Massive iPhone upgrade coming this week from Apple but your device could miss out

Tech giant Apple is about to lift the lid on some well-guarded iPhone secrets on Monday as it hosts its annual Worldwide Developer Conference - WWDC - at its headquarters in California. Each year the event dives into what Apple will add to the iOS software for the iPhone, as well as iPadOS, macOS for its MacBooks and iMac, and other software for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.

Though WWDC is mainly for developers (that is, professionals who make and design apps and services), there’s a lot announced that affects you if you have an iPhone in your pocket. Apple is set to unveil all about iOS 18, the next major software update for the iPhone and rumour suggests that just like its competitors Samsung and Google, Apple is about to go all-in on artificial intelligence (AI).

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, iOS 18 will introduce a slew of AI-powered features for the iPhone including voice memo transcription, photo editing and retouching, AI-generated automatic replies for messages, AI-generated emojis, and summaries in apps that can sum up messages and emails in shorter text chunks, and even a more natural tone of voice for Siri.

One potential huge change could be Apple finally allowing you to customise the home screen on your iPhone. Famously, Apple has never let you put icons where you want like you can on Android. Though you can now add widgets, icons snap to a rigid grid, filling in from the top of the screen. It’s pure stubbornness that’s kept Apple from changing, but it is rumoured iOS 18 would let you put apps anywhere and even theme the icons in different colours.

All this could represent the biggest free update to iPhones in years. Though the software will very likely debut in September when we expect the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro to launch, Apple brings its latest software to iPhones dating back several years with a free software update. Currently, iPhones dating back to the iPhone XS and XR from 2018 can download and use iOS 17.

We’d assume these two models might get booted off for iOS 18 though, meaning anyone with 2019’s iPhone 11 or later will get iOS 18. This is all conjecture, but Bloomberg’s Gurman also recently reported that some of the expected AI features may be reserved for only the latest iPhones. He says that most of the AI features that are processed on-device (partly for speed and privacy reasons) “will be supported by iPhone, iPad and Mac chips released in the last year or so”.

This implies that we could only see the AI smarts on the new iPhone 16 series and the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro phones released in 2023. There’s even a chance the regular iPhone 15 won’t get it because it runs the A16 Bionic chip that actually debuted in 2022. It means older iPhones back to 2019 might get iOS 18 but only with the visual changes and none of the AI.

Express.co.uk will bring you all the latest from WWDC 2024 when the event starts on Monday 10 June.