iOS 18 was one of, if not the biggest, updates to Apple’s iPhone collection to date.
While it’s not a complete overhaul of the operating system, there are plenty of changes permeating virtually every aspect of the iOS experience, especially if you own an iPhone capable of taking advantage of Apple Intelligence.
Apple Intelligence was Apple’s big bet for iOS 18, hoping to bring the iPhone in line with the best Android competition in generative AI capabilities – and to that end, Apple largely achieved its goal.
Apple Intelligence includes all the popular AI-powered features available on competitive Android, including writing tools, text-based image generation, dictation and translation technology and much more, plus a few features we haven’t seen yet, like voice acting for custom emoji. Genmoji, official integration with ChatGPT and the ability to summarize phone calls.
Some features may not always work as intended, as recently shown by iPhones incorrectly interpreting a BBC News headline and essentially creating a fake headline using notification summary technology, but some genuinely handy new features are integrated into the experience.
Essentially, this was an absolutely brilliant update that introduced path more new features and functionality than any other big iOS update in recent memory – but don’t get used to these big updates because iOS 19 seems a little… light on features right now.
What could Apple bring us in iOS 19?
The big update for iOS 19 appears to be a real LLM-based Siri experience. Although Siri received a significant update in iOS 18, allowing it to answer questions in a much more useful way, it still needs to switch to ChatGPT for certain tasks in iOS 18.2. A proper Siri, powered by LLM, could remove this need.
For those new to the world of AI, an LLM, or Large Language Model, is trained on large amounts of data, from text to art to math and more depending on its specialty, allowing it essentially understanding natural language and performing tasks accordingly. , whether it’s creating poetry or generating videos.
It’s the underlying technology that powers many of the AI experiences available in 2025, from chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini to image generation tools like Midjourney.
An LLM-based version of Siri would instantly make the virtual assistant more useful, allowing it to answer general knowledge questions, help solve math problems, etc., but it goes well beyond just make him smarter.
A new Siri might also be able to better conduct ongoing conversations and offer the ability to recall information from previous chats to better provide help – a key feature of competing ChatGPT that makes it particularly useful.
Interestingly, although this is what I currently consider THE iOS 19’s flagship feature, reports suggest that, like the initial Apple Intelligence rollout, it will not launch on the first version of iOS 19. Instead, Apple is reportedly considering a spring 2026 launch, potentially in iOS 19.4. by previous release cycles of the iOS Dot update.
Now, an even smarter Siri is an important feature, but it’s just A functionality compared to the magnitude we saw with the release of iOS 18.
Is that it?
Elsewhere, rumors currently suggest we’ll get a redesigned Camera app in iOS 19. Said to be inspired by Apple’s VisionOS UI, the new design offers more real estate for the camera view, with translucent context menus which house the different elements of the phone. shooting modes and settings.
As far as current leaks go, that’s about it.
Now, I’m not suggesting that Apple would release a big update with just one or two new features – it will likely improve some of the current Apple Intelligence systems and potentially add new features to better compete with 2025 competition – but all signs point to a year of tweaking Apple’s mobile operating system.
iOS 19 won’t be officially revealed until WWDC 2025, which will almost certainly take place in June, so we still have plenty of time to hear about other new features coming to the iPhone. But this time last year, we already knew about many important features of iOS 18, many under the Apple Intelligence banner.
The fact that it’s not the same this year might say a lot about Apple’s plans for 2025 – but we’ll have to wait and see for now.
