The New iOS 7.1 Beta 2 from Apple

iOS 7.1 beta 2 has been out for a little less than a day so far, and there are some new user-facing features that people will notice when the public version drops eventually; assuming these features make it to the public release of course.

First off, Touch ID & Passcode was moved front and center, now sitting just under Sounds on the main Settings page. No longer do you have to dive into General > Touch ID & Passcode to find it.

Calendar got an updated layout, now allowing you to show a list of events below the tradition Month view, something that was available in iOS 1-6 but was oddly removed in iOS 7. Now it seems that Apple looks to add it back. To turn it on, you press the button at the top of the screen (highlighted in red).
The Dark Keyboard option is no longer available in beta, so either Apple decided against the idea or it was never meant to be public. As you can see, however, a new option for “Button Shapes” has been added. What this does is adds a gray shape around the all-text buttons of the iOS 7 UI, making them look more like the traditional buttons you were used to pre-iOS 7.

Also found in iOS 7.1 beta 2 is a new option under restrictions: Car Display. It looks like iOS 7.1 could finally be the public release that unlocks iOS 7′s ‘iOS in the Car’ feature that it showed back at WWDC, but then went silent about. This could be on accident though, let’s just hope it wasn’t.

Also seen in beta 2 are some noticeably faster animations. If you have access to a device running the newest beta and compare it to an iOS 7.0.4 device, or even a beta 1 device, you will notice the animations of opening apps, folders, or getting to multitasking are much faster. Also there is a new animation for opening Control Center, which I don’t really care for. It is much bouncier than before, and makes the utility feel more childish. I also noticed that the contrast for Control Center has been bumped up, making it appear brighter than in earlier versions.