iOS 10.2 Beta Release
Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering for Apple Inc., talks about photos within iOS at the company's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S. June 13, 2016 REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Apple released the iOS 10.2 Public Beta 1 for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch on Tuesday. Previously, the software was available only to registered developers for testing. In the public beta program, the software is available to anybody who signs up for the program for free. It will allow users to test features of the software before the final release.

The software comes with many new features. Here are 5 most exciting iOS 10.2 features:

  • Preserve Camera Settings and video widget: In iOS 10.2, rather than resetting the camera settings every time you close the camera app, users will get the option of retaining the last used camera mode, photo filter and live photo setting. A new widget has also been added for the videos app. It will be accessible in the widget menu on swiping right on your iPhone/iPad home screen. The widget will show movies and TV shows downloaded from iTunes and will play content automatically on tap.
  • Unicode 9 emojis: iOS 10.2 will come with Unicode 9 emoji including clown face, drooling face, selfie, fox face, owl, shark, butterfly, avocado, pancakes, croissant, and more. In totality, there will be more than 100 emojis, including ones denoting both males and female representations of several professions. Many of the existing emojis will be redesigned in iOS 10.2.
  • Apple Music: A new "sort playlists" option has been added to Apple Music. It will sort playlists by type, title and recently added.
  • Emergency contacts: This new feature will send out automatic notifications to your emergency contacts when you use the Emergency SOS feature
  • New wallpapers and "Celebrate" screen effect: iOS 10.2 will finally bring the iPhone 7 graphics showcased at the launch, to users. A new Celebrate screen effect will be added to messaging options.

The company has yet to announce a date for the official launch of the software.