The start-up chime is still, to this day, an iconic calling card for Apple’s Mac computers. Now the company is giving the iPhone a signature power-on sound.
According to snoops digging around in the iOS 16 release candidate, Apple has added a chime to accompany the company logo when a user turns on the phone. Apple is yet to confirm the addition and didn’t mention it during Wednesday’s keynote address where the iPhone 14 was announced.
However, it should be a nice accessibility feature for blind or low vision users who, according to the technology accessibility expert Steven Aquino, have been calling for it for quite some time.
In a tweet (via MacRumors), he wrote: “iPhone 14 accessibility tidbit: Apple has added a Mac-like startup chime when you boot the phone. My understanding is a lot of Blind and low vision people, even inside the company, wished for a concrete way to tell whether their phone restarted.”
Further evidence of the feature was spied by developer Steve Moser, who’s often digging around in the iOS 16 source code. He found a string of code reading: “Play sound when iPhone is powered on and off.”
The sound itself has also been reportedly discovered and posted by an @AppleSWUpdates Twitter account and you can hear it below. The account, which found the sound within the iOS 16 update coming on Monday, only mentioned it’ll be coming for the iPhone 14 Pro only, but we’re sceptical about this being the case.
Because this is a software-based addition, it should come to all iPhones (and probably iPadOS 16 tablet models too) that are cable of running iOS 16. The software launches on September 12, so it won’t be long before we find out. It’ll probably be available within Settings > Accessibility on the models in question.
What do you make of the iPhone start-up chime? Let us know @trustedreviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
