judgement : WWDC is right around the corner , with the bragging opening tonic schedule for Monday at Apple Park . But like in previous days , we ’ve see good deal of leaks in the run - up to WWDC that give us a good idea of what Apple has gravel up its arm .
That ’s peculiarly true of Io 18 this twelvemonth , with an downright bevvy of leaked features doing the round online that percentage point towards a particularly transformative update for the iPhone focalize on , yes , you infer it , AI smarting .
It’sthebig feature in 2024 with a growing turn of phones capable of running on - twist GenAI project like voice bill transcription , veridical - time interlingual rendition and more . If Apple wants to vie with the Android competition , it has some overtake up to do .
With that in mind , here are five of my favourite features rumour to be coming to the iPhone with Io 18 ahead of itsofficial reveal early next week .
An AI-powered Siri experience
Siri is a bit of an oddness ; despite being one of the first practical assistant to launch , well ahead of Amazon ’s Alexa et al , it has lagged behind the contender in late years . While contend smart assistants are equal to of more advanced tasks in 2024 , like look up search results to answer your question , the same ca n’t be say for Siri .
Well , that looks like it ’s about to change with iOS 18 . The rumour first derive before of the iOS 17 launch early last September , withThe Informationclaiming that Apple want Siri to be way smarter in iOS 18 , able to deal complex multi - step tasks and more .
The publication give the example of Siri possibly being capable to take a serial of five photos , stitch them into a GIF and send out the GIF to a booster , all with a exclusive natural action . It ’s suppose that Siri will be more deeply integrate with the Shortcuts app to make this potential , though a more late write up fromBloomberg ’s Mark Gurmanclaims it go right smart further than that .
Per the reputation , Apple is said to have all re - engineer Siri ’s underlying code with LLM support , the technical school that powers chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Gemini . In fact , Apple has been rumoured to cooperator with ChatGPT Godhead OpenAI and Google to bring AI elements to the iPhone experience , though it ’s expected that Apple will utilize its own LLM to power the Siri experience .
Gurman exact that the upgrade Siri will be able to do tasks like opening specific documents , moving a musical note from one folder to another , erase emails , summarising articles and more . It ’s also said that the iPhone will be able to analyse what users are doing on their machine and mechanically enable features to make life a fiddling easier .
The only letdown is that Gurman claim the functionality wo n’t be ready in sentence for the launching of Io 18 in September . Instead , Apple is rumoured to launch the overhauled Siri as part of a smaller iOS 18 update sometime in 2025 .
RCS support in Messages
Getting Apple to take in RCS musical accompaniment has been somewhat of an uphill conflict , with companionship like Google candidature for Apple to adopt support for some sentence – it even had a internet site position up limn all the welfare , including improved security compared to regular SMS texting , to help make its pillow slip .
Well , Apple last relented in former 2023 , confirming that the iPhone would stick out the cross - platform messaging standard in the Messages app “ subsequently ” in 2024 , suggesting that it ’ll be an iOS 18 lineament .
As someone who regularly communicates with Android users , it ’s a real boon as I ’ll no longer ask to trust on third - party service like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to mail high - reticuloendothelial system photos and television , audio frequency messages and more .
It ’ll also bring functionality like type indicator , read receipts , Wi - Fi messaging and improved group chat support , allowing me to bring all my messaging need into the Apple Messages app for the first time . It wo n’t get rid of that horrible shade of green that iPhone users see when messaging an Android drug user , but hey , we ca n’t win them all correct ?
Redesigned control center
Mark Gurmanhas also claimed that iOS 18 will admit update to the Control Center , suggesting that both the music gizmo and chic supplement controls will get upgrades that make them easier to expend – though he has n’t gone into detail about what exactly we should expect .
It ’s a long time coming in my opinion ; the Control Center is a ready to hand feature for iPhone users , but it ’s full of shortcuts and icons that do n’t really make a luck of sense .
That ’s especially genuine of the music whatchamacallum , which can display media not only from your iPhone but other Apple equipment currently playing media . It can get frustratingly complicated if you want to control playback or exchange output from your iPhone to AirPods .
An overhauled widget should hopefully make multi - gadget ascendance much easy , but we ’ll have to wait and see for now .
New AI-powered Health features
The Apple Health app is one of the unsung hero of the iOS experience in my opinion . It bestow in information from most seaworthiness apps , as well as your Apple Watch or other compatible wearable , appropriate you to get a holistic overview of your wellness and fitness , as well as tracking wellness trends over clip .
Well , it ’s about to get even better in iOS 18 with rumours that it’llboast unexampled features powered by on - twist AI – though we ’re yet to hear the specifics of these alleged Modern features .
I ’d love to see Apple ’s AI be capable to analyse all the data point within the Health app and then not only sum up that for you on request , but give you actionable intel on how to better your wellness and fitness establish on said data .
Something similar is already avaialble in the form of the ChatGPT - powered Whoop Coach on the Whoop Band 4.0 , a feature I use on a regular basis to put on a deeper understanding of my metric and trends over time . If that could see data from all health and fitness apps , not just Whoop , that ’d be a plot - changer – and that ’s what I ’m hop for from iOS 18 .
AI-generated notification summaries
If you ’re anything like me , your iPhone notification are whole out of control . eBay missed item notifications ? hold in . Random secret plan telling sample to get me to enter for free gifts ? chequer . Emails , social media notifications , reminder ? Check , check , and crack again .
This mean that , specially in the mornings , I awaken up to an sheer wall of notice on my iPhone . It usually takes me a few minute to go through them , reset the junk , and pass on those I desire to interact with – after my morning cup of tea , of track .
Apple should make things a little easier to digest in iOS 18 , with Siri rumor to be able togenerate handy notification summariesthat give you a prompt overview of your miss notifications . There ’s no parole on how exactly that ’ll happen , but anything that ’ll help me take controller of my sprawling notifications is a welcome addition in my account book .
