iOS 15.4 Beta 4 Released - What's New

Connection Issues with iOS 15.4 Beta 4 Still Persist Despite Latest Update

Even though I've been testing iOS 15.4 beta 4 for some time now, I'm still experiencing connection issues that seem to persist despite having no problems with my actual connection. It's a bit frustrating, especially since it's unclear what specifically is causing these issues. The fact that they're not related to any problems with my own connection makes them all the more puzzling.

In reference to the release notes, there are still several known issues with the Health app and Home application, both of which have received attention from Apple. There are also some messages that don't open properly or fail to scroll after viewing a photo, as well as an issue with Settings. These issues are not widespread, but they're still present nonetheless. Despite this, Apple is working on resolving these problems.

On the other hand, performance-wise, iOS 15.4 beta 4 feels great so far. I haven't noticed any significant issues or complaints to report, even though it's only been a short period of testing. In fact, things seem to be running smoothly and efficiently, which is exactly what you'd expect from a well-designed operating system like iOS.

It's worth noting that, even with an A build, the performance is similar to beta 3, which suggests that Apple has made significant progress in optimizing their code for the latest hardware. The Geekbench test results confirm this, as I scored 1746 on the single-core and 4,821 on the multi-core, compared to 1,735 and 4,914 in beta 3.

As for battery life, I've been pleasantly surprised by how well iOS 15.4 beta 4 has performed so far. This is a significant improvement over my experience with earlier beta stages of iOS 15.4, which suggests that Apple is making good progress on optimizing their code to deliver better battery life.

Next Up: iOS 15.4 Beta 5 or RC

The next update we can expect is either iOS 15.4 beta 5 or the release candidate (RC). Both of these updates are expected to arrive within the next week, with most likely iOS 15.4 beta 5 arriving on March 1st. After that, Apple may release an RC build, followed by a final release a few days later.

If we do see an RC build on March 1st or 2nd, this would suggest that the final release is expected to occur around March 8th. This date coincides with what appears to be an Apple event scheduled for the following week. If my predictions prove correct, we can expect to receive the final release of iOS 15.4 on March 8th.

Event Invites and Updates

In preparation for this potential event, Apple may send out event invites to select users soon. If so, these invites will likely be sent out early next week, possibly as early as March 1st. We can expect more updates and information about iOS 15.4 on my follow-up videos, which I'll post here on the channel every weekend.

Conclusion

In conclusion, iOS 15.4 beta 4 is an impressive update that brings multiple new changes and features. Despite some lingering issues with connection problems, performance and battery life are solidly improved over earlier beta stages of iOS 15.4. As we move forward to the next updates, including iOS 15.4 beta 5 or RC, I'll be keeping a close eye on developments and providing updates here on the channel.

Next Steps

As part of my ongoing testing, I plan to insert a SIM card into these devices and monitor cell connectivity performance. This will provide valuable insights into how iOS 15.4 handles cellular connections in real-world scenarios. I encourage all of you to try this as well, if you're interested in understanding the specifics of how your device is handling cell connectivity.

I'll also be running additional Geekbench tests over the weekend to further assess the performance capabilities of my devices under the latest iOS 15.4 update. Stay tuned for more updates and insights into the world of iOS 15.4 as I continue testing and exploring its features.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today apple released ios 15.4 beta 4 to register developers exactly one week after the third beta and for public beta testers you guys should be seeing this update very soon now in addition to this ios release we also got ipad os 15.4 beta 4 tv os 15.4 beta 4 home pod os 15.4 beta 4 watch os 8.5 beta 4 and mac os monterey 12.3 beta 4. but of course in this video we're talking all about ios and ipad os and what's new in the software along with when to expect the next beta which might be the rc build we'll talk about that later and of course eventually the final release of 15.4 but first let's start off with the size of this update and you can see here on my iphone 13 pro max it came in just under 700 megabytes coming from beta 3. that size of course will vary depending on your device and the version that you're coming from now if we go into our settings and then go to general about 15.4 we can see the new build number here is 19e 5235 a so we do have an a at the end of the build number which does indicate we are very close to a final release usually the rc the build before the rc is the a build so with that in mind that means that we could see the rc next week but again we'll talk more about that later on and if we go down to the modem firmware you can see that has also been updated it's now 1.59.03 it's 1.59.00 before this all right so now what's new here in this fourth beta and first off i have to say that i got the prompt to download the software update over cellular so i don't even have a sim card in this phone but i still got the prompt to use cellular data to download this update so we talked previously how this might be like a bug it may just not last but this is two betas in a row now we've seen this so it looks like this could be a feature coming in ios 15.4 that is the ability to use cellular data to download software updates before you were only able to do this over 5g only using 5g enabled phones so this is nice if you wanted to download software updates over cellular but you did not have 5g we also get a brand new siri voice in this update so we go to our settings and go to sirian search and then to siri voice you can see that we have a new voice down here voice 5 and you can take a listen to what it sounds like hi i'm siri choose the voice you'd like me to use so that is a brand new voice here for siri so hopefully we get even more voices over time but we have a nice selection now of voices to use for the american style of siri voice also new in this update we get a new prompt when setting up an air tag for the first time so this of course is in response to all of the headlines about people using these air tags to stock people but you could see now we have a new prompt here and you kind of have to agree to some terms here so it says air tag is linked to your apple id air tag is intended solely to track items that belong to you using air tags to track people without their consent is a crime in many regions around the world air tag is designed to be detected by victims and enable law enforcement to request identifying information about the owner so that is a new agreement that you have to agree to before you set up and link the air tag with your apple id and this is really smart for apple to add in the air tag setup because if somebody did use these to stock somebody they put them in somewhere they agreed to this right here so in court you know nothing's going to hold up because they agreed to a contract this prompt right here is essentially a contract they agreed to it and then breached the contract so that's going to be something else that's going to be good for apple and court if somebody does actually use an air tag to stock somebody so it's nice to see that they have this added now for setting up air tags we also have a minor change inside of the music application so now when you go into the menu when you're on at the now playing screen you can see that the view full lyrics glyph icon has slightly changed from 15.3.1 so you can see 15.3.1 here on the left right next to view full lyrics you can see that the glyph icon has been changed and speaking of the music application we also got references in the code to a new sorting option being added by release date but we still don't see anything added here in beta 4. i'm not sure if it's going to be for the playlist or inside of a playlist if you could sort it by release date but we don't have either right now there's nothing new here in these menus to sort by release dates but that is referenced in the code so it should be coming soon maybe in the rc or the final release i've also had a lot of people ask me about the tap to pay feature which of course is the feature coming to the iphone very soon where you'll be able to make payments via just tapping on another iphone you won't need like a square reader or any external hardware you'll just be able to pay by simply tapping on another iphone so there's still nothing new here that we can visually see in 15.4 beta 4 we are still waiting on third-party providers to add support so that's probably when we'll see it on our phones stripe has already said they're going to be the first ones to launch this feature it's actually in beta right now through stripe so you'll be able to tap to pay for a lot of different things that use stripe but right now we don't see anything new here in beta 4. now of course once we get to a fourth beta apple's main focus starts to shift to bug fixes and we have quite a few bug fixes in this update so first off in our settings if we go to our icloud settings and then to icloud and then to icloud mail we can finally click on custom email domain and it actually loads up so before in previous betas it would just hang there and it would stop loading and we would never see the splash screen we would never be able to set up our custom email domain but now in beta 4 we can actually open up this menu and actually create our custom email domain also in settings if we go down to general background app refresh and then all the way to the bottom you will notice that the web icon or the web toggle there is missing so before in previous builds we talked about how the web toggle right here for background app refresh was bugged out because it didn't show an icon now it's just been completely removed from this section inside of settings we also have a fix for reminders so if you synced your reminders via icloud and you noticed that they were not syncing properly over the past couple of betas i believe it worked in beta 1 but it did not in beta 2 and 3 but that has been addressed and does work properly now in beta 4. and if we look at the release notes for beta 4 we can see there's only one resolved issue with this update and that's the same as beta 3 we only saw one resolved issue there's still a lot of known issues which is pretty interesting but we can see here the resolved issue has to do with facetime and inadvertently taking a photo of a participant when in a group facetime call so you can see here it happened by tapping on the grid button or the bottom left corner of the screen and this is also a bug on mac os that has been resolved with this update and then as far as bugs go another bug that should be fixed by now is the storage bug so i talked to you guys about this previously in my last video my follow-up video on saturday and a lot of people said that the storage issue has finally been fixed where they could actually load up their storage right here they may have to wait a little bit but it does eventually load up and they can see the amount of storage taken up on their device so if it hasn't been fixed for you i would assume that beta 4 fixes it for those remaining that did not have it fixed in beta 3. now with that being said i am still having issues with airplay to homepod it's still not working every time i get some weird error sometime saying that couldn't connect or the connection timed out i'm still getting that even though i know i have no issues with my connection and then if we go back and reference the release notes you can see there are still quite a few remaining issues relating to the health app the home application has quite a few known issues itunes messages phone so we have issues with emergency sos we have issues with some messages not opening or not being able to scroll after viewing a photo and quick look and also an issue with settings so you can read all those in the release notes if you want to a lot of them are not really too widespread i don't see too many people talking about them but they are still known issues that apple is working on now as far as the performance goes performance feels great so far i mean really nothing to complain about yet of course i haven't used it long enough but i've tested out quite a few things that i had issues with in the past and everything seems to be running just fine so far i cannot imagine it's going to be much different from beta 3 despite having an a build because things were already pretty good and running pretty well i will discuss my overall experience after spending more time with ios 15.4 beta 4 in my follow-up video on saturday i'm also going to start putting my sim card in at these phones i'm running the betas on from now on just to discuss cell connectivity performance as well i know some people requested that so i do want to go ahead and do that for you guys as well and of course like always i did run a geekbench test right after installing the update and you can see i scored a 1746 on the single core and a 48-21 on the multi-core compare that to 1735 and 49-14 which was beta 3 which was a couple of days after it released so pretty good scores definitely in the single core pretty good scores right there right off the bat i will run more this weekend as well and then as far as the battery life goes battery life you know beta 3 was my first good experience with battery life so far in all of ios 15.4 the beta stages so i'm hoping that it continues here with this fourth beta of course i don't know yet it's too early to tell i will discuss that in my follow-up video as well on saturday so stay tuned for a battery update all right so now what's next for apple so next up is ios 15.4 either beta 5 or rc so that is coming next week most likely on march 1st which is next tuesday it could be on the wednesday as well but it's going to be most likely one of these two days so we're either going to see a beta 5 or an rc now if it's a beta 5 say we get beta 5 on march 1st that means that the next week march 8th which is when we're expecting to see an apple event we might see the rc build released after the event and then the final release maybe in the next couple of days maybe the 9th or the 10th now if we see the rc next week on march 1st or march 2nd somewhere in there then that means that we're going to see the final release most likely on march 8th after the apple event so again there's a lot of speculation right now we don't know for sure that the apple event is happening on the 8th but everything is kind of lining up right now for that to be the case next week we should be seeing event invites go out from apple if there is in fact an update on the eighth or a event on the eighth we should see those event invites go out sometime early next week most likely on march 1st given that it's going to be exactly a week from the event but of course things can change and that's why it's always good to keep updated with me over on twitter and of course in my follow up videos that i post here on the channel every weekend you can get more updates and more you know up to the date release date schedules and my predictions so make sure you are following me on twitter and of course make sure you do tune in to those follow-ups on saturday if you're not already but anyways guys there you have it that is ios 15.4 beta 4. even though we're on a fourth beta we still got multiple new changes in this update multiple new features which is crazy this update is just absolutely massive definitely the biggest update of ios 15. but if you guys enjoyed this video as always i would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up and of course make sure to subscribe for a lot more ios 15 coverage but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon youwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today apple released ios 15.4 beta 4 to register developers exactly one week after the third beta and for public beta testers you guys should be seeing this update very soon now in addition to this ios release we also got ipad os 15.4 beta 4 tv os 15.4 beta 4 home pod os 15.4 beta 4 watch os 8.5 beta 4 and mac os monterey 12.3 beta 4. but of course in this video we're talking all about ios and ipad os and what's new in the software along with when to expect the next beta which might be the rc build we'll talk about that later and of course eventually the final release of 15.4 but first let's start off with the size of this update and you can see here on my iphone 13 pro max it came in just under 700 megabytes coming from beta 3. that size of course will vary depending on your device and the version that you're coming from now if we go into our settings and then go to general about 15.4 we can see the new build number here is 19e 5235 a so we do have an a at the end of the build number which does indicate we are very close to a final release usually the rc the build before the rc is the a build so with that in mind that means that we could see the rc next week but again we'll talk more about that later on and if we go down to the modem firmware you can see that has also been updated it's now 1.59.03 it's 1.59.00 before this all right so now what's new here in this fourth beta and first off i have to say that i got the prompt to download the software update over cellular so i don't even have a sim card in this phone but i still got the prompt to use cellular data to download this update so we talked previously how this might be like a bug it may just not last but this is two betas in a row now we've seen this so it looks like this could be a feature coming in ios 15.4 that is the ability to use cellular data to download software updates before you were only able to do this over 5g only using 5g enabled phones so this is nice if you wanted to download software updates over cellular but you did not have 5g we also get a brand new siri voice in this update so we go to our settings and go to sirian search and then to siri voice you can see that we have a new voice down here voice 5 and you can take a listen to what it sounds like hi i'm siri choose the voice you'd like me to use so that is a brand new voice here for siri so hopefully we get even more voices over time but we have a nice selection now of voices to use for the american style of siri voice also new in this update we get a new prompt when setting up an air tag for the first time so this of course is in response to all of the headlines about people using these air tags to stock people but you could see now we have a new prompt here and you kind of have to agree to some terms here so it says air tag is linked to your apple id air tag is intended solely to track items that belong to you using air tags to track people without their consent is a crime in many regions around the world air tag is designed to be detected by victims and enable law enforcement to request identifying information about the owner so that is a new agreement that you have to agree to before you set up and link the air tag with your apple id and this is really smart for apple to add in the air tag setup because if somebody did use these to stock somebody they put them in somewhere they agreed to this right here so in court you know nothing's going to hold up because they agreed to a contract this prompt right here is essentially a contract they agreed to it and then breached the contract so that's going to be something else that's going to be good for apple and court if somebody does actually use an air tag to stock somebody so it's nice to see that they have this added now for setting up air tags we also have a minor change inside of the music application so now when you go into the menu when you're on at the now playing screen you can see that the view full lyrics glyph icon has slightly changed from 15.3.1 so you can see 15.3.1 here on the left right next to view full lyrics you can see that the glyph icon has been changed and speaking of the music application we also got references in the code to a new sorting option being added by release date but we still don't see anything added here in beta 4. i'm not sure if it's going to be for the playlist or inside of a playlist if you could sort it by release date but we don't have either right now there's nothing new here in these menus to sort by release dates but that is referenced in the code so it should be coming soon maybe in the rc or the final release i've also had a lot of people ask me about the tap to pay feature which of course is the feature coming to the iphone very soon where you'll be able to make payments via just tapping on another iphone you won't need like a square reader or any external hardware you'll just be able to pay by simply tapping on another iphone so there's still nothing new here that we can visually see in 15.4 beta 4 we are still waiting on third-party providers to add support so that's probably when we'll see it on our phones stripe has already said they're going to be the first ones to launch this feature it's actually in beta right now through stripe so you'll be able to tap to pay for a lot of different things that use stripe but right now we don't see anything new here in beta 4. now of course once we get to a fourth beta apple's main focus starts to shift to bug fixes and we have quite a few bug fixes in this update so first off in our settings if we go to our icloud settings and then to icloud and then to icloud mail we can finally click on custom email domain and it actually loads up so before in previous betas it would just hang there and it would stop loading and we would never see the splash screen we would never be able to set up our custom email domain but now in beta 4 we can actually open up this menu and actually create our custom email domain also in settings if we go down to general background app refresh and then all the way to the bottom you will notice that the web icon or the web toggle there is missing so before in previous builds we talked about how the web toggle right here for background app refresh was bugged out because it didn't show an icon now it's just been completely removed from this section inside of settings we also have a fix for reminders so if you synced your reminders via icloud and you noticed that they were not syncing properly over the past couple of betas i believe it worked in beta 1 but it did not in beta 2 and 3 but that has been addressed and does work properly now in beta 4. and if we look at the release notes for beta 4 we can see there's only one resolved issue with this update and that's the same as beta 3 we only saw one resolved issue there's still a lot of known issues which is pretty interesting but we can see here the resolved issue has to do with facetime and inadvertently taking a photo of a participant when in a group facetime call so you can see here it happened by tapping on the grid button or the bottom left corner of the screen and this is also a bug on mac os that has been resolved with this update and then as far as bugs go another bug that should be fixed by now is the storage bug so i talked to you guys about this previously in my last video my follow-up video on saturday and a lot of people said that the storage issue has finally been fixed where they could actually load up their storage right here they may have to wait a little bit but it does eventually load up and they can see the amount of storage taken up on their device so if it hasn't been fixed for you i would assume that beta 4 fixes it for those remaining that did not have it fixed in beta 3. now with that being said i am still having issues with airplay to homepod it's still not working every time i get some weird error sometime saying that couldn't connect or the connection timed out i'm still getting that even though i know i have no issues with my connection and then if we go back and reference the release notes you can see there are still quite a few remaining issues relating to the health app the home application has quite a few known issues itunes messages phone so we have issues with emergency sos we have issues with some messages not opening or not being able to scroll after viewing a photo and quick look and also an issue with settings so you can read all those in the release notes if you want to a lot of them are not really too widespread i don't see too many people talking about them but they are still known issues that apple is working on now as far as the performance goes performance feels great so far i mean really nothing to complain about yet of course i haven't used it long enough but i've tested out quite a few things that i had issues with in the past and everything seems to be running just fine so far i cannot imagine it's going to be much different from beta 3 despite having an a build because things were already pretty good and running pretty well i will discuss my overall experience after spending more time with ios 15.4 beta 4 in my follow-up video on saturday i'm also going to start putting my sim card in at these phones i'm running the betas on from now on just to discuss cell connectivity performance as well i know some people requested that so i do want to go ahead and do that for you guys as well and of course like always i did run a geekbench test right after installing the update and you can see i scored a 1746 on the single core and a 48-21 on the multi-core compare that to 1735 and 49-14 which was beta 3 which was a couple of days after it released so pretty good scores definitely in the single core pretty good scores right there right off the bat i will run more this weekend as well and then as far as the battery life goes battery life you know beta 3 was my first good experience with battery life so far in all of ios 15.4 the beta stages so i'm hoping that it continues here with this fourth beta of course i don't know yet it's too early to tell i will discuss that in my follow-up video as well on saturday so stay tuned for a battery update all right so now what's next for apple so next up is ios 15.4 either beta 5 or rc so that is coming next week most likely on march 1st which is next tuesday it could be on the wednesday as well but it's going to be most likely one of these two days so we're either going to see a beta 5 or an rc now if it's a beta 5 say we get beta 5 on march 1st that means that the next week march 8th which is when we're expecting to see an apple event we might see the rc build released after the event and then the final release maybe in the next couple of days maybe the 9th or the 10th now if we see the rc next week on march 1st or march 2nd somewhere in there then that means that we're going to see the final release most likely on march 8th after the apple event so again there's a lot of speculation right now we don't know for sure that the apple event is happening on the 8th but everything is kind of lining up right now for that to be the case next week we should be seeing event invites go out from apple if there is in fact an update on the eighth or a event on the eighth we should see those event invites go out sometime early next week most likely on march 1st given that it's going to be exactly a week from the event but of course things can change and that's why it's always good to keep updated with me over on twitter and of course in my follow up videos that i post here on the channel every weekend you can get more updates and more you know up to the date release date schedules and my predictions so make sure you are following me on twitter and of course make sure you do tune in to those follow-ups on saturday if you're not already but anyways guys there you have it that is ios 15.4 beta 4. even though we're on a fourth beta we still got multiple new changes in this update multiple new features which is crazy this update is just absolutely massive definitely the biggest update of ios 15. but if you guys enjoyed this video as always i would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up and of course make sure to subscribe for a lot more ios 15 coverage but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon you\n"