Apple has already started seeding beta versions of the next major iOS 7 firmware update, iOS 7.1, and according to a latest rumor it has already seeded iOS 7 beta 3 to various testing partners. As of now this build has not been seeded to developers because it hasn’t been long since Apple rolled out iOS 7 beta 2, that particular build was seeded to developers on December 13th. According to a “trusted source” who spoke to BGR, iOS 7.1 beta 3 includes important bug fixes as well as a several new features, however they have not been described.
The same source claims that iOS 7.1 will not be publicly released until March 2014. It was previously believed that this update might be rolled out for all iOS users in January, but that timeframe has now been contradicted. It is also unclear if iOS 7.1 beta 3 patches the exploit that has been used to achieve the iOS 7 untethered jailbreak that was released just yesterday. While it can go either way, Apple usually patches the exploits soon after the jailbreak has been released. There also exists the possibility that the company might not wait for iOS 7.1 and simply release an incremental update that patches the exploit. iOS 7.1 is going to be the first major update ever since iOS 7.0 was released back in September.