Apple Officially Releases iOS 10.2 Beta 7 Two Days After Previous Update, Final Version Expected Next Week

Apple seeded the seventh iOS 10.2 beta to developers and public testers on Wednesday, just two days after releasing iOS 10.2 beta 6 and five days after seeding beta 5.

Cupertino’s latest iOS update includes a slew of new features, including 72 new Unicode 9.0 emoji. Among the new emoji are a selfie taker, a fox, face palm, clown face, canoe, avocado, a “call me hand” emoji, and new profession emoji in both male and female versions. Additionally, most of the existing emoji have been redrawn and updated, often with added detail and improved design.

Other new features found in iOS 10.2 include:

• Apple’s new TV app — which replaces the stock Videos app in beta 3 and newer.
• A Preserve setting option in the Camera app.
• Single Sign-On support for watching content via third-party apps.
• A new and improved Videos widget, which is joined by the TV widget.
• New “Celebration” and “Love” iMessage screen effects.
• An emergency SOS feature, similar to the one implemented on the Apple Watch.
• In Music, there’s a new “Show Star Ratings” option in Settings.
• Similarly, there are now dedicated buttons for Repeat and Shuffle in Music.

Apple’s work and fine-tuning of iOS 10.2 is slightly unusual, due to the sheer number of beta versions released to developers and public beta testers in the last few weeks. According to MacRumors forum member bmcfadden, the release notes for iOS 10.2 beta 5, beta 6 and beta 7 are identical — so it’s not clear what exactly today’s release has added, changed or updated. Most likely, it’s a handful of under-the-hood changes, bug fixes and small tweaks.

Recent changes may have included some battery updates, due to the battery issues discovered on the iPhone 6s in recent months. Last week, Apple said that it would release a diagnostic tool next week to help users track and understand issues related to their phone’s battery.

Apple is largely expected to release the final version of iOS 10.2 sometime next week — which would coincide with the announced release of the battery diagnostic tool.

iOS 10 beta 7 is currently available as an over-the-air update for developers and public beta testers.