How does iOS choose witch picture is the "album cover" in Photos?

[Cobold]

Hey.

How does iOS choose witch picture is the "album cover" in Photos?
It seems completely random! It is neither the first picture in an album, nor the last... It isn't even the "same" in a row, like always use the 4th picture or so.
It is totally random (read: a total mess!)
For my understanding, the best way would be to use either the first or the last picture in an album as it's cover.

But for my albums, it is like so:
First album uses the second picture in the album as album-cover.
Second album uses the 9th (!) picture in the album as cover.
Third album actually uses the first (yay!) picture as cover.

But however, I cannot see any logic behind that behavior...
Do you?

 

[Hary]

A very good question!

You are right. It seems that something has changed with iOS 8. I upgraded all my iPhones (4, 4S, 5, 5S) and the result is the same. Everytime that i sync my iPhones through iTunes the album cover is different and as you correctly pointed it out without any logic. It's not the first one not the last one. I also don't like that. I fully agree agree with you. The best it would be to have as key photo the first or the last one. Today i upgraded my iPhone 5S with iOS 8.0.2. The phone works better but as far as this issue is concerned nothing has changed. I would also like to have some official information on this subject. Is this a new feature or is it a bug that it will be fixed in the future?

 

[Fanaticalism]

I don't believe in witch pictures, personally.

 

[Hary]

Problem fixed!!!

It seems that with iOS 8.1 the problem has been resolved. I upgraded my iPhone 5S today and everything works fine. The photo cover of the albums is not any more a random photo but the first one as it was the case before. Thanks Apple!!!