Apple releases first test version iOS 7.1

Apple has released a first test version of iOS 7.1. The new version does not seem to contain any major features for the time being. One of the ‘biggest’ changes is the ability to always use the dark gray keyboard.

The dark keyboard option is under Accessibility. In addition, iOS 7.1 offers some other minor changes, such as being able to upload burst photos to Photo Stream and a larger button in the notification center to clear notifications. Furthermore, iOS 7.1 mainly contains performance improvements, writes 9to5Mac. In addition, some bugs have been fixed, although there are also new ones in the test version.

The first test version of iOS 7.1 follows shortly after the release of iOS 7.0.4, which came out last week. The update is currently only available to developers and can be downloaded from Dev Center. It is unclear whether future versions will contain new features that are not yet available. When iOS 7.1 will be released is also unclear: the .1 versions of iOS in previous years invariably came out within three to six months of the release of .0 versions. For example, iOS 6.1 was released in late January and iOS 5.1 was available in March 2012.

Apple released iOS 7 at the end of September as the biggest visual update to iOS yet. This new OS came out on all iPhones since the 2010 iPhone 4, all iPads since the 2011 iPad 2, and the most recent models of the iPod touch. iOS 7.1 is expected to be released for those same devices.