iOS 18: The biggest new iPhone features you need to know

Packed with new AI-powered tricks, iOS 18 is set to be Apple’s biggest ever iPhone update.

Soon, you’ll be able to record and transcribe calls, schedule messages to be sent later, create custom emojis, remove unwanted people and objects from photos, and more. As for the apps you rely on to do these things, they’ll walk the path of the Dodo.

More generally, iOS 18 will offer an unprecedented amount of customization for the iPhone. You can solve the chaos like Android users by changing the color and grid-like layout of the home screen.

Then, there is Apple Intelligence. Apple’s take on generative AI can help you write emails and messages, create custom images, create photo and video slideshows based on your description, and dig up old files from your iPhone. Best of all, it can turn Siri into the ultimate AI assistant.

Now that we’ve seen iOS 18 in all its glory, the big question is when will it arrive? Here’s what you need to know about iPhone software updates, including release dates, feature lists, supported phones and more.

Here are the biggest non-AI features that Apple announced for iOS 18 at the WWDC event earlier this June:

What is Apple Intelligence?

Apple has built a suite of AI features directly into iOS 18 and its latest software updates for iPad and Mac.

The new device uses the company’s custom-designed chips and internal and external machine learning models trained on large data sets to generate text, images, and photo and video slideshows. It’s like having ChatGPT and Dall-E at your beck and call – and not entirely different from Microsoft’s AI offering on Windows PC.

You can ask bots to change the tone of your email, create custom emojis (or “Genmoji” in iPhone speak) based on text descriptions or photos in your gallery, generate cartoons with a few words, and turn sketches and notes into pictures.

The technology could also be a boon for Siri. Apple promises a new and improved version of its digital helper that can better understand what you say, complete follow-up tasks, and make full use of the data on your phone.

During the demo, Apple showed Siri correctly responding to weather forecasts for areas that the speaker had intentionally misread. Not only does it identify the location correctly, but it also schedules a hike at the destination for the morning – all with the simplest of nudges.

In other cases, Siri reminds iPhone owners about their mother’s flight arrival time and arranged dinner plans by retrieving relevant information from emails and texts. With iOS 18, you can also type to Siri, when you don’t want to speak out loud, by double-tapping the bottom of the iPhone screen.

This being Apple, the AI ​​features seem to have been created with privacy in mind. Apple emphasizes that most of the processing happens directly on your device, so your data is never lost unless absolutely necessary.

Even if it passes more demanding requests to the cloud, which will be handled by OpenAI partners, Apple says that the data remains encrypted and cannot be accessed by anyone but the user.

Apple will release iOS 18 as a free download this Autumn, the company revealed at WWDC. However, you can preview it first by signing up for the public beta, which launches in July.

As far as new features go, iOS 18 sounds like a blowout, but there is one big caveat. Not all features will be available on every supported device. Specifically, Apple says you need an iPhone 15 Pro or higher for Apple Intelligence because it can handle massive AI tasks using the A17 Pro chip. The feature is also available on iPad and Mac devices with M1 or later.

It is important to note that some features may not be accessible in all countries, languages, or on all devices. For example, Safari’s “Highlights” feature, which automatically detects relevant information, is only available in English in the U.S. In addition, the new live audio transcription capability in the Notes application will be available on iPhone 12 and newer models in English in Australia. , Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, and USA.

Wondering if your iPhone supports the new update? Apple has confirmed that iOS 18 can be downloaded on the following models: