Apple’s iOS 18 to Bring Major Upgrades for iPhone Users
Every year, Apple introduces a new operating system for its mobile devices, bringing new features and experiences to users. According to Mark Gurman, a journalist at Bloomberg, Apple is planning a significant upgrade for its mobile operating system, iOS 18, with expectations that it could be the “biggest” software update in iPhone history.
In a recent Q&A segment of the Power On newsletter, Gurman mentioned that internally at Apple, iOS 18 is considered to be one of the most important iOS updates in the company’s history, if not the most important. While further details about the feature updates for iOS 18 are yet to be shared, several new features are expected to be included in the update.
- RCS Message Support
RCS (Rich Communication Services) is a cross-platform messaging standard aimed at replacing traditional SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), providing users with a richer and more secure communication experience. RCS supports high-definition images and videos, voice messages, typing indicators, read receipts, Wi-Fi messaging, and enhanced group chat functionality.
Apple announced in November 2023 that it plans to support RCS in its iPhone messaging app later in 2024, collaborating with Android manufacturers such as Google and Samsung.
This means that iPhone users will be able to enjoy the same messaging experience as Android users without the need to download third-party apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram. RCS support is likely to become a significant feature of iOS 18, bridging the messaging gap between iOS and Android.
- Smarter Siri
Siri is Apple’s intelligent voice assistant, capable of helping users with various tasks such as making calls, sending messages, setting reminders, checking the weather, and playing music. However, there is still substantial room for improvement in Siri’s intelligence and range of functions, especially when compared to competitors like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
Gurman predicts that iOS 18 will incorporate generative AI technology, significantly enhancing Siri and Messages applications in terms of question-answering and sentence autocomplete capabilities. He also mentioned that Apple is exploring the application of generative AI features to its other platforms, including Apple Music, Pages, Keynote, and Xcode.
In addition, according to The Information, Apple plans to integrate large language models into Siri, allowing users to automatically perform complex tasks. This feature is expected to have more profound integration with the Shortcuts app. The report suggests that this feature is likely to appear in the iPhone software update to be released in 2024, quite possibly iOS 18.
Generative AI technology is an artificial intelligence model trained on a large amount of text data, capable of generating relevant outputs such as text, images, and audio based on given inputs.
Generative AI technology gained popularity after OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, and last year, both Google and Microsoft introduced similar chatbots. Domestic smartphone brands have also launched AI large models and integrated them into mobile phones.
In the future, Apple will also apply generative AI technology to its platforms, providing users with more intelligent and humanized services.
In addition to the aforementioned new features, iOS 18 is likely to bring other improvements and optimizations, such as a new interface design, stronger privacy protection, and faster performance. Gurman suggests that developers will be very excited about iOS 18, and users will also be pleasantly surprised and satisfied.
Apple typically holds its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June of each year, where it unveils new operating systems and officially releases them to users in September.