call button move to a new position that was harder to reach for left-handers, and harder to find with muscle memory.
Now, presumably in response to the negative feedback, the company has moved it again, but this time to a more reasonable place.
This latest change comes in yet another iOS 17 beta. Specifically, the sixth developer beta and the fourth public beta, both of which are out now and contain the same content.
With this beta, the end call button has moved to a more central position again, like in iOS 16, but slightly lower down on the screen. It's also now surrounded by the other call actions, which in iOS 16 are separated from it. You can see where the call button sits now in the post below from Brandon Butch, while a post from Morning Brew shows where it was in the previous beta and where it is in iOS 16.
Apple has moved the “end call” button to the middle (iOS 17 Beta 6) pic.twitter.com/HxT5WUASxiAugust 15, 2023
So, this latest change is sort of a middle ground between the end call button’s iOS 16 position and its position in the previous iOS 17 beta. It should be easier for left-handed people to reach than in its previous place (though depending on how you hold your phone, it might still be trickier than in iOS 16), and it makes the other call action buttons easier to reach than in iOS 16.
However, those other buttons haven’t just been moved further down the screen, they’ve also been moved around compared to how they are in iOS 16, so muscle memory will still be an issue. Still, we’re generally okay with this change.
Faster photo picking and other tweaks
This isn’t the only new thing in the latest iOS 17 beta, though there’s not much else of note. MacRumors has found that, in the Messages app, you can now long press the ‘+’ button to launch the photo picker, rather than having to manually select it from a list of options.
The site also reports that the animations used for moods in the mood tracking feature have been tweaked, a splash screen appears when you first launch the Photos app to tell you about new features, and the wallpaper icon in the Display & Brightness section of the settings app now shows an iOS 17 wallpaper.
This isn’t the biggest of updates, then, but if you’re already running an iOS 17 beta, it’s worth downloading. If you’re still on iOS 16, then at this point we’d suggest waiting for the finished version of iOS 17, as that’s probably only a month away. But if you really want to give it a try now, here’s how to download the iOS 17 beta.