• Android 17 is causing touchscreen issues for a number of Pixel owners
• Google is aware of the issue and has suggested some solutions, but these seemingly haven't worked for most people
• Another fix suggested on Reddit appears to work better, but still not for everyone

Android 17 hasn’t had the smoothest of starts, with some early updaters reporting issues with Wi-Fi and 5G connections, and now yet another bug has emerged — this time affecting the touchscreen.

According to various Reddit users (via Android Authority), the update to Android 17 has led to touchscreen issues, including the screen scrolling in the opposite direction to the one they swiped, completely ignoring taps, and there being dead zones where the screen is unresponsive.

It’s hard to say how widespread this issue is, but there are multiple Reddit threads about it, and it has also been submitted to Google’s issue tracker. So if you haven’t updated to Android 17 yet, you might want to hold off — though it seems the Google Pixel 6 series at least might be unaffected.

The good news is that Google is aware of the bug, as not only has it been submitted to the company’s issue tracker, but an official Google account actually replied to one of the Reddit threads, suggesting a couple of possible fixes.

Three possible fixes

These included clearing the cache, by going to Settings > Apps > See all apps > Pixel Launcher app > Storage & cache > Clear cache. If that doesn’t work the other suggestion was to boot your phone into safe mode and see if that fixes the problem.

To do this on a Pixel 6 or newer that’s currently switched on, press and hold the power button for a few seconds, and then tap and hold either the ‘Power off’ or ‘Restart’ option, followed by tapping ‘OK’. If your phone is off, you instead want to press the power button, and then when the animation starts, press and hold the volume down button until the animation ends.

In either case your phone will say ‘safe mode’ at the bottom of the screen once it starts up, and if this does fix the problem then the issue is a third-party app, so you should temporarily remove these one by one, starting with the most recent ones, until you find the culprit.

But while that’s the official Google advice, it doesn’t appear to have worked for many people. What does seem to have worked slightly more widely is a suggestion to turn off the triple-tap magnification shortcut.

To do this, head to Settings > Accessibility > Magnification, then either turn off ‘Magnification shortcut’, or tap on it and change the magnification option to something other than ‘Triple-tap screen’. However it's unclear whether this has worked for everyone or not.

So if none of the above resolves the problem for you, then unfortunately you’ll probably have to wait for Google to roll out a proper fix. Let’s just hope that doesn’t take long.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is a balanced flagship phone, but can it compete with Ultra-branded camera phones from China? To find out, I pitted the best Samsung phone against the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, which is widely considered the best camera phone available right now. But while the Oppo flagship was the favorite going into my photo walk, the Samsung surprised me in a few ways.

With the S26 Ultra, the Korean giant doubled down on software and bundled it with larger apertures on two sensors, whereas Oppo went all-in on hardware upgrades and paired them with meaningful software advancements. It also added 10x optical zoom, making the Find X9 Ultra the only Ultra phone with this feature in 2026. Oppo says its 10x telephoto camera is 3x more light-sensitive than the Galaxy S23 Ultra's 10x camera.

The resulting camera system beats the Galaxy S26 Ultra in most scenarios, but Samsung's flagship phone surprised me on multiple occasions. It's certainly a better camera phone than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, despite having seemingly similar hardware.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra vs. Oppo Find X9 Ultra: Specs

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra covers 13-111mm focal lengths. It has a 50MP 13mm f/1.9 ultra-wide camera with a 1/2.5-inch sensor, a 200MP 23mm f/1.4 main camera with a 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 10MP 67mm f/2.4 3x telephoto camera with a 1/3.94-inch sensor, and a 50MP 111mm f/2.9 5x periscope telephoto camera with a 1/2.52-inch sensor. It looks formidable until you see what Oppo has on offer this year.

The Find X9 Ultra covers focal lengths from 14mm to 230mm. It has a 50MP 14mm f/2 ultra-wide camera with a 1/1.95-inch sensor, a 200MP 23mm f/1.5 main camera with a 1/1.2-inch sensor, a 200MP 70mm f/2.2 3x telephoto camera with a 1/1.28-inch sensor, and a 50MP 230mm f/3.5 10x telephoto camera with a 1/2.75-inch sensor.

I took more than 500 photos on each phone and narrowed down this comparison to 25 images. Here's how the two Ultra phone cameras compare:

Main camera

Both Samsung and Oppo shoot pixel-binned images from their 200MP sensor by default. I recommend using a higher resolution mode (like 24MP or 50MP on the Galaxy S26 Ultra and 50MP on the Oppo), but I kept the default settings for this comparison.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra boosts color saturation to add a pop, whereas Oppo's shots look more natural. While I like Samsung's contrast, there's some artificial color sharpening going on, making it look less natural.

On the other hand, the Find X9 Ultra gives you a more pleasing bokeh, thanks to a bigger sensor. Both phones captured good amount of details, as you can see the texture on the leaves.

However, I prefer Oppo's color science and Master Mode, which give me natural tones with minimal phone-like color processing.

In evening shots, the Galaxy S26 Ultra gave my photos a teal hue, whereas the Find X9 Ultra had a pink hue. My skin tone was better captured by the Oppo phone, and it had more details. In comparison, the Samsung shot looks slightly noisy and less appealing overall.

Samsung has been working on improving its night mode photos for a few years now, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra beats its rivals in this scenario on most occasions. I want my low-light photos to look like low-light shots instead of artificially brightened photos. That's why I like Samsung's saturated colors on the entrance board versus Oppo's brightened picture quality at night.

However, if you switch to the Master Mode, things change drastically. The Find X9 Ultra handles night light well and doesn't overexpose the shots to brighten every detail. In my testing, Master Mode consistently delivered better results than Oppo's default processing, and I relied on it for night shots.

Telephoto cameras

This is one of the scenarios where Samsung surprised me. I like its cooler tone versus Oppo's warmer look, which gave my skin a yellow tint. It doesn't look bad, but I'm simply not that pale. Again, this could be fixed by using the Master Mode, but I expected better color science from the default processing. However, Oppo's shot captured rich details as compared to a slightly smoother-looking skin on the Samsung flagship.

In challenging lighting situations like the above, when the setting sun was directly hitting my face, Samsung processed the photo better than Oppo.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra managed to get the golden hour look, while the Find X9 Ultra's shot looks washed out. Both photos were captured with tap and shoot, so the focus was set, and the cameras didn't struggle to find the subject automatically. Again, I wish Samsung captured more details with a more natural-looking bokeh. It looks soft and slightly artificial in comparison to the Oppo's.

Oppo's bigger lens and smarter processing comes in handy when you need rich details in shots like above. Samsung struggled to focus on the thick webbing, while the Find X9 Ultra focused and captured even the single strands. And this extends to the 10x telephoto camera.

Oppo demolishes the Galaxy S26 Ultra in macro shots. This was a tricky subject because the small flower kept moving in the slightest breeze. I struggled to get it in focus with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which it simply couldn't do. That's why I don't have a comparison photo for this shot. The Oppo Find X9 Ultra, by contrast, focused on the same subject with a single tap and even captured those white threads in the picture.

One of the reasons I love having big telephoto cameras, like the one on the Find X9 Ultra, is that they allow me to get so close to small subjects and capture things I'd never be able to focus on with my eyes. Oppo's macro mode is right up there with Vivo's, and Samsung doesn't have a match for it.

Ultra-wide camera

When it comes to my ultra-wide testing, the Oppo Find X9 Ultra was able to get more contrast and highlight the blues of the sky without blowing out the green leaves as the Galaxy S26 Ultra did.

Overall, I prefer Oppo's shot here because it has more details on the tree trunks and didn't overexpose the leaves. However, Samsung's processing focused on better exposing the leaves and didn't have the same halo effect as its rival.

Verdict

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra consistently captured richer details compared to the Galaxy S26 Ultra. However, the Samsung flagship stood its own and even beat the Oppo phone on a couple of occasions. While I prefer having bigger sensors, the Galaxy phone surprised me in the best ways.

That said, Oppo easily wins in most scenarios. It is, hands-down, the current king of smartphone telephoto cameras. TechRadar's Cameras Editor Timothy Coleman also compared the Find X9 Ultra to two dedicated cameras and concluded, "It feels like this flagship Chinese phone renders most travel zoom compacts redundant," which can't be said about the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The Master Mode is an added benefit if you like shooting film-like colors. I simply can't stop shooting with this phone.

Online safety — and in particular, the online safety of children — has emerged as a hot topic of debate in recent months.

The UK is following Australia’s lead in banning social media for under-16s, while Big Tech companies including Apple and Google have committed to giving parents more safety tools to better protect their children from smartphone-related harm.

Apple, for its part, dedicated a sizeable portion of its WWDC 2026 presentation to the new Child Account features it’s introducing in iOS 27, but are these changes — which include more granular parental control and app-specific screen time limits — enough to satisfy increasingly safety-concerned governments? The answer, at least for now, appears to be ‘no’.

On the same day as Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote, the UK government gave major tech firms a three-month ultimatum to “implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children,” lest they face fines and legislative action forcing them to do so.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer referenced Apple and Google by name as the biggest bearers of responsibility on this “horrific issue”, adding that “nothing is off the table” in terms of sanctions: “As a last resort, we are exploring criminal liability for tech bosses who fail to comply.” Yikes.

Starmer also cited British AI company SafeToNet — whose HarmBlock software blocks all nude content on supported smartphones at the operating system (OS) level — as proof that the government’s demands are possible to implement at a technological level.

TechRadar spoke exclusively to Richard Pursey, founder and CEO of SafeToNet, to understand where Big Tech companies like Apple are still falling short when it comes to child safety — and how they can address the vulnerabilities in their respective approaches to this complex issue.

The questions in this interview have been edited for clarity.

TechRadar (TR): Apple dedicated a sizeable portion of its WWDC 2026 keynote to demonstrating its new child safety features. Does this suggest Big Tech companies are waking up to the dangers of smartphone use among children?

Richard Pursey (RP): All advancements from Big Tech in online child safety are welcome. At SafeToNet, we've never believed in one silver bullet, because protecting children online requires a collaborative approach where the online safety ecosystem must work together. This includes legislators, big tech, and cyber safety specialists like SafeToNet.

What Apple announced at WWDC 2026 was genuine progress: mandatory child accounts, parental approval before new app downloads or website [visits], and an expansion of its Communication Safety detection to cover violent and graphic content alongside nudity. All of that matters, and parents should switch it on.

But the protection still lives where Apple chooses to build it — inside its own apps, like iMessage and FaceTime — and depends on individual app developers like Meta, TikTok, etc. choosing to build similar protections into theirs. And there’s the rub. The tech platforms have been given years to sort this issue out, and they’ve failed. I don’t see why they will start now. As welcome as Apple’s announcements are, they don’t get to where the harm is happening — on platforms where users can see, film and share harmful content.

Ann Thai, Apple’s Senior Director of Marketplace Platforms and Technologies, said at WWDC 2026, “It’s developers who play an important role in assuring kids get age-appropriate experiences in apps”. She further continues, “…we believe every app has the same responsibility.” And [she] cited Apple’s resources to help developers build this functionality into their apps. The reliance on every app platform, every messaging app, every chat room, [and] every gaming platform to build solutions themselves is a huge risk to every child's safety. We can’t afford to leave any gaps, as we all know that the bad actors will find them and exploit them.

That's precisely the gap that the UK government called out on June 8, giving every device manufacturer three months to define how they will close it.

It's also the gap HarmBlock was built to close: one safeguarding layer that runs across the entire device. One that is application agnostic and which even works on E2EE environments. HarmBlock is designed to prevent the seeing, filming, and sharing of sexual content across the entire device, including livestream and the camera. The government further stated that all of this must be delivered without threatening users’ privacy, which is where HarmBlock is so powerful. It runs on the device, in real-time, without collecting or transmitting any user data.

TR: Is it too late — or even possible — for Big Tech companies to implement these changes?

RP: It's not too late, but we can’t be timid in our approach. The UK Government has been bold, and it must not soften or concede. HarmBlock is absolute proof that it is possible to make every smartphone and tablet (laptops too — even though they are out of the initial UK Government scope) safe out of the box.

Technology like ours is tamper-proof; it cannot be deleted or circumvented. This must become the standard. We used to drive cars without seat belts. Nobody in their right mind would do that now. So, we need to push ahead with confidence and make every device in the hands of a child safe to use. We can do that, and we can do it now.

TR: Apple's Communication Safety feature uses on-device AI to determine if a photo or video appears to contain nudity and blocks that content accordingly. As you noted, Apple announced that it's expanding this functionality to include gore and violent content. Could you clarify how HarmBlock still differs from Apple's approach?

RP: HarmBlock is universal. It runs across every device and across the entirety of that device. It isn’t selective like Apple. It is agnostic and protects across the entire ecosystem — not just the apps a manufacturer happens to control. HarmBlock stops problems like sextortion in its tracks because it works in the camera of any application — not just the Apple native camera. I don’t know of a single parent who doesn’t want that.

TR: Regarding the UK government’s new demands surrounding the detection of sexually explicit images, how does Apple’s current approach fall short of those demands?

RP: There's still a clear gap. Apple has confirmed it can block explicit content within its own messaging ecosystem, but it puts the responsibility on every other app to build that same protection into its own environment, and there's currently no way for a parent to check whether any given app has actually done that. The camera also remains unprotected, meaning content can be created.

With a HarmBlock-enabled device, you don't have to check. It just works the moment the device is switched on. You'll see our sapling symbol in the status bar, and that's confirmation that nude-based protection is active across the entire device, not buried somewhere inside one app's settings. Children cannot circumvent or disable it. Parents shouldn't have to dig through every app their child has installed just to know their child is safe. SafeToNet makes the entire device safe out of the box. No onboarding, no confusing user flows. It just works.

TR: Are there plans to make HarmBlock AI available on additional devices, beyond the HMD Fuse?

RP: Yes, and that is happening as we speak. More OEMs are turning to SafeToNet, including chipset manufacturers, and we plan to make some major announcements in that area very soon.

We believe we are setting the gold standard for on-device safety. If it isn’t HarmBlock-enabled, then it isn’t safe. We are being chosen due to the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of our software, and, crucially, because we are independent. We are specialists in this area and have been safeguarding children for over 14 years. This is our area of expertise

HarmBlock detects harm faster than the blink of an eye, which is how it works in livestream. Manufacturers like that we don’t intrude on the user’s experience of their device or their apps. We are chosen because we balance safety with privacy. We don’t know of anyone else who does that.

If SafeToNet is in talks with chipset manufacturers, it figures that HarmBlock will become a key selling point of more phones soon — and hopefully on models available outside the UK, too.

Might the company also be in direct communication with Big Tech firms like Apple and Google over the issue of child safety? “I can't deny or confirm,” SafeToNet’s Co-Founder, Sharon Pursey, told TechRadar for a separate article, which suggests Richard's vision for a true a “collaborative approach” might soon be realized.

In any case, if you’re mulling over which smartphone to buy your child right now, we recently researched the best phones for kids so you don’t have to. Our comprehensive guide explains the difference between smartphones, dumbphones, and hybrid devices, and features recommendations for different parental needs.

We've reached out to Apple for its response to the UK government's demands and will update this article if we hear back.

• Football supporters who spill and throw pints could ruin your smartphone
• Cider, with its high sugar content, can wreck the insides of even an IP68-rated phone
• If you fall foul of such spillage and booze-based buffoonery, make sure you take action to clean and protect your phone

As a man who hates waste and has a distinct apathy for over-the-top football celebrations, the seemingly new phenomenon of throwing alcoholic pints into the air when terminal runners-up England score a goal has left me with an even greater disdain for sloshed soccer supporters.

Research from Aldi notes that, during the 2024 European Football Championship, nearly 5 million pints were spilt every time the England team scored a goal, and as such, avoiding accelerated alcohol during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could be challenging — even for those of you lucky enough to support another nation.

The best I can do to combat this moronic mindlessness is to flag the booze that poses the most damage to smartphones — using data sourced by phone comparison and recycling site Compare and Recycle — with the hope that the next time Freddie Flag-jumper, Gravy Dave, and Barry Bulldogs decide to send their pint skyward, you'll be primed and ready to take cover.

My prejudices aside, even if you’re at a more civilized public house — perhaps one with a nice selection of cask ales and fancy sausage rolls — pints can still be spilt via more innocent bumps of a hand or slips of a tray, and so hopefully, you'll find this information useful even if you're not a footy-mad hooligan.

Now you might say to me, ‘Roland, surely the best phones are waterproof…’ and I’d say ‘correct, have a tech sticker’. But I’d also point out that the folks at Compare and Recycle have noted that the composition of commonly chugged boozy beverages can damage even phones rated against a dunk in the drink.

“While many modern flagship smartphones have an IP67 or IP68 rating, which gives some level of water resistance, this is typically only for fresh water and offers little proven protection against the sugary, alcoholic liquids found in beers and ciders,” says Lee Elliott, chief product officer at Compare and Recycle.

Even when a phone is wiped clean of spilt drink, the sugars in it can suck in moisture from the surrounding environment and get into areas of the phone that might be resistant to standard water but can be corroded by sugar.

“Add in the alcohol content, which can act as a mild solvent over time, gradually degrading things like the oleophobic coating (an oil-repellent layer) on your screen or rubber seals around ports and buttons, and you can start to understand why a spilt pint is a much bigger problem for your phone than you might initially realize,” Lee explains.

Particular pints are purveyors of palaver for portable phones (thank you), with cider apparently being the worst offender due to its high sugar content; so I’d suggest heightened caution when watching England at a Somerset-based public house or alcohol-allotting establishment.

Beer is less of a problem, but Kronenbourg 1664 (a reasonable lager in this seasoned drinker’s opinion) is the most phone-unfriendly tipple, according to Compare and Recycle's list. Here's the full list of drinks, ordered from most to least hazardous:

The ranked list

• Kopparberg
• Old Mout
• Rekorderlig
• Magners
• Strongbow Dark Fruits
• Blackthorn
• Woodpecker Cider
• Thatchers Gold
• Bulmers
• Strongbow Original
• Kronenbourg 1664
• Estrella Damm
• San Miguel
• Stella Artois
• Peroni
• Heineken
• Grolsch
• Corona
• Birra Moretti
• Budweiser

Analysis: clean your phone, rein it in

“Spillages during a football match are inevitable. If you aren’t the one spilling the drink on someone else, chances are, your friend will spill it on you. It’s just one of those match-day mishaps,” says Lee, which I feel paints a depressing picture of British society in 2026.

Yes, we’re allowed a mishap, but if you’re not being careful with your beverage in the age of the £7 pint, I think you really need to have a good look at yourself in the mirror. If you’re deliberately throwing a pint in the air when an overpaid ball-kicker with a love of dramatics comes close to the opposition’s goal line, well… I’m not sure I can really say what I think of that on TechRadar.

My advice is to keep your phone in your pocket or handbag — if you’re at a pub, you should be sociable, not swiping at a screen — and act like a civilized human and simply cheer at the ‘beautiful game’ while keeping a firm grip on your drink. In short, don’t be a word that rhymes with stick or punt.

Nevertheless, if I put aside my views and accept Lee’s assertion that spillages are inevitable, the question is: what should you do to keep your phone safe? Compare and Recycle suggests the following:

• Immediately turn your device off: While it’s tempting to check that your device is still working fully, electricity flowing through wet components causes short circuits.
• Remove accessories: Phone cases are excellent for protecting your phone from falls, but keeping it on after a spilled pint can stop your device from drying out properly. Remove it immediately, along with any screen protectors, as the liquid can seep beneath imperfections and cause screen damage. 
• Rinse with water to remove sticky residue: This might sound counterintuitive, but if you get a decent amount of a pint or cider spilled on your phone, then it can actually be beneficial to give it a quick rinse under a slow-running tap to remove the spillage as soon as possible. This is because sugary residue can speed up the corrosion of things like the mainboard. Only do this when your phone is completely switched off. Quickly dry it with a clean, dry cloth, paying close attention to the charging port and speaker grills where liquid is most likely to have entered.
• Drain the ports by tapping gently on the top of your phone: Gently tap your phone against the palm of your hand to help gravity do its work with the charging port and speaker grills facing downward. This will encourage any excess liquid to flow out of the openings. 
• Resist turning it back on too soon: The instinct after following these steps is to turn your phone back on and see if it still works, but it's best to keep it off and leave it to dry completely - even if that means waiting until the final whistle. 

So, yeah, follow those tips to help your phone survive spillages.

But also, my tip would be to find friends that aren't utter galoots, yobs or knuckleheads, or watch a more civilized sport like tennis or F1.

If your phone of choice is a Samsung Galaxy handset, then you'll know that the Android-based One UI software that comes with it is packed with handy settings and features. There's more to explore than there is on many other Android phones, including the Google Pixel series.

In fact there are so many options that Samsung has hidden some of them away. One UI includes a Connectivity labs menu, which includes a variety of useful features, but you have to jump through a number of hoops before you can find it.

Once you do have it enabled, you can check the strength of the Wi-Fi all around your home, troubleshoot problems you might be having with the network, change the way your phone switches between mobile data and Wi-Fi, and more besides.

Here's how to find Connectivity labs, and how to use it.

Enabling Connectivity labs and Wi-Fi scans

To get this menu visible, you need to head to Settings on your Galaxy phone and tap Connections then Wi-Fi. Tap the three dots in the top right corner, and select Intelligent Wi-Fi. You then need to tap the Intelligent Wi-Fi label at the bottom of the next screen seven times (you'll see a countdown appear after a few taps).

Hey presto — you now have a new Connectivity labs menu to make use of. Open this up and you'll see a host of different statistics about your network, and numerous features and options to explore. Right at the top, for example, you can see how long the device has been connected to Wi-Fi today, and what the daily average is.

Go further down the screen and there's a breakdown of the Wi-Fi bands that your Galaxy phone has been connected to, and the standard of Wi-Fi it's been using (so you can check that your new Wi-Fi 7 router is working as advertised). You're also able to see how many Wi-Fi networks are saved to the phone.

One of the most useful features in Connectivity labs for me is the Home Wi-Fi inspection. If you select this then choose Start, your phone will take you on a tour of your home, showing you in real time the Wi-Fi signal strength from your router and giving you warnings about areas with weaker connectivity.

Fortunately, the Wi-Fi in my home is relatively strong, but there are a couple of spots where the signal is weak, and the inspection tool flags them up. It can also be useful to make changes to the Wi-Fi setup (such as moving the router somewhere else) and seeing how that effects the signal coverage.

Other features you'll find in Connectivity labs

There's lots more you can do with Connectivity labs, as you'll see if you keep scrolling down the page. Turn on Auto reconnect to carrier Wi-Fi, for example, and your phone will automatically connect to public Wi-Fi hotspots operated by your carrier. There's also a Wi-Fi 7 toggle switch, to make sure you're always using the latest Wi-Fi standard, on networks where it's available.

If you enable the Switching to mobile data faster toggle switch, your phone then automatically hops to a cellular connection when it detects that the Wi-Fi it's using is spotty and weak. It means you might end up using more data, but you'll have fewer problems with interruptions when the Wi-Fi you're connected to isn't the best.

The Intelligent Wi-Fi Handover and Switching to mobile data with AI features work in a similar way. The former will hand over some tasks to cellular data on a weak Wi-Fi signal without disabling the Wi-Fi completely, while the latter uses your typical usage patterns (in terms of downloads, browsing, and so on) to decide when to switch off Wi-Fi.

You can use the Connect to 2.4GHz for IOT setup to force your phone to use the 2.4GHz band on your router — this is the one a lot of smart home devices attach themselves to, so you might have to do this to configure them — while L4S is a special low-latency connection protocol that can speed up your connection, if your router supports it.

There's also the option to Show network quality info in the list of networks when you're connecting to Wi-Fi, so you can see what the best pick is when you've got multiple options to choose from. These are all genuinely useful features to have access to, and it's not really clear why Samsung thinks they should stay hidden by default.

• 2027 could be Apple's "biggest product year" ever
• This is according to Apple watcher Mark Gurman
• Potential new devices include the iPhone 20 Pro series, the iPhone Ultra 2, the iPhone Air 2, Apple glasses, and more

2026 is set to be a big year for Apple, especially as we’re likely to see the company’s first foldable phone in the form of the iPhone Ultra. But next year could be even bigger; in fact, it could be Apple’s “biggest product year” ever.

That’s according to reputable Apple tipster Mark Gurman, speaking to TBPN (via 9to5Mac), and he went on to mention much of what’s (probably) coming in 2027.

We’ve listed those rumored devices and other possibilities below, which, combined, certainly could make for a massive year.

1. iPhone 18

The iPhone 18 could be one of the first devices we see from Apple next year; it's rumored to be getting a launch in or around March. That would be a break from tradition for Apple, as previously, mainline iPhones have landed in September, but this year, we might just see the iPhone 18 Pro series and the iPhone Ultra in September.

In any case, the iPhone 18 will likely have a new A20 chipset, with leaks suggesting it might be boosted to 12GB of RAM to help with AI.

It could also have a new 24MP front-facing camera and a smaller Dynamic Island than the iPhone 17, but it might also have a simplified Camera Control, which could lack a capacitive sensor. That might help keep costs down.

2. iPhone 18e

The iPhone 18e will probably land alongside the iPhone 18 and is likely to be next year's cheapest iPhone model.

This device could have a smaller display than the iPhone 18 and just 8GB of RAM from what we’ve heard so far, but it might still have an A20 chipset, which could be the main upgrade over its predecessor.

3. iPhone Air 2

Now we’re getting to one of the more exciting 2027 devices, as Apple is also reportedly going to launch a successor to the iPhone Air next year. This might also land in March, and reports suggest it could have a second rear camera and better battery life — fixing two of the biggest issues with the original.

4. iPhone 20 Pro series

The iPhone 20 Pro and iPhone 20 Pro Max will also probably land next year. That’s right, 20, not 19, with Apple reportedly skipping 19 so the naming of the new models lines up with the iPhone’s 20th anniversary.

And it’s not just the name that’s getting special attention — these could be Apple’s most exciting phones in years; they're rumored to have a new design, potentially with solid-state buttons and a quad-curved screen.

It’s also possible that the iPhone 20 Pro will have an all-glass design, and it could have an under-display selfie camera (though that feature might be ready in time for the iPhone 18 Pro).

Whatever the case, the gist from rumors is that Apple plans to go all out with the iPhone 20 Pro series, so it should be worth the wait — although these phones probably won’t land until September 2027.

5. iPhone Ultra 2

The iPhone Ultra 2 could also land in September 2027, but it’s hard to know what, exactly, to expect from this device, considering the first model hasn’t even launched yet.

However, this foldable phone is likely to be more powerful than the original iPhone Ultra, and Apple may well make other upgrades too, like improving the cameras or making it slimmer.

6. AirPods with cameras

As well as phones, Apple will also surely release other products next year, including, perhaps, AirPods with cameras, which are rumored for late 2027.

These would reportedly work similarly to smart glasses, with the cameras allowing Siri to see what you do, so you can get information about whatever you’re looking at.

7. Apple glasses

We might also see smart glasses from Apple next year, with these likely being similar to current smart glasses from other brands.

That means cameras in the frames for taking photos and videos, being able to speak to Siri to get information about what you’re looking at, and being able to listen to music and podcasts through the glasses, as well as probably being able to take phone calls through a linked iPhone.

Gurman reckons these are another product that we’ll see in late 2027, so there’s probably a little while to wait yet.

8. Other possibilities

Gurman specifically mentioned all the products above, but we’re likely to see other devices next year too, including new Apple Watches, new iPads, new Macs, and even a smart display with a swiveling robotic arm.

So, even if most (and not all) of these things arrive, 2027 could well be Apple’s biggest product year yet.

• Apple has announced price hikes will be coming to its products
• These increases could be ‘fairly imminent,’ according to one reporter
• The price changes are due to ongoing component shortages

A few days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the disappointing news that “unfortunately, price increases are inevitable” for his company’s products, all thanks to the ongoing computing component crisis. And if you were hoping that you could weather the storm a little longer, we’ve got some bad news: Apple device costs could be going up sooner rather than later.

That’s the expectation of Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, at least, who posted on X to say that he saw the price hikes as being “fairly imminent.” Indeed, rather than waiting until later in the year, Gurman argued that the changes were “happening soon,” before adding that they were “not a fall thing.”

Gurman also noted that Apple’s back to school sale — which usually occurs over the summer — is also “imminent,” and that Apple might have announced the price rises now so that it can soften the blow with a summer sale, with costs ticking upwards once it is over.

That means that events like Amazon Prime Day or Apple’s back to school sale could be your last chance for some time to grab one of the best iPhones, Macs and iPads for a decent price. Because with parts like memory and storage still being sold at inflated levels, it doesn’t look like there’s much relief on the way.

Even more premium

Apple has created a reputation for itself as a premium brand with devices that tend to be on the more expensive side of things. But even if you’re used to that positioning, price rises can hurt.

And as Apple pundit John Gruber has pointed out, “For Apple, prices are part of a product’s brand, so they don’t fluctuate with component costs.” That means that once the higher costs come into play, we should “expect those prices to stick,” Gruber believes.

We’ve seen this in the past: the “trash can” Mac Pro’s price remained at $3,000 even when its specs were well out of date. Similarly, Apple adjusted UK prices to be more in line with those in the US after the 2016 Brexit vote and hasn’t reversed course a decade later.

Gruber also points out that if Apple thinks that component prices will continue to rise throughout 2027, it will simply implement one large price hike now rather than put them up again later on. So, that means we could see a single $200 / £200 / AU$400 jump rather than two separate $100 / £100 / AU$200 increases, for example.

If you’re considering picking up some new Apple tech, this all means it might be wise to act sooner rather than later. But it’s worth noting that there might be a slight difference between Gurman and Gruber when it comes to timing.

While Gurman says the changes are “imminent” and will happen before the fall, Gruber feels that Apple could wait until the new iPhone 18 Pro launches in September.

Still, whatever date Apple picks to implement its price adjustments, you don’t want to wait if you’ve got your eye on some shiny new Apple kit. Before too long, we could see Apple become even more premium than it already is.

I’ve been testing the Honor 600 Pro for the last couple of weeks (the super cute Molly Limited Edition version, to be precise), but there’s one cool feature that I’ve overlooked up until this point.

The Chinese tech giant has been making quite a big deal out of the phone's AI Image to Video 2.0 tool, which lets you transform static shots into moving video clips in just a few taps. Now, Honor is a bit guilty of sticking the word ‘AI’ on basically anything to make it sound more impressive, so I just assumed that AI Image to Video 2.0 would be little more than an image editing tool wrapped up in AI branding, memory-holed alongside the likes of the AI Memories app — which, hilariously, is literally just a standard screenshot tool — and the completely useless AI Settings Agent.

Last night, however, I wanted to show off some of the 600 Pro’s big features at after-work drinks with my colleagues (yes, our nights out really are that riveting), saw AI Image to Video 2.0 in the photos menu, and decided to give it a shot.

Bring on the prawns

The results? A steady stream of what I can only describe as absolute, unmitigated slop—but I mean that in the best possible way.

AI Image to Video 2.0 gives you an impressive range of presets to choose from. There’s an option that lets you stand next to your favorite fictional character, one that puts your pets in human clothes and makes them talk, and even one that brings your pen and paper doodles to life.

Picking one of these presets basically just fills in the prompt automatically with some basic descriptive text and, while there are some tantalizing picks, I beelined straight to the unrestricted freestyle mode to see just how wacky things could get. My input was simple. A photo of Phones Editor Axel Metz, pint in hand and perched on a spare gaming chair that we’d wheeled over to the pub from our office across the street.

My first prompt: to send the chair flying up into space with Axel in it. After a few minutes waiting, while the 600 Pro processed my request in the background, I was presented with an eight-second clip of exactly that and, honestly, I was pretty surprised at how good it looked.

The prompt was understood perfectly, and there is an impressive level of visual consistency in what it generated, even when the background scene panned into the sky. It came with sound too; the chair creaking loudly and audible shouts of “This is amazing!” as it took flight. Don’t get me wrong, the result is obviously artificial and the painfully generic American voice it generated for Axel sounded nothing like him. But it was still enough to get some decent laughs at the table and everyone was clamoring to add their own prompts to test it out.

Flying chairs are one thing, but you can be seriously weird with what you can achieve with AI Image to Video 2.0, much to Axel’s chagrin. VPN Editor Rob Dunne had the ground beneath the chair crumbling into a massive fiery pit, while Axel himself demanded to be transformed into an inflatable, arm-flailing tube man.

I came in with the idea for a sea of tempura prawns pouring into the shot, which it generated beautifully, albeit with the bizarre addition of Axel’s AI self singing “I’m going prawn mode” throughout.

If you’ve got a group of friends with a raft of in-jokes to bring to life, all this silliness is going to be an awful lot of fun.

Free... for now

Unfortunately, there is a pretty big catch. There’s a little label every time you hit the generate button that clarifies that the free generation is only available as part of a “limited-time free trial.”

This does make some sense, as it’s mainly powered by a cloud service which must be extremely expensive to maintain, but I’m still a little disappointed that I won’t be able to conjure billions of tempura prawns forever.

There are some usage limits right now as well, and working out how many you’re actually entitled to is enough to make your head spin. Per the Honor website, if you activate your device before July 31, 2026, you get 10 free uses per day for exactly 76 days, and then 10 every 30 days from day 77 onwards.

Activate your phone after that date, and you only get the latter 10-every-30-days allowance. There doesn’t appear to be any on-screen counter telling you how many you’ve got left at any given time either.

You can pay for additional uses, though the pricing structure is equally confusing. There’s introductory pricing, which is presumably a bit cheaper, though I can’t find details on how much it actually costs up until December 31, 2026 when the regular rate kicks in.

Still, AI Image to Video 2.0 is a cool little gimmick that gives the Honor 600 Pro a neat trick up its sleeve. It’s available on the significantly cheaper Honor 600 model as well, so more budget-conscious buyers can join in the fun, too.

• A Nothing exec has announced that there won't be a new CMF phone this year
• They say the ongoing RAM crisis is to blame
• There will, however, be other CMF products and other Nothing phones

The CMF Phone 2 Pro from Nothing combined distinctive looks with a bargain price when it launched last year, but if you’ve been hoping for a CMF Phone 3 Pro this year, you’re out of luck, as the company has just confirmed that no new models are coming.

Posting on X, Nothing’s co-founder Akis Evangelidis claimed that while the company was previously working on a successor, “with memory prices where they are right now, we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF.”

As a result, there won’t be a new CMF phone this year — though he added that other new CMF products are still planned, including “entirely new categories,” and also that there will be new phones from Nothing, just without CMF branding, meaning they’ll presumably be pricier models.

An unsurprising development

This news isn’t entirely surprising, and indeed not long ago, Counterpoint predicted that low-end phones could face a “permanent removal” in some markets.

This is all thanks to rising RAM costs, with AI data centers demanding huge quantities of the stuff, therefore leading to shortages and skyrocketing prices. This, in turn, makes it increasingly hard for companies to make cheap phones.

For now, Nothing has only announced that we won’t see a new CMF phone this year, but the company will likely be facing the same issues next year too, so don’t be surprised if it’s a long time before we see another CMF handset.

So, if you’re hoping to upgrade your phone any time soon, you might have to be prepared to spend a bit more — and to look at more premium ranges like the standard Nothing line.

Today, I was using the ChatGPT app on my iPhone when I accidentally held my finger down on the send button (the blue upward arrow) a bit too long, and I was suddenly taken to a new options screen I hadn’t realized existed before, which I use all the time now.

The option screen gives you three different intelligence settings for the answer you're going to get back from ChatGPT: High, Medium, or Instant.

What’s going on here is that ChatGPT is asking you to choose between three different flavors of ChatGPT-5.5 that change how long the chatbot thinks before answering. These options are easily visible in the web-interface version of ChatGPT, but the reason why I’d never seen them before in the iOS app is that there’s nothing that indicates they exist, and I bet a lot of you haven’t found them either.

So, fire up ChatGPT and try it now - you’ll be surprised. The workflow goes like this:

1. Type your prompt
2. Long-press the blue send arrow
3. Choose a model - e.g., Thinking
4. Send

For paid users only

What’s nice is that having the freedom to choose ChatGPT’s intelligence level like this means that you can choose differently for each prompt you enter.

So, if you just need a quick answer to a simple question, then choose Instant. If you’ve asked something more difficult and you want to make sure you get the full benefit of the AI thinking about it properly, then choose High. The Medium setting gives you a balance of both approaches.

If you've never used the High option before then it can be quite surprising how long ChatGPT will take to think about its answer, but the benefit is that you get a much more in-depth response.

Sadly, this feature only works for users on paid ChatGPT plans. If you’re using a free ChatGPT account, you won’t get these options.

Android alternatives

Since the feature isn’t prominently documented, many people aren’t aware it exists. And if you’re on an Android phone, well, it doesn’t actually exist, because this hidden feature is unique to iOS, but there is an Android equivalent.

On Android, when you long-press an answer text (not the send button), a new menu will be available for you. At the end of the menu, you can see a Change model option — you can use this to select a thinking or instant variant of your current model.

I love finding hidden features in tech I own, and often it's like this one — the hidden setting turns out to be something I’ll use all the time, once I’ve discovered it. Let's hope you do, too.

UGreen MagFlow Magnetic Wireless Power Bank 10000mAh Qi2 25W review

The absurdly lengthily named UGreen MagFlow Magnetic Wireless Power Bank 10000mAh Qi2 25W is the sort of gadget that makes everyday life feel that little bit easier.

It’s a power bank that features three key components: a wireless charging pad, an integrated USB-C cable, and an additional USB-C port. These can be used individually or simultaneously, making it easy to juice up multiple devices at once, or even charge the power bank while bringing your phone back to life.

No matter which of these three components you’re using, the UGreen Qi2 25W power bank assures steady performance — a base requirement for any model rivaling the best wireless chargers and best power banks. For instance, the 5,000mAh Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra projected that it would take about 2 hours and 58 minutes to charge with this power bank, and I found that figure to be spot on. In addition, fast-charging worked well with the integrated cable and extra USB-C port, whether I was juicing up the Nothing Phone (4a) or recharging the power bank itself, with 30W charging available here.

Luckily, this model also supports a wide range of charging standards, including PD 3.0, Qi2 25W, QC 4.0, PPS, and more, meaning its well-equipped to serve a gigantic range of devices from a variety of brands, including Apple gear, Android phones, and a whole host of others.

Of course, this model has a 10,000mAh capacity battery, which should be fine for charging a phone and a pair of the best wireless earbuds, for instance, but you’ll still need to recharge the power bank fairly regularly. If you want a device that’s better suited to more power hungry devices, or one that can juice up your phone multiple times on a single charge, then it may be worth looking at a bulkier alternative like the Anker 737 140W.

One of the benefits of the UGreen Qi2 25W’s more modest capacity, though, is that it's incredibly compact. This model can easily slide in your pocket, and when it's magnetized to your phone, it doesn’t feel clunky or uncomfortable to hold. Its highly portable design makes it the ideal device to take when you're journeying by train or plane, or whenever you’re out and about, especially given it's just 0.6lbs / 254g in weight.

As is the case with most UGreen chargers, this model is also rammed with tech designed to prioritize safety. UGreen says the Qi2 25W has “13-layer protection,” with features like high-temperature shielding, short circuit prevention, and overcharging protection.

I never experienced any technical faults with my unit during testing, and although my charger and phone did feel a little hot after a full charge, this wasn’t to a dangerous degree — and this is understandable given the power bank’s slim build.

One final thing that impressed me with the UGreen Qi2 25W, was its build quality. This model is beautifully constructed, with a textured silicone and metallic finish, a range of attractive color options, and a “military grade” integrated cable, which UGreen claims to have survived a 10,000+ bends test. There’s also a nifty display on-board, which makes it easy to know when your power bank is close to being fully charged.

So, is the UGreen Qi2 25W worth buying? On performance alone, I’d say yes. Although there’s one more thing we have to consider: price. And this device doesn’t come cheap. It has a typical asking price of $89.99 / £79.99 / AU$99.99, which is quite a bit for a power bank with a 10,000mAh capacity and 30W wired charging capabilities.

However, it’s worth noting that an all-in-one combination of Qi2 wireless charging, an integrated cable, and a display is always going to come at a premium. There’s also an extra USB-C cable included in the box, and again, the build quality here is excellent. What’s more, you can grab this model on sale quite regularly. When writing this review, I spotted it on sale for less than $60 / £55 / AU$80, and at that price, I think this wireless charger-power bank hybrid is well worth considering.

UGreen MagFlow Magnetic Wireless Power Bank 10000mAh Qi2 25W review: price & specs

Should I buy the UGreen MagFlow Magnetic Wireless Power Bank 10000mAh Qi2 25W?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

UGreen MagFlow Magnetic Wireless Power Bank 10000mAh Qi2 25W review: also consider

I’m sorry to keep banging on about the iPhone Air, but WWDC 2026 provided an unexpected boost to the appeal of Apple’s super slim iPhone.

Now, irrespective of what I’m about to explain, $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 is still a lot of money to spend on a device that has only one camera and so-so battery life. But the iPhone Air’s combination of an A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM has suddenly become more significant than most people realize.

You see, at WWDC 2026, Apple announced its all-singing, all-dancing Siri AI assistant, which will soon be available on all Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhones as part of iOS 27. But only three iPhones will get the very best version of Siri AI — and the iPhone Air is among that number.

Specifically, only the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air will get Siri voice customization and more advanced systemwide dictation, because only these phones run on Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model and 12GB of RAM.

Admittedly, these two features alone aren’t reason enough to buy a top-end iPhone — the former gives you the ability to customize the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s voice, while the latter makes Siri more effective at converting speech into accurate text — but I would bet my (non-existent) house that Apple locks several additional, more significant features behind this AFM Core Advanced paywall in future versions of iOS.

Indeed, we’ve already seen this segmentation start to happen with the move from Apple Intelligence in its original form to Apple Intelligence as it exists in iOS 27. Anyone who bought an iPhone “built for Apple Intelligence” can access all of the AI features revealed at the software’s announcement in 2024 — Apple has covered its back, legally speaking — but the iOS 27 version of Apple Intelligence (let’s call it Apple Intelligence 2.0) contains a handful of features that only iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air users can access.

At the moment, these features are limited to those two relatively minor tools mentioned above — but who’s to say what hardware-specific features Apple will introduce with Apple Intelligence 3.0 and iOS 28? I noted as much in a separate feature explaining the significance of Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model:

In classic marketing fashion, Apple’s small print on the matter leaves the door ajar for more features to be made exclusive to the AFM Core Advanced model: “Apple’s most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation, are available on…,” reads the company’s Siri AI press release. ‘Like’ is the operative word there — more hardware-exclusive features are surely coming down the line, ones which require more compute power than Apple’s base AFM Core model can provide.

In other words, like the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air will soon support more software features than any other iPhone — and the gap between model capabilities will only grow wider as more hardware-exclusive features are announced.

Maybe, for you, the promise of upcoming features still isn’t enough to justify the Air’s sizable price tag and lack of hardware in other areas — but finally, Apple's super slim iPhone boasts more than just looks.

• The iPhone Air 2 will reportedly have a second rear camera and better battery life
• This latest report echoes previous ones in saying that it will launch in 'spring' 2027
• Apple fans broadly seem keen on a device that has these upgrades, but also point to the single speaker and lack of a telephoto camera as issues

The iPhone Air is one of the more interesting devices Apple has launched in recent years, but it’s also one of the more compromised, with its slim design leaving little room for some other components. Somehow, though, it seems Apple might have found the space for them in the iPhone Air 2.

According to Apple tipster Mark Gurman, writing for Bloomberg (via 9to5Mac), the iPhone Air 2 will have a second camera on the back, fixing arguably the biggest flaw of its predecessor, which has just a single lens. This second camera is said to be an ultra-wide one, and the phone will also apparently have improved battery life, fixing another flaw with the original. Though Gurman adds that “it’s unclear if that will come from a larger battery, which may be impractical in the Air’s compact chassis, or efficiency gains.”

If Apple really does address these two issues, then the iPhone Air 2 could be a much bigger hit than its predecessor, and reactions to this news are largely positive, with a 9to5Mac commenter saying “instant purchase”, while over on Reddit, there are replies like “day 1 buy for me”, and “what I do miss is the ultra-wide lens. Add that, and we’re golden.”

These aren't the only issues

That said, some Redditors have pointed out other issues with the original iPhone Air that they want to see addressed instead of — or as well as — those upgrades listed above. Chief among these qualms is the Air's single speaker, but a significant number of replies are also asking for a telephoto camera instead of an ultra-wide.

It's possible that Apple is opting to add an ultra-wide lens to the iPhone Air 2 instead of a telephoto lens for reasons of physical ease, but it's more likely an intentional decision to maintain differentiation between the Air and Pro lines.

So, even if this report is accurate, the iPhone Air 2 might not please everyone. But then there are limits to what you can fit in a thin chassis — those who want dual speakers, a telephoto camera, and a big battery might have to sacrifice some slimness and buy the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max instead.

If you do like the sound of this rumored iPhone Air 2, though, you’ll probably have to wait until next year for it, with this report also reiterating previous claims that it will launch in the “spring” — so likely between March and May.

Which is your most wished-for iPhone Air 2 upgrade? Let us know in the poll below.

• Google is working on an intriguing way to give old phones a new life
• Their motherboards would be used as makeshift cloud servers
• This could save money and reduce the industry’s environmental impact

What happens when you recycle your old phone? In most cases it’ll be stripped for parts, but the smartphone itself doesn’t usually live on in any meaningful way. Things might look different in the future, though, as a new project from Google is giving discarded phones a new life in the cloud.

The tech giant has teamed up with researchers from the University of California San Diego to find ways in which old smartphones can be reused past their sell-by date, and one particularly promising avenue is as replacement servers. The idea is to both reduce the raw materials needed to manufacture new servers and cut down on the emissions that result from that manufacturing process.

As detailed on Google’s blog (via Tom's Hardware), the tech firm is exploring what it calls “phone cluster computing.” This involves removing the motherboards from old phones, then packing them into clusters and deploying the resulting amalgam into a “general-purpose computing platform.” This can be used to power servers instead of prompting businesses to buy new devices.

And it could be worthwhile. Google claims that between 25 and 50 phones equate to a modern server, depending on the task. However, many places don’t need anywhere near that much power — grading and research performed by teachers and universities is “within the capabilities of a single smartphone to host,” Google notes. A 20-phone cluster, meanwhile, can handle “peak submission rates” from a classroom of 75 students or more, suggesting education could be a worthwhile avenue for this kind of experimentation.

Powering future servers

A project like this makes a lot of sense. After all, while your old phone might not feel as snappy as something you can buy today, it’s still full of highly capable components that could provide valuable power in different circumstances. As Google explained, “The single-threaded performance of modern smartphones’ performance processor cores is on-par with or better than those of modern multicore servers.” Simply throwing that away is clearly wasteful.

That’s made more pertinent when you consider Google’s assertion that people tend to replace their phones every four years. By that point, most smartphones remain extremely capable and still have plenty of life left in them. It would be a shame to squander that, especially when the intensive manufacturing process is taken into account.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego are planning a computing cluster packed with up to 2,000 repurposed phones, which would be deployed for computer science research. This could be capable of “supporting a hundred such classes at once,” Google says, and will be able to do so at a “fraction of the cost” of a regular server equivalent.

If the project is a success — and if consumer-grade hardware such as that found in smartphones is able to handle sustained usage in this way — it probably wouldn’t be a surprise to see more moves like this in the future. The 2,000-phone cluster is expected to go live in fall 2026, so watch this space.

• Android 17 is rolling out now
• Initially, it's only available for Pixel phones
• New features include Screen Reactions, Bubbles, a foldable gaming mode, and more

Following months of betas, Android 17 is finally available in finished form — though initially only to Google Pixel phones, with devices from other brands set to get it throughout 2026, as manufacturers put their own spin on the software.

But if you have a Google Pixel 6 or newer, you can grab Android 17 now (or at least soon, if it hasn’t yet been pushed to your phone).

Sadly, what you won’t get right now is Gemini Intelligence or most of the other related AI stuff announced at the recent Android Show, with Google saying these features will launch “later this summer”.

But there’s still a lot to get stuck into, from Screen Reactions to multitasking bubbles and beyond. Below, we’ve detailed the seven best new features you’ll find in the Android 17 update.

1. Multitasking bubbles

If you like having multiple windows open at once, then you’ll probably appreciate Android 17’s new ‘Bubbles’ feature, which lets you turn any app into a floating bubble that stays on top of other apps.

This is probably most useful on large-screen devices like foldable phones and tablets — which even get a dedicated ‘Bubble bar’ at the bottom of the screen for quickly resizing and switching between apps — but it works with standard phones too, and with every app.

2. Screen Reactions

Screen Reactions is a feature that Google has already heavily advertised, but it’s available now in finished form.

This lets you capture your phone’s screen and record yourself with the front-facing camera simultaneously, with the video from the selfie camera appearing in a small window on top of the screen recording.

This makes it easy to record reaction videos or tutorials without having to use multiple apps or a green screen.

3. Android Parental Controls for all devices

Android Parental Controls rolled out last year for Pixel phones, but now they’re expanding to all Android 17 devices.

Since Pixels are the only phones getting Android 17 currently, this won’t actually be a new feature for anyone yet, but once other brands roll out Android 17, it will be.

With these new controls, parents will be able to set screen time limits, downtime schedules, control usage of specific apps, and set up app store filters to limit what children can download.

4. Foldable gaming mode

If you’re a gamer with a foldable phone, then Android 17 has exactly the tool you’ve probably been waiting for, as Google has developed an “optimized 50/50 layout” that lets you use your phone like a Nintendo DS, with a view of the game itself on the top screen and a dynamic gamepad below. With this new mode enabled, there are no buttons obscuring your view of the game.

That said, Google says this feature will be “available in the coming months”, so even though it’s part of Android 17, you won’t be able to access it yet (this is the last not-yet-available feature in our list — we promise!).

5. Contact Picker

Contact Picker is a small but potentially very useful new feature that lets you choose to just share specific contacts with apps.

Previously, if an app needed access to a contact, you’d have to give it access to all of your contacts, which, from a privacy perspective, is far from ideal, so now you can be selective.

This is one of several new privacy and security features in Android 17, with others including the ability to grant apps temporary access to your precise location and improvements to Live Threat Detection, so your phone can block more scams and suspicious apps.

6. Continue On

With Continue On, you can start a task — such as editing a document or composing a message — on one device and seamlessly continue it on another, similarly to how Apple’s Handoff feature works.

Initially, this only works between phones and tablets, but Google has plans to extend it to the web, so you’ll be able to continue using apps on larger devices too.

It also requires developers to implement the feature, so it won’t work at all for every app, but it could be very useful where it is supported.

7. Hide app labels

Another small feature, but one that could drastically change the look of your home screens, is the option now to hide app labels, so there’s less text on the screen, potentially making it look less cluttered.

Of course, the downside is you’ll need to be able to recognize apps from their icons, or just be left guessing which app is which, but for some people this feature could be a big deal.

You probably know how much mobile data you pay for every month, but do you know how much you actually use? I suppose, in this day and age, that’s like asking if you know how many liters of water you drink every month (“No, but I know it’s a lot”).

Mobile data usage has skyrocketed in recent years due to a variety of factors (not least the advent of autoplay features in social media apps such as TikTok). Analysis from Ericsson suggests the amount of data transferred over cellular data networks has increased more than sevenfold since 2020, with the monthly average now standing at 25GB per device in both the US and Western Europe.

But while it’s true that most of us are using more mobile data than ever, these numbers don’t quite paint the full picture — they embolden mobile operators to sell oversized data plans, and, in all likelihood, you’re paying for more data than you actually need.

That 25GB figure is skewed by smartphone users who rarely, if ever, touch Wi-Fi. We all stream HD video over 5G and occasionally set up mobile hotspots for our laptops, but some people do these things near-constantly (yes, really), using upwards of 100GB per month and disproportionately affecting the monthly average.

By contrast, Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2025 suggests the average person in the UK uses 10.6GB of data per month, while Statista puts the equivalent US figure at between 5 and 15GB, which aligns with Ofcom’s findings. All three numbers are significantly lower than the 25GB figure quoted by Ericsson, suggesting they account for those disproportionately high usage cases (there are, of course, disproportionately low usage cases to consider too).

Unlimited mobile data plans are a popular choice among users who don’t want to be charged per gigabyte or exceed a monthly limit, but as above, these plans are rarely better options — financially speaking — than the cheaper, fixed-capacity data plans they sit above.

“Mobile operators and MVNOs [Mobile Virtual Network Operators] face higher network costs as data usage increases, which is why plans with larger allowances typically cost more,” Christian Banhans, UK Managing Director at mobile operator spusu, exclusively tells TechRadar. “However, many customers only use a fraction of their monthly data, meaning they may be paying for more than they actually need.”

“The main reason customers use less data than their allowance is psychological, as they want to avoid running out, so they often choose plans with more data than they need,” Banhans continues. “Providers also face fixed costs for each plan, alongside the costs of (often unlimited) minutes and texts. In our experience, the difference in underlying costs is relatively small compared with the pricing difference between plans.”

“Larger plans often have a lower cost per gigabyte, making them appear better value even when much of the data goes unused. This is where the gap between what customers pay for and what they use tends to be greatest.”

How to check your data usage

Banhans notes that there are several ways consumers can avoid paying for more data than they need. “The first is to sync your phone’s internal data counter to the billing cycle and track how much data you need per month, or download a standalone application to do that.”

To check your data usage on your iPhone, go to Settings, Cellular (or Mobile Service), then scroll down to the Mobile Data menu. The Current Period displayed here reflects your data usage since the last time your Mobile Data Usage Statistics were reset, which will probably be some time ago. To align that figure with your specific monthly billing cycle, you’ll want to scroll down to the bottom of the page and tap Reset Statistics on the same day each month that your billing cycle resets. You can set up a recurring Reminder to help you remember to do this.

A more straightforward solution, though, is to track your data usage through your network provider's official app — which will already be aligned with your monthly billing cycle — or use a third-party data tracking app like My Data Manager and Data Remaining.

On Samsung phones, the process is simpler. If you go to Settings, Connections, then Data Usage, you’ll see your data usage displayed in a monthly format by default. To manually align the dates to your monthly billing cycle, tap Billing cycle and data warning, then Start billing cycle on.

To see your monthly data usage on Pixel phones, go to Settings, Network & internet, then SIMs. You can choose which date you’d like your data usage stats to be reset under App data usage cycle. The process is similar for most other Android phones.

How to choose the right data plan

If, using the above methods, you find that you’re paying for more data than you actually use, you’ll want to choose a data plan that better fits your needs.

I suggest choosing a data allowance that sits a gigabyte or two above your monthly average, unless the provider in question makes it easy (and affordable) to add more data to the plan as and when needed. “It’s also important to account for occasional high-usage months, as well as factors such as Wi-Fi access and travel habits, when choosing the right allowance,” Banhans adds.

Some network providers allow you to ‘rollover’ unused data so it can be used in another month, but this shouldn’t be seen as a reason to choose a data allowance that far exceeds your real-world monthly average: “While rollover data is often presented as a solution to unused data allowances, the extra data frequently goes unused and eventually expires unless a customer’s usage varies significantly from month to month.”

In some cases, unused rollover data can be converted into money off new plans or device contracts, but these savings are often laughably small compared to the money you’ll have overspent on accruing that rollover data in the first place.

So, in summary, while unlimited and large-capacity data plans are attractive options for many people, network providers rely on consumer ignorance to sell these often excessive packages. If you put in the small amount of work required to determine your actual monthly data usage — using the methods outlined in this article — you could save hundreds over the course of a year.

• PopSockets unveils its thinnest iPhone MagSafe grip yet
• It's 2.6mm thick
• Comes in 12 colors and is available exclusively at the Apple Store — for now

Every gadget has an origin story, but PopSocket's Low-Pro iPhone grip might be special. Unveiled today in the Apple store, it's an idea as old as the PopSockets brand, but one that waited almost a decade, until the original grip had become a smartphone industry icon, adorning the backs of hundreds of millions of phones.

PopSockets makes a wide range of grip styles, and some, like the Kick-Out & Grip, are pretty low profile, but nothing is quite like the 2.6 mm-thick Low-Pro, which PopSockets ' VP of Marketing Lisa Li calls "a labor of love."

The idea for the Low Pro traces back to the first few months of PopSockets when Founder and CEO David Barnett was already percolating ideas for an ultra-thin grip. But to understand that notion, you need to know why and how Barnett developed the PopSocket grip in the first place.

Blame it on the wired headphones

A former University of Colorado Philosophy professor, Barnett had headphones he frequently used with his iPhone, which got tangled in his pocket. As a solution, he purchased a pair of large coat buttons and glued them to the back of his iPhone 3G (I saw it, it's real). Then he wrapped the headphone cord around them.

Problem solved. That spark of ingenuity ignited a little flame of innovation: Barnett realized he could do more with his phone cable holder and envisioned an attachable and collapsible pair of grips. He even taught himself CAD and created a 3D print of a 2.1mm-thick disk. The print was a bit of a failure in that it didn't expand and was basically a stiff disc he now sometimes carried with him.

Even as Barnett started to hand out early grip prototypes to his students and they started using them as grips, Barnett couldn't shake the notion that it could be thinner. He told a friend about his idea:

"He was visibly upset, and he scolded me. I still remember that he was basically yelling at me in this coffee shop. He said, ' You would be a complete idiot to turn your attention and start developing a new product when you're sitting on something that could be a big hit here.'"

Barnet took his advice to heart, shelved the ultra-thin idea, and grew the PopSockets into a popular brand and, for some, an indispensable smartphone accessory.

Those darn skinny jeans

He also never let go of the idea, and as he talked to customers over the years, he noticed an odd trend with potential male users who said that while the product looked cool, they wouldn't use it because it would get stuck in their pockets.

"That's funny...what are they talking about? I slip it into my pocket. I just put my hand over it like this [and] I slip it into my pocket," said Barnett, who added that he'd never gotten one of his PopSocket grips stuck in his pockets.

Still, Barnett and company soon realized that there might be a market opportunity if they returned to that ultra-thin idea, a grip so low profile that it barely has any edges — and would never get stuck in a pocket.

Getting there, though, would not be easy. Stripping a few millimeters off their current thinnest design, arguably the PopSockets Kick-Out & Grip stand (6mm), would require re-engineering an OG component: the two-step expansion accordion section between the base on the button: it's the place where you slide your fingers to grip the...er...grip.

The result is a PopSocket grip that feels unlike any that's come before it. Instead of a satisfying two-step pop-up to snap into place, the Low-Pro grip has one action, and when it's open, the button sort of hovers or wiggles atop what honestly looks like a very flimsy rubber platform. It isn't even a single piece of material that's attached to the thin base that sits inside an equally thin steel ring. Like PopSocket grips before it, the ring and base are attached by a hinge. Instead of the button swinging out as a kickstand, the metal ring does that work, opening to virtually any degree.

Barnett assured me, by the way, that the $39.99 PopSocket Low-Pro is stronger than it looks.

To conduct a tensile test, the PopSockets team glued the base to a phone and then pulled on the button. It held up to 30-lbs pressure. In the real world, the magnet would give way off a MagSafe iPhone back before the Low-Pro tore in half.

They also opened and closed the Low-Pro 100,000 times without issue.

The new grip is so thin that MagSafe charges can still work through it, though charging speeds may be diminished. The magnetized face is strong enough to hold tight onto other magnetic surfaces, which means you could mount your iPhone on a metal cabinet or your metal fridge.

All about the iPhone — for now

Unlike the classic PopSockets, which are platform-agnostic and used to attach to phones and phone cases with a sticky base, the Low-Pro is designed for MagSafe and, therefore, the iPhone. In fact, the PopSockets Low-Pro grip launches exclusively on the Apple Store today with six colors, arrives in Best Buy and Target on July 12, and at all other retailers on July 29. By then, it should be available in 12 colors.

It's a relatively big swing for PopSockets to take a familiar and loved design and basically toss it out (at least for the Low-Pro) to bring in new customers who demand thinness at all costs, but Barnett has faced tough critics before, and it seems he's eventually won them over.

When Barnett shared the prototype for his very first grip with his wife, she told him, "It was the stupidest thing she'd ever seen, and that nobody was going to ever buy one," he recalled.

A decade later, he gave her a preview of the Low-Pro. "Her reaction," Barnett said, "was that it's the best invention since the credit card. She said everyone's going to buy this thing."

• Commodore has launched a new retro-themed flip phone
• The device blocks social media, web browsers, and user tracking
• But it still runs Android apps and has a built-in camera

The more smartphones pervade everyday life, the clearer it becomes that they can have some pretty deleterious effects, from phone addiction to cyberbullying and much more. If you’re looking to break free from your smartphone’s grasp without losing access to some of its more beneficial features, Commodore reckons it has a retro-themed device for you.

That product is the Commodore Callback, and, as its name suggests, it’s a phone that heavily borrows from the past in its design. You’ll see that in its flip-up clamshell design, inspired by classics like the Motorola Razr. It also comes in a range of old-school colors, including ProtoPET White, SX Silver, and BASIC Beige.

Commodore says its historical inspiration goes more than just skin deep. The Callback does not work with social media apps and has no touchscreen capabilities, supposedly thwarting the endless doomscrolling that afflicts so many people today. At the same time, it also lacks a web browser and work apps, giving you a chance to switch off and put your phone down.

The Commodore Callback is priced at $549.99, meaning it’s far from the cheapest smartphone on the market. But if you want something to loosen the hold your phone has over you, it’s worth considering.

A middle path forward

What I find interesting about the Commodore Callback is its positioning: Commodore describes it as “the not dumb dumbphone.” Instead of stripping features back to the bare minimum, it’s loaded with a smattering of helpful apps without any of the temptations that could cause you to waste hours endlessly scrolling. That makes it “a speed bump for your mind,” Commodore claims.

That could help make it more appealing to users who dislike the pervasiveness of social media but don’t want a phone that’s barely functional for anything other than simple calls and texts. It suggests that ditching the worst aspects of the smartphone experience doesn’t have to mean adopting an ascetic monk's lifestyle, and that could help broaden the device’s appeal.

Indeed, Commodore has thrown in a few tasty extras that show the Callback has some enticing features of its own. That includes a 48MP rear camera, an “audiophile grade” DAC that supports HD audio, FM radio, an SID sound chip, and in-ear monitor (IEM) earphones. It also runs on Sailfish OS, a privacy-focused Linux-based operating system that works with “99%” of Android apps, which could attract users sick of having their private data gobbled up by unscrupulous app developers.

While the Commodore Callback might seem like a novelty gimmick — especially given its retro-themed color choices and marketing materials — it boasts a range of features that could prove to be particularly appealing to people sick of the current state of the smartphone world. It’s niche, sure, but it might provide a middle path forward between all-consuming smartphones and feature-stripped alternatives.

• Gemini calls have stopped working on Android Auto for some
• Many users are going back to Google Assistant
• Google is promising that a fix is now on the way for the issue

Update: Google has confirmed that "We are aware of an issue preventing some users from making calls with Gemini on Android Auto and mobile devices. A fix is now available, and users can resolve this by updating their app to the latest version in the Google Play Store." Our original story is below.

Gemini hasn't been available through the Android Auto dashboard for long, but users are now running into problems with making calls through the AI assistant — and some are even switching back to the older Google Assistant out of frustration.

As spotted by 9to5Google, multiple reports of this issue are popping up online. When an attempt to make a call through Gemini on Android Auto is made, an error message shows up: "Something went wrong. Please try again."

This also seems to be affecting Gemini-initiated calls on Android itself, to some extent. While it's being widely reported, however, it doesn't seem to be affecting everyone, and in some cases comes and goes intermittently.

This Reddit thread details a couple of workarounds that might work: either going back to Google Assistant, or uninstalling the most recent updates for the Google app on Android. The problem does appear to have appeared rather suddenly.

A fix is coming?

Something went wrong error while making calls via gemini app and Android auto. from r/GoogleGeminiAI

It's fair to say that the switch over to Gemini hasn't been a perfectly smooth one, which is perhaps to be expected when millions of devices all move from one AI assistant to another. Gemini has also had problems getting to grips with smart home devices.

Online reactions are overwhelmingly negative, as users find themselves without calling functionality in their cars. "The whole Gemini migration has been a dumpster fire," says one commenter on Reddit, while "absolute rubbish" is another prominent post.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel. An official Google post on Reddit suggests that a fix is rolling out for the problem — though the comment immediately below it says that the bug is persisting, even after updating.

If you're experiencing this issue and don't want to uninstall updates or go back to Google Assistant, all you need to do (hopefully) is sit tight: make sure you apply any updates to Android, and the Google and Gemini apps on your phone, as they show up.

• Apple has explained why Siri's AI overhaul has taken so long
• Initially, the company built an "iterative" version on top of the existing Siri, but this didn't deliver on Apple's vision
• So instead Siri was then rebuilt from the ground up

Siri’s AI overhaul is finally set to arrive later this year, long after it was initially promised — but Apple has now shed some light on what, exactly, took so long.

In a post-WWDC talk attended by 9to5Mac and TechRadar, Mike Rockwell — the Apple executive who took leadership of the Siri team last year — explained that, back in 2025, the company managed to build a working version of Siri AI “that was sort of incremental on top of the original Siri” but that “we didn’t feel it was really delivering on the vision and the experience that we wanted to do.”

As a result, the team then “rebuilt Siri from the ground up, literally, tore it to the ground,” with the end result being “a profoundly more capable Siri.”

A necessary shift in strategy

So, in other words, it sounds like Apple pivoted away from an initial plan of adding to the existing Siri after realizing this wouldn’t cut it with expectant fans, and then started work on the lengthy job of completely rebuilding its digital assistant.

Whether this is a satisfying explanation is debatable — it could be argued that a company with as much talent and experience as Apple should have already known what would be necessary to build a true AI assistant, especially when there were plenty of rival models the company could look to for inspiration.

But it does at least go some way to explaining why this whole endeavor has taken quite so long. And while Apple’s initial goal of delivering an incremental upgrade might have been shortsighted, the ultimate decision to abandon that and rebuild Siri from the ground up was probably the right one, given how impressive the competition is in this space.

It feels like the whole world is obsessed with Labubus. You can’t walk around a major city like London without spotting countless little grinning monsters dangling off the straps of handbags or clipped to the back of rucksacks. Dodgy street markets are filled with racks of unconvincing fakes (or 'Lafufus’ as they’ve come to be known), and every time you walk past one of manufacturer Pop Mart’s many shops, you’ll inevitably see long queues as shoppers race to get their hands on the originals.

The plush toy’s trademark—slightly creepy—smile is inescapable, but there’s another, less disconcerting face that you might have seen around. Designed in 2006 by Hong Kong creative Kenny Wong, Molly is a child-like mascot with big blue eyes and a playful pouting expression. She was Pop Mart’s top-selling character before the Labubu craze and has appeared in collabs with some of the most prominent pop-culture brands.

You can find figures of a Squid Game Molly, a Donald Duck Molly, a Zootopia Molly, and now she’s bursting into the tech world via a new limited-edition phone made by Chinese smartphone giant Honor.

Fit for the 'gram

The Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition is one of the best-looking special-edition devices I’ve seen. Its sleek, iPhone-like design is perfectly on trend, and the Golden White color exudes an understated luxury. Some might say the phone looks like a dupe, but Apple could never make something this cute.

Although you can buy the regular Honor 600 Pro—which we described as “a classier and more composed alternative to the usual flagship brigade” in our review—in the same colorway, this edition is marked by the glittery Molly illustration; the character is printed on the phone’s rear panel, outfitted in a fetching beret and puffy dress. It’s a phone that you would expect to see clasped in the hands of someone wearing a princess-inspired hime lolita dress as they take yet another selfie for their thriving Instagram page.

Honor obviously knows this too, as plenty of the phone's unique software features are centred around photography. Every Honor phone comes with a selection of optional photo watermarks (so you can show your followers exactly which device your shots were taken with) and the Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition gets a bunch of exclusive picks.

There are three basic designs to choose from—Molly Paradise, Molly Planet, and Molly’s Adventure—but countless customization options are available for each one.

Molly Paradise, for example, adds a basic Polaroid-like frame to your snap in the color of your choice, complete with a Pop Mart logo and some ‘Molly 20th Anniversary’ branding (the character is celebrating 20 years since its creation, after all).

You can decorate the frame with some little art of Molly in a tap, in a range of outfits and poses to fit your desired theme. For a casual vacation pic, you might want to add the flight attendant Molly dragging her little suitcase, while Molly wearing scuba goggles and carrying a big fish would be perfect for a photo taken on your latest beach outing.

Fashion meets serious specs

The phone comes pre-loaded with a Molly theme, which consists of a gold-patterned wallpaper and a lock screen featuring the same illustration as the rear panel. As with the watermarks, there’s an impressive level of customization here.

The always-on-display, for example, can be adorned with Molly if you wish. There’s another theme on offer too, which actually lets you create your very own unique Molly wallpaper by dragging and resizing little illustrations and logos.

No, the overall software experience isn't completely transformed. This is still very much an Honor 600 Pro running the company’s MagicOS 10 software (which is based on Android 16), but these little touches show an impressive level of attention to detail and make the phone feel that much more special.

The same is true of the unboxing experience, which is simply a delight. The Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition comes in a mammoth Molly box that’s designed to look like a briefcase, complete with a functional carrying handle. Inside, you’ll find the phone itself in a unique Molly-fied version of the regular packaging, in addition to an adorable handbag-style phone case that looks a bit like an old-fashioned camera, a colorful lanyard to attach to it, a commemorative print, a pin badge, and more.

Considering it only costs an extra £100 to upgrade from the regular Honor 600 Pro (which retails for £899.99 in the UK), I was pretty impressed with the sheer number of extra goodies thrown in with the Molly Limited Edition model. You can also take advantage of a £300 discount coupon at the time of writing if you buy through the Honor store. As ever, though, the phone isn’t available in the US or Australia.

Under the hood, the Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition has the same formidable specs as the regular 600 Pro. That means you’re getting a staggeringly bright 6.57-inch AMOLED display, 512GB of storage (so you won’t have to worry about running out of space), the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC paired with 12GB of RAM, an all-day 6,400mAh battery, and a three-camera setup that includes a capable 200MP main shooter, plus a 50MP periscope lens and a 12MP ultra-wide.

I’ve been using the phone for the last couple of days, and while there are some minor frustrations — you’re only getting the slow USB 2.0 standard with its Type-C port, and its dual speakers are a noticeable downgrade compared to those on my usual flagship Honor Magic 8 Pro — it’s hard not to fall in love with a device that just looks this good.

• Siri's AI overhaul is currently free, but a reputable source predicts that Apple will add a subscription eventually
• This will probably lock off advanced features like conversational responses and image generation, while basics remain free
• Before that, Apple will probably want to improve its AI model and convince people that it's worth using

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of WWDC 2026 was that Apple didn't announce any subscription plans for its long-awaited Siri AI overhaul. Rival services like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude hide their best models and features behind a paywall, but Apple isn't following that trend just yet — however, this generosity might not last forever.

Reputable Apple tipster Mark Gurman has argued in his latest Bloomberg newsletter (via PhoneArena) that a subscription fee probably will be coming to Siri — but not yet, and not for everything.

Gurman predicts that Apple will keep all the previously existing Siri features free, along with its new on-device personal context capabilities for searching through messages and calendar entries, but that he thinks "we'll see a separate subscription at some point" for things like conversational responses and image generation.

A likely future

Sadly, this does seem to be the most likely path for Apple to follow, since these AI features are set to cost the company a lot of money. Apple is paying Google roughly $1 billion a year for access to Gemini technology, and there will be steep additional costs in having hundreds of millions of people running complex tasks on the company’s AI systems too. Apple isn’t in the habit of losing money, and so it figures that the company could look to subscriptions to recoup those additional costs.

And as Gurman points out, there are already signs of that future arriving, as iCloud+ subscribers currently get more daily access to Siri’s most advanced features (specifically, they get a higher daily usage limit).

Whether any future Siri subscription would purely be sold separately or be bundled into certain iCloud+ or Apple One tiers remains to be seen, but some form of paid access appears highly likely.

The bigger question, though, is when Apple might introduce a subscription. Presumably, it hasn’t done so yet because the AI Siri is still in beta, and because early impressions suggest it’s not yet as capable as rival services. Plus, Apple will need to win back users who may have given up on Siri long ago and subscribed to rival services. As Gurman notes, "Apple is still at a place where it needs to prove to consumers that its AI technology is worth using, let alone worth paying for."

So, it will take time for the new Siri to catch up, both in capabilities and popularity. But if and when it does — which Gurman predicts could happen within the next 12 months — there’s a strong chance users will have to start paying to access some of its features.

It's too early to draw firm conclusions about Apple's take on AI in the iOS 27 Dev beta, but I have been busy trying out new features, including the Apple Intelligence image-altering tools in Photos: specifically, Spatial Reframing and Extend.

I've already had some fun with both, and was immediately impressed with their raw power. To generatively alter your images, Apple uses a powerful private-compute cloud-based diffusion model built, in part, with Google. It's unlike any AI Apple has ever presented before, and, as I've written, it opens Apple up to a lot of questions about whether it still prizes image truth over aesthetics.

I'm not here, though, to critique these tools. After all, this is the developer beta, and some tools and features will likely change quite a bit before they arrive fully baked on, we expect, the iPhone 18 in September.

Still, this platform update marks the beginning of Apple's journey as a card-carrying AI citizen, fully capable of standing alongside OpenAI and partner Google. Siri can talk and pay attention, Image Playground can generate images from whole cloth, and Photos can alter and extend photos with a gesture.

Having spent time with Spatial Reframing and Extend, I remain somewhat startled at just how far Apple is taking the AI image-altering strategy. Spatial reframing, for instance, lets you turn photo subjects to see elements the camera never saw or captured.

Seeing beyond the edge

I've had more fun with Extend, though, not necessarily because I plan on filling in the lost information in my photos, but thanks to how Apple's image-generation tools guess at what was never captured in the first place.

The thing about a tool like Extend is that, if you're using your own photos, you already know what was cropped out. Perhaps you chose that framing, but as Apple noted in its keynote, it can be difficult to frame a portrait-mode photo in a landscape frame. Sometimes you need those extra bits.

Apple's approach for the moment appears to be "let guesswork be your guide." It doesn't know what's missing, but Apple Intelligence can use its smarts to read the rest of the image and fill in the blanks.

To see how this early version is doing, I took a bunch of photos of things and places, doing both a tight and a wide shot. In other words, I shot what was really there, and then cropped in to see just a smaller section. The goal: how close could Photo's Extend tool come to filling in the blanks?

Considering what it had to work with, Photo Extend did a pretty good job, though a couple of the results were unintentionally comical.

One other thing I learned is that the Extend tool in the current version of iOS 27 Dev Beta will not extend, for instance, body parts. I took a photo of my hand, cropping out a few fingers, but no matter what I did, the app wouldn't extend the frame to fill in the rest of my hand. This is actually good news; I had worries about ending up with six fingers.

I'm also learning that Extend likes order. It seems almost allergic to clutter, so whatever it does generate is usually clean, orderly, and has as few elements as possible.

Below are some examples of real wide shots alongside the more tightly framed ones, where I let Apple Intelligence Extend do its thing. If you hadn't seen the originals, you might never know that significant portions of the images were generated by AI.

For the majority of these images, I took one photo for which I stepped back enough to capture more of the scene, then I took a second, tighter photo. I applied Extend to the latter image, and then compared Apple Intelligence's guesswork to reality. You can see the original, unextended photo in the center.

Extending the frame and stretching reality

This is the only image where I took just one photo and extended it with Apple Intelligence's latest Photo tools. This is a dev beta, so I won't offer much criticism, but some might take issue with the Empire State Building redesign.

The home office

On the left, you can see my home office as it is. The orchid is a plant I've nurtured for years (I even fully replanted it almost 18 months ago). Extend's gift is that it tries to leave original reality alone, but the more information you ask it to fill in, the wilder the flights of fancy.

I love, for instance, that my closet now has three doors, and I have been staring at the glass door on the right for hours. What is that? Why did Extend add it? No matter; it's early days, and these generative skills are impressive.

Foliage

I think Extend already has a solid grasp of how plants and trees work, and shows off that knowledge here. The extended tree looks quite realistic. As for the sky, it now has a rather dramatic, almost beatific look. My shed got an odd redesign.

Guitar on the wall

The guitar work shows off a little of Extend's penchant for cleanliness and order. The suggestion of a lampshade is turned into a perfectly round, brightly colored tube, and, based on the two visible supports, it might no longer be a lampshade.

The blinds also got a bit of a cleanup. As for my guitar, it looks essentially the same. In other words, Extend appears to be, even in Dev Beta form, ensuring that the image's original subject remains — even if extended a bit — essentially untouched.

Office shelf

Something as busy as my office shelf can present challenges for any generative system — so many objects, so many options.

I took a picture (at left) of the actual shelf, and you can see the second, tighter photo in the center, and then the extended image on the right.

It makes sense that in the extended photo, Extend chose order over my clutter, but the best part is the transformation of the USS Enterprise into a quasi-jetliner. I think a couple of book titles also got a rewrite.

Backyard furniture

Extend did a nice job of decluttering my backyard space. I noticed that when Extend detects a cube-shaped object (in this case, my fire pit), it will just turn it into a featureless box, instead of trying too hard to guess.

Jetliner

I was impressed with how effectively Extend completed the jetliner. Notice, though, how once again it assumes order where, in truth, there's chaos.

There you have it — some fun, early experiments with Apple Intelligence's newest and most powerful image generation tools. That it does so well at the dev stage is especially encouraging, since Apple still has months to refine it.

Ultimately, I don't think people will push Extend as far as I have. They may only use it to recenter a subject, adding just a few inches to one side or another, or to extend a solid background or even an evening sky, efforts that won't detract from or alter the subject.

How do you think you'll use these new Apple Intelligence Photo tools? Let me know in the comments below.

“Which smartphone should you buy your child?” This question has been bouncing around in my head for a while now. My eldest child is 10 years old, and he’ll be starting secondary school soon. We tested the Garmin Bounce 2 smartwatch to see if it could be an alternative to buying a smartphone, but found it lacked sufficient LTE coverage in rural areas.

As a result, I’ve spent countless hours researching smartphone options because there’s a lot at stake when you put a phone into the hand of a child. The Australian government has realized this and put in place a social media ban for under-16-year-olds. There is a similar concern in the US; a landmark court ruling found that Meta and YouTube had knowingly designed addictive social media products.

The numbers are bleak. Bertie Aspinall, co-founder of SafetyMode, has revealed that "every day, on average, a child is exposed to two pieces of inappropriate or harmful content.” No parent wants their child to see or experience anything harmful, but at the same time, we’re not sure how they could function in the modern world without a phone.

So, to help you — and me — make an informed choice, I’ve collated several different options and categorized them into 'dumbphones', 'hybrid phones', and 'smartphones'. I’ve also outlined the pros and cons of each, and shared some advice on how to narrow down your search.

Dumbphones

Maybe your first thought is to keep your child as far away from anything 'smart' or internet-based as possible. You've read the articles, experienced the negative impacts of social media yourself, and don't want your child to have access to anything that might expose them to something potentially harmful.

If that's you, buying your child a so-called dumbphone is a great option. Your child might not agree, but I'm not getting into parenting advice here! Dumbphones offer limited functionality and instead focus on essential tools such as calling, texting, and alarms. Most of them lack browsers, and if they are present, they are super basic and therefore discourage doomscrolling.

These types of phones are also fantastic for parents who are not particularly tech-savvy. You don't have to worry about apps, filters, or tracking. If you want to know where your child is, you pick up the phone and call them or drop them a text. Dumbphones are simple to set up and simple to use.

Hybrid phones

If a dumbphone is a little too limiting and you're not ready to go all out on a smartphone, then a locked-down hybrid phone is an ideal middle ground. These devices offer a number of the benefits found in smartphones but with a lot more parental controls that significantly restrict a child's access to apps and features.

I first discovered this type of phone when a fellow parent recommended the Balance Phone. Rather than a traditional app drawer and access to an app store, this device boasts a minimalist interface with text links to parent-approved features, such as calling, the camera, and photos. You can even allow WhatsApp access if that's the only way your child's friends communicate online.

The hybrid phone type has predominantly emerged out of a need to provide a safer mobile experience for our children. As a result, they often, although not always, include an AI feature that "watches" over your child's phone use and restricts harmful content before it's seen. The HMD Fuse, for instance, features HarmBlock+ software that prevents nudity from being shown, shot, and stored on the phone. This is an ideal feature that can help bring protection in the realms of pornography and sexting.

Smartphones

If your child is a little older or you'd like them to have greater freedom, then you could go for a budget smartphone. This type of phone provides access to all types of apps for learning, news, sports, games, and more. Your child will also be able to access their favorite social media apps.

It's worth noting, though, that all-out smartphones are much harder to lock down, and if a child really wants to find a way around your parental controls, they'll probably be able to do so if they're tech-savvy enough. If that's an issue for you, then a hybrid alternative might be your best bet.

The very best phones are overkill for children (no matter how hard your youngster tries to convince you otherwise), but the best cheap phones from the likes of Apple, Google, and Samsung still provide the full smartphone experience.

It's worth noting, too, that Apple recently announced a slew of new child account upgrades coming to iPhones in iOS 27, so any iOS 27-compatible iPhone will become easier to manage as a parent later this year.

How to choose

One of the first places to start is to decide how restricted a phone experience you want for your child. You could call this your ideal position. Begin exploring the options within this category and weigh up the pros and cons. If you find a perfect fit, then you're good to go. If not, give some thought to the other categories, each of which has pros and cons that will helpfully feed into your decision-making.

The use of social media by children is a hot topic, and so it's worth keeping an eye on the latest news as it relates to the law and what smartphone brands are offering in terms of dedicated child-friendly handsets. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for instance, recently took the stage at London Tech Week to give major tech firms, including Apple and Google, a three-month ultimatum "to prevent children from sending and receiving sexually explicit images."

• More hints around a folding iPhone have appeared
• iOS apps are being updated for a bigger screen size
• Apple is also telling developers to plan for larger displays

Rumors of an 'iPhone Fold' have been swirling for years, but it looks very much like 2026 will be the year when Apple finally launches a foldable phone — and a lot of the most recent hints in this direction are coming from Apple itself.

As spotted by MacRumors, more native iOS apps are being updated to include a landscape mode option, so they'll adjust when you rotate your iPhone (and fit nicely on the large screen of a foldable iPhone when it's opened out too).

The updated apps include Apple Music, Reminders, Weather, Home, Podcasts, Fitness, Health, Shortcuts, Find My, Voice Memos, and the Apple Watch app, so this is clearly a concerted and deliberate effort by Apple developers.

These landscape orientation modes aren't just the standard layout turned on its side, either. There are left-aligned sidebars in many of the apps to make it easier to get around these apps when they're in landscape mode or on a bigger screen.

Developer alert

Landscape modes aren't the only hint we've had about an upcoming iPhone Fold, either. As spotted by Vadim Yuryev, in one of the presentations posted online as part of WWDC 2026, Apple's Cindy Barrett encouraged developers to code for different screen sizes.

"You're designing for a dynamic range of sizes and aspect ratios," Barrett said while showing off some of the changes Apple has made under the hood with iOS 27 — another indication that iPhone apps need to be more flexible now.

So, even while Apple hasn't actually acknowledged that a foldable iPhone is on the way, it looks as though the rumors are true: the device is indeed launching around September time, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro.

And while we've been referring to it as the iPhone Fold here, those in the know are suggesting that it's going to be called the iPhone Ultra, a naming scheme that Apple has used with its products in the past.

WWDC 2026 was all about software, with new versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and more unveiled. But while hardware didn’t take center stage, it was present in the background, with Apple hinting at (and in some cases all-but-confirming) its long-rumored foldable phone, believed to be called the iPhone Ultra.

These clues came in announcements, software changes, and even buried deep in code, and combined, they strongly point to the iPhone Ultra not just being in the works, but probably launching soon.

So, below, we’ve detailed the various WWDC clues that hint at the iPhone Ultra’s existence.

1. Mentions of a foldable phone in iOS 27 beta code

Perhaps the most telling sign of the iPhone Ultra's existence can be found within iOS 27 itself, as code within the first beta found by Sam Henri Gold contains mentions of “foldState” and “angleDegrees.”

Both of these references seem like they’d only be relevant to foldable devices, and since the mentions are in an iOS beta, they evidently concern an iPhone, specifically.

This code also isn’t present in iOS 26, so it’s been newly added, suggesting that checking for fold states will be relevant before the launch of iOS 28. That in turn means we’ll probably see the iPhone Ultra before too long — with most leaks pointing to September.

2. A check for how many screens a device has

The same source has also found a check in the iOS 27 developer beta for how many built-in displays a device has.

Since this is iPhone software and no iPhone currently has more than one screen, this is another obvious hint that a multi-screen device — such as a foldable phone — is on the way.

3. Resizable iPhone Mirroring

At WWDC 2026, Apple debuted the ability to resize the iPhone Mirroring window on Mac, allowing you to make it bigger and more like an iPad display — or more like a large foldable screen.

Now, this could just be about making your iPhone’s display appear bigger and more readable on a large desktop screen, but displaying it in a larger size would also be necessary for the iPhone Ultra, which will probably be able to switch between a phone-sized cover screen and a near tablet-sized foldable display. As such, this feature feels like it’s laying the groundwork for Apple’s foldable phone.

4. Resizable apps and developer encouragement

As well as being able to resize your iPhone screen when mirroring it on a Mac, Apple is also making it easier for developers to resize apps to support a variety of display sizes, which similarly seems to hint that new screen sizes are coming.

And the company is making a real push for developers to embrace this change, encouraging them during WWDC’s Platforms State of the Union to allow their apps to support "a dynamic range of sizes and aspect ratios," rather than designing apps to work just for specific devices or screen sizes.

5. Larger widgets

Finally, iOS 27 is adding larger 4x6 widgets, which can fill up an entire iPhone home screen. While some people will probably find this useful on existing iPhones, these widgets are likely to be more beneficial on the iPhone Ultra, where a widget that size would probably fill just around half of the foldable screen.

So, while not as obvious a hint as some of the above ones, this too feels like a feature that’s been designed with larger — and perhaps foldable — iPhone screens in mind.

iOS 27 and WWDC 2026 are very much the talk of the tech town right now, and I’m sure their implications will continue to be discussed for quite some time (somehow, Apple’s Liquid Glass aesthetic is still a topic of debate 12 months after its announcement).

Apple paid particular attention to child safety at WWDC 2026, announcing new features for Screen Time that aim to give parents more control over their child's iPhone-using habits. However, as a longtime Apple fan, I’m surprised to admit that I’m far more taken with the screen time-reducing approach of Android 17 and Pause Point.

In theory, Screen Time is a good idea. The ability to set timers on apps makes sense, and giving parents more granular control over their child's phone activity feels like a natural extension of that offering, even if existing bugs threaten to unravel Apple's good intentions.

The problem is, adults need their screen time checked too, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve set a time limit for Instagram, continuously ignored it, and then removed the restriction completely. Now, with an iPhone 16 in hand, I have no Screen Time limits set up whatsoever.

For me, Screen Time is just too easy to bypass. The concept works best when you’re setting it up for someone else (like your child), as you hold the keys to unrestricted access, but trying to apply those restrictions to yourself feels moot when you’re in the driver’s seat. Unless you change your behaviour in how you interact with your phone and the apps therein, the cycle is doomed to repeat itself.

I used to get irritated with myself if I wasted a good 30 minutes doomscrolling over nothing, but now that I’m a dad, I’m suddenly aware of the fact that my daughter, being delightfully inquisitive, is now watching my every move. This is a habit that I do not want her to pick up. To that end, I think that Google’s Pause Point, which is set to appear in the next big Android update, can fix my mindset.

Why Pause Point feels so important

For those not in the know, Pause Point takes a different approach to smartphone use, instead acting as a barrier that pops up any time you want to access an app that’s known for being a time sink. When it appears, users are encouraged to take 10 seconds to partake in a breathing exercise and to consider why they feel the need to use the app in the first place.

As someone who took up meditation and mindful breathing during the pandemic via the Calm app, I know firsthand how helpful this practice can be in centring yourself in moments when you’re on autopilot and your instinct is to just open up your phone and scroll aimlessly as a means of passing the time.

If, after the moment of reflection, you recognize that there is a genuine need to open the app in question (maybe you need to respond to a message from a friend), then Pause Point lets you set a quick timer so that you don’t get too sucked in. Much like with Screen Time, I’m less enthusiastic about this particular aspect of Pause Point, but what really gives the feature a leg up is how it steers you to use a more fulfilling app.

In one of the images shared by Google at The Android Show 2026, Pause Point is shown to suggest alternative apps like Play Books and Mellow Mindspace. It’s such a simple concept, but it’s a great reminder of how, under the right circumstances, our smartphones can be conduits to learning and self-improvement.

Apple’s next steps and other mindful tech

Apple is already halfway there in the fight to promote more mindful smartphone use, as it has one of the best reading apps in the game: Apple News.

My subscription to Apple News+ and the ability to get lost in tons of great magazines filled with thought-provoking articles are two of the reasons why I’ve stayed with iPhone for so long, and I utilize a massive Apple News widget on my homescreen to try and catch my attention before social media does.

If Apple could bring about its own version of Pause Point, then, in tandem with the revamped Screen Time app, it could have one of the best systems out there when it comes to promoting healthier habits among its users. I just hope that, unlike the much-rumored iPhone Ultra foldable, this isn’t something we have to wait years for.

As a side note, even with all of these guardrails set up, it’s still worth having periods of separation from your smartphone during the day, and I have a few other devices on my person that help to keep those breaks intact.

My go-to device here is the Kindle Paperwhite, as there really isn’t a better antidote to the digital world than getting lost in a good book. The device’s E Ink display is far easier on the eyes than the blue-light-emitting screens of our phones, tablets and laptops.

On the productivity front, the reMarkable Paper Pro Move is perfect for parsing through ideas or writing out your to-do list without getting distracted by the usual barrage of incoming notifications. This miniature digital notebook also uses an E Ink display, but it brilliantly recreates the feeling of using pen and paper, with the modern convenience of having your doodles saved digitally so that you can access them at any time.

If you want to go one step further, here’s how one member of the TechRadar Pro team managed to construct a virtually ‘distraction-free’ work-from-home setup.

Indie folk darling Phoebe Bridgers has announced a 2026 tour, and told fans that "phones, cameras, or any devices with recording and filming capabilities are prohibited" — a ruling that has kicked up quite the discourse on social media.

When you turn up at one of these gigs, you'll have to put your devices into a Yondr pouch, which stays locked until the gig is over, or until you decide to leave (it looks as though medical exemptions are allowed, though this may vary by venue).

Depending on who you listen to, the move is classist, dangerous, awesome, or just quite funny, and there are a lot of opinions being shared out there (and some rather humorous responses to those opinions).

While there are some valid questions being asked about safety and emergency phone access, this is something I'm actually quite encouraged to see — and I'll explain why.

The case for no phones

Phoebe Bridgers is far from the first artist to set up a no-phones show of course (here's one earlier example), but it's not the norm. As someone who's been to plenty of gigs down the years, I'm beginning to think that maybe it should be.

I actually like to take a photo or two at a live show, just to record the moment: who I was seeing, what the venue was like, when it happened. But I try to limit myself to just a handful of photos per show, and there are plenty of gig goers who aren't so disciplined.

While I'd miss being able to do that at a phone-free event, it may well be a sacrifice worth making for a better experience overall.

Especially in larger venues, and especially during the more famous songs, the view of the stage can soon get blocked out by a sea of bright phone screens, all trying to capture the moment. At one gig I went to, someone in front of me must have videoed at least three quarters of the songs: not only was he seeing the gig through a phone screen, so was I.

Let's be honest, most of these photos and videos aren't being snapped and recorded to look back on later — they're for sharing to social media, for getting clicks, likes, reposts, or whatever it is. You end up with at least half the crowd not living in the moment.

And it seems I'm not alone in preferring to see phones banned at gigs. When we previously polled TechRadar readers, we got almost 1,500 votes: 56% of you would be happy with phone-free gigs, 27% of you thought phones should be allowed but used less, and 10% were open to a ban if some kind of "discrete tech" could still be used to capture photos and videos instead.

Only 7% of you voted 'no chance' to no phones, so that you could still film and take photos, giving you something to remember the gig by — even if your memories would be likely to feature lots of other people with their phones out, as well as the artist on stage.

Before they were famous

I've actually got a bit of a personal connection with Phoebe Bridgers, as I first saw her in 2018 playing at the Leaf bar in Liverpool, not long after her first album came out. I didn't do a headcount at the time, but there can't have been more than 150 people there.

It had everything that makes small gigs so great: a good view of whoever is playing, minimal hassle from the crowd, easy access to the bar, and very few people using their phones too much (I got my standard two or three snaps in, as always).

Fast forward to 2023 and I saw Phoebe Bridgers again, in Halifax, as part of her Boygenius 'supergroup' with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. I was much further away from the stage, I got much more annoyed by the people around me, and there were a lot more phones on show a lot more of the time.

You may or may not have any idea who Phoebe Bridgers is, but in the year 2026 she's got two nights booked at the 20,000-capacity O2 Arena in London for this tour, which gives you some idea of how far she's come (my level of fame has remained about the same).

I'd bet that these gigs are going to be more enjoyable for the majority without any phones out recording, even if it means no permanent record of the night for punters. It's not just the taking photos and videos either — it's the checking for messages, the scrolling social media, and so on.

I'm old enough to remember going to gigs before smartphones arrived, and we all survived, more or less. I don't have anything to remember those shows by except my actual memories (which can get a little fuzzy over time), but I know I was there. Maybe that's something we need to get back to.

As for the latest Phoebe Bridgers tour, I think I'll give it a miss, irrespective of the phones policy. I'm not a huge fan of gigs above a certain size: the high prices, the crush of crowds, the artist you've come to see no more than a dot in the distance. Maybe I'll find a small live show to go to instead...

We’re only a few days out from Apple’s jam-packed WWDC 2026 keynote, and while Siri AI has taken center stage, each of the platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS — has a treasure trove of updates that we’re all beginning to learn more about.

And beyond the headline AI push, Apple is quietly continuing to turn Wallet into something much bigger than a place to store tickets and cards. It’s increasingly becoming a real-time, dynamic layer for travel, events, and now theme park experiences — and that shift is about to get a lot more visible.

Just as Disney World adopted Live Activities on the iPhone in 2025, later this fall it’s going to adopt one of the most meaningful new Wallet features Apple is shipping with iOS 27. That's support for Apple Wallet’s enhanced keys feature, which turns passes into dynamic, updateable credentials rather than static tickets.

Wallet is getting a host of updates with iOS 27, many of which you can try right now in the developer beta, but it’ll fully ship this fall (think September). You’ll be able to use Visual Intelligence to easily split a bill just by showing a receipt to the camera — or pulling one up in Photos — and then automatically send requests via Apple Cash, create your own passes, and use a much easier-to-use Apple Pay sheet when checking out.

Apple Wallet’s enhanced keys feature, though, is what Disney is adopting as an update to the current MagicMobile experience.

In its present form, MagicMobile has been a way to add your park ticket — either a single-day, multi-day, or annual pass — to Apple Wallet. That made it pretty seamless to enter any of the parks at Disney World — Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, EPCOT, or Hollywood Studios — by just tapping your iPhone or Apple Watch at the gate.

Now, though, Wallet is set to go a step further beyond just being a digital ticket holder for Disney World. You’ll be able to see more of your itinerary directly within the Wallet app when you tap your Disney MagicMobile pass. That includes park reservations for the day (and future visits), Lightning Lane redemptions you’ve booked, special ticketed events (like after-hours), dining reservations, and even upcoming trips — all surfaced directly in Wallet.

Because this is built on Apple’s enhanced key system, the pass itself becomes dynamic. Instead of being simply a ticket, it can update itself in real time as your plans change.

Better yet, thanks to continuity features across iOS and watchOS, Wallet will automatically suggest your pass when you approach a Disney World park, making it even easier to badge right in without digging through apps or screens.

You’ll still initially add the pass to your Apple Wallet via the MyDisneyExperience app, which is also where you’ll make park reservations, Lightning Lane selections, dining bookings, and purchase tickets for special events.

But once that’s set up, if someone in your party is managing reservations within the MyDisneyExperience app and you’re linked to their plans, those updates will automatically sync to your MagicMobile pass on your iPhone. It’s a strong example of how Apple and Disney are using enhanced keys to make passes genuinely responsive.

MagicMobile, since its launch, has been a handy tool for Disney guests. If you haven’t invested in a MagicBand or MagicBand+ — Disney’s wearables for park entry, ride access, PhotoPass taps, and enable some epic immersive experiences — your iPhone or Apple Watch can do the same job. And if you’re staying at a Disney hotel on property and have linked a payment card, you can also pay for merchandise and food throughout the parks and resorts by tapping MagicMobile.

The ability to surface a more detailed itinerary inside Wallet takes that experience a step further. It turns the app into a real-time trip companion, and it’s a strong early example of how Apple’s enhanced keys could expand beyond hotels and transit into full-scale hospitality and resort ecosystems.

Disney World won’t be the only location adopting this either. Resorts World Las Vegas is also expected to support it at launch when iOS 27 formally ships later in 2026, hinting at a broader push to make Wallet a core part of travel and venue access going forward.

Disney World is also in the midst of updating its MyDisney Experience app for iOS with a quest to make it simpler — search will be getting an enhanced experience with portions of it powered by AI, and a more intuitive layout that should make it much simpler to book various reservations and add-ons for trips that you have.

We're expecting to see those roll out in the coming weeks and months, so they'll likely arrive alongside this enhanced MagicMobile experience — it's all about simplicity, and that's something to get behind. If you're interested in other features arriving with iOS 27, check out our roundup of 21 additions here.

It's been a busy week for Apple fans, keeping track of all the news that came out of WWDC 2026 this year. Although there was a lot of new info on MacOS Golden Gate, iOS 27, new child safety tools, and more, the bulk of Tim Cook's last presentation was devoted to Siri AI.

Apple's first truly smart AI assistant was on full display, using natural language and working across the Apple ecosystem. But users in the EU were shocked when Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, mentioned during the presentation that EU iPhone and iPad users wouldn't get Siri AI, at least for now.

"Siri AI will not be available initially in the EU on iOS and iPad OS. We're working hard to find a path forward to preserve our users' privacy and security."

Federighi's unusually forward statement about regulations for a conference like this, without any indication of when Siri AI would arrive in the EU, sparked a lot of concern. So, what's going on? Read on, and watch our TikTok embedded below to understand exactly what's up regarding the Siri AI delay.

Watch our explainer on the issue here:

What is the Digital Markets Act?

The Digital Markets Act, or DMA, is the piece of EU legislation getting in the way of EU iPhone and iPad users accessing Siri AI in its current form. The DMA, brought into force in May 2023, is an anti-monopoly and pro-interoperability law designed to ensure major tech companies such as Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others don't restrict the growth or usage of other platforms, and allow users more choice when selecting online services and deciding who can access their data.

The DMA says, "A small number of large undertakings providing core platform services have emerged with considerable economic power that could qualify them to be designated as gatekeepers pursuant to this Regulation.

"The combination of those features of gatekeeper is likely to lead, in many cases, to serious imbalances in bargaining power and, consequently, to unfair practices and conditions for business users, as well as for end users of core platform services provided by gatekeepers, to the detriment of prices, quality, fair competition, choice, and innovation in the digital sector."

Essentially, the EU doesn't want companies like Apple or Google to lock users into a solitary ecosystem that only works with proprietary technology, leading to a monopoly.

The problem with Siri AI

In a world in which we grow increasingly distrustful of AI, Apple seems to have designed Siri AI with security and privacy in mind. Siri AI works across Apple's operating systems, using its Private Cloud Compute technology to act as a private 'on-device AI' while retaining the advantages of a cloud-based system. Apple claims that complying with the EU's interoperability laws will result in cracking open access to Private Cloud Compute to third-party AIs, leading to a breakdown of that trust Apple is trying to build.

In a press release, Apple says, "Siri AI is private by design and deeply integrated across Apple’s platforms using on-device processing and Private Cloud Compute, which extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud.

"However, under EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA, Apple would have to give any virtual assistant direct access to users’ private data — and the ability to directly control other installed applications — as soon as Siri AI is made available in the EU, without the essential protections necessary to keep users and their data safe.

"According to EU regulators, the DMA requires Apple to give any AI system nearly unlimited access to a user’s device, as well as the ability to act on that access autonomously without a user’s ongoing visibility and control. That includes the ability to read and send messages, make purchases, access files, and execute actions across any app."

Strong language there from Apple. The EU wants a level playing field, which means opening up operating system-level access to other AI companies, which Apple is obviously loathe to do. So, who's in the right?

Have your say — who's right?

You can vote in our poll above to have your say, and we'll publish the end results next week, but it's safe to say the debate is already fierce. Our TikTok above has hundreds of comments, and there are strong feelings on both sides of the aisle.

Pro-Apple users are saying that the EU is sacrificing their privacy, and there is already plenty of choice: just don't buy Apple devices if you don't want to use Siri AI.

One user said, "The European Commission is in the wrong here. I get that they want others to have the same access to make it fair, but we’re not talking about giving access to small European businesses, we’re talking about massive American corporations like Meta, Google, Musk’s X, Anthropic, OpenAI, etc."

Another said, "People already have a choice. If you like Apple's ecosystem, you get Apple products. It's that simple. If you want more 'freedom' then you get literally anything else." A third wrote, "I chose Apple because the other players have proven time and again they don’t care about privacy".

However, there were just as many pro-EU comments in the threads as pro-Apple ones. One person wrote, "The only thing Apple should provide is a means to allow another service to access my data, and prohibit the use if no permission is granted. Interoperability."

Another said, "Apple should adjust to laws of the region they are selling to if they want to be relevant there. simple as that." A third wrote, "100% in the EU camp here. I want to be able to choose my AI provider on my iPhone. I don’t want Gemini. I don’t trust Google."

This isn't the first time Apple has balked at the Digital Markets Act, releasing a similar statement last year regarding delays to features like Live Translation. At this moment in time, we don't know how things are going to play out. However, we want to hear more from you. Vote in our poll above and comment below, and we'll publish your thoughts next week.

• The Met Police are calling on tech firms to make stolen phones harder to reset
• They're working with Apple on this, and have already seen phone theft in London reduced by 18% compared to the previous year
• Apple enabling Stolen Device Protection by default has likely made a big difference, and there's evidence of another anti-theft tool in the works too

Smartphones are a major target for thieves. After all, they’re likely the most valuable device most people carry around with them, and their value increases further once thieves export them to countries like China, where devices without local government restrictions are highly sought after. But the UK's Met Police is working with Apple to make smartphones significantly less desirable to thieves.

As reported by the BBC, the Met Police are urging tech firms to make stolen phones harder to reset and reuse, and they’re working with Apple to achieve this. Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley emphasized the strategy, stating: "If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses, and so does the incentive to steal them."

And progress is supposedly already being made on that front, with Apple being said to have “cracked” the engineering problem that previously allowed thieves to factory reset devices using illicit software.

It’s unclear whether Apple has made changes behind the scenes, but one thing it definitely has done is enable Stolen Device Protection by default in iOS 26.4. With this feature enabled, there’s a delay before things like passwords can be changed when the phone isn’t in a familiar location like a user’s home. The idea is that a user will then have time to get to another device and mark their phone as lost or stolen before the thieves can gain access.

A big drop already

As a result, Sir Mark claims that "the vast majority of phones" stolen in recent weeks in London have not been factory reset.

But even before this software update, there was progress being made, with the Met reporting that 14,000 fewer phones were stolen in London between June 2025 and May 2026, which is a drop of 18% compared to the previous year.

This won’t purely be down to Apple’s work, as the Met have also done things like using e-bikes, drones, and live facial recognition to combat theft in recent months. But it’s all making a difference.

And Apple looks set to employ another thief-thwarting technology soon, as there’s evidence in iOS code of an upcoming feature that would use an iPhone’s sensors to detect when it has likely been stolen, and then automatically lock it. It’s a feature that sounds a lot like Theft Detection Lock on Android — and indeed the Met noted that Google and Samsung are also working to combat phone theft.

So, while we're never “going to get down to zero crime,” as Sir Mark noted, “this is going to make a massive difference.”

• Apple execs Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak have explained how the company's approach to AI is different from rivals'
• This includes Siri AI not being interested in "sycophancy" or being a "romantic partner"
• They also highlight how Siri AI doesn't require you to be a "prompt expert" but does respect your privacy

It’s been a long wait, but Apple’s AI vision is almost here. The company's overhauled Siri voice assistant, Siri AI, is a key component of iOS 27, which is due out later this year, and is currently in beta. But if Apple is to be believed, Siri AI won’t just be a ChatGPT or Gemini clone with Siri’s voice.

In an interview with Mostly Human — via MacRumors — Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi and marketing chief Greg Joswiak discussed the company’s approach to AI and highlighted three ways that the new Siri is different from competing chatbots.

The most eye-catching statements relate to how Siri AI communicates with you, and specifically that it won’t act as an AI boyfriend or girlfriend for anyone. Federighi argued that “if you use many of the existing chatbots, they're really focused on engagement to a large degree. And sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself, and then use that as a basis to establish a connection.”

While not naming names, this is a clear dig at AI rivals like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok, which do, to varying degrees, allow for this odd relationship-building. Indeed, we’ve heard of people falling in love with ChatGPT, using chatbots as therapists, and, even more alarmingly, that as much as 26% of Gen Z have dated an AI.

With Siri, though, apparently none of this will be possible, with Federighi going on to say that “the way that we have designed Siri, Siri really wants to say 'Listen, that's not what I'm here for, right? I'm here to help you. I can help you get things done. I can help you learn about the world.' But if you try to engage Siri as a romantic partner, Siri's not up for that. Siri's 100% not into that.”

Simple, useful, and preserves your privacy

That’s not the only way in which Siri apparently differs, though — or the only subtle dig Apple makes here about rival platforms.

Another is in Joswiak’s claim that he doesn’t want iPhone users to have to become "prompt experts" — which seems like a dig at the need to design complex prompts to maximize the potential of other AIs.

He added that “we don't do AI for AI's sake. 'Hey, look at us, we're doing AI.' It's 'How does AI make everything better?' And that makes our products better, our features better.” Which is perhaps not so much a response to ChatGPT and Gemini as to the fact that AI is increasingly being inserted into almost every piece of software we use, whether it’s truly beneficial or not.

And while some other AIs can gather an alarming amount of data about you and share that with their parent companies — even going so far, in Gemini’s case, as to not let you save conversation histories if you don’t consent to Google employees potentially viewing your chats and using them to train models — Apple claims to be taking a privacy-first approach.

On that point, Federighi said, “I think it's a challenging thing for a lot of people to understand the distinction between what your iPhone knows and what, say, Apple as a company knows. Your iPhone is yours, right? Your data is yours, and it stays on your phone, and [under] your control, and Siri is using it for you. Apple doesn't get to know any of this stuff, and that is very different [from what] I think most players in the space [are doing], and I think super important.”

So, while Siri is certainly late to the AI party, it could have some real advantages over rival services, though it remains to be seen how good — and how true to these principles — it will be in practice.

Apple's WWDC 2026 keynote spent a lot of time on Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, and (less predictably) child account protections, which meant there wasn't room to say much about iOS 27 beyond the big-hitting, headline features.

However, with the first developer beta of iOS 27 now out in the world, users are quickly coming across changes and improvements, and posting their findings to social media. There's also more information now up on the Apple website.

Here we're going to run through some of the iOS 27 upgrades that Apple didn't mention at WWDC but which make the mobile operating system worth looking forward to ahead of a full rollout (most likely in September, as usual).

Bear in mind that iOS 27 is still in beta development — there's a good chance that all these changes will make it to the final version of the software, but it's not guaranteed, and there may be additional tweaks along the way.

Genmoji, widgets, and CarPlay

As per Apple's official press release, Genmoji are getting a revamp with iOS 27, with improved quality and better control over how they're created. You'll be able to prompt the changes you want to see to existing emojis, change their styles, and get started with a photo of your own.

There's better management of your lock screen, too. As reported by 9to5Mac, you can swipe away the now playing widget from the display when your iPhone is locked, as if it's a notification. This is something you can already do on Android, and it will please users who don't want constant access to playback controls.

Then we've got the addition of extra-large widgets (9to5Mac again), which give you more space on your Today view and on your home screens. No doubt this points towards the future release of a foldable iPhone, which it seems iOS 27 is setting the scene for.

As we've already reported, there are changes to CarPlay that include the ability to watch videos (when you're parked), and there are bonuses for other apps and services connected to iOS 27: iCloud+ subscriptions will come with higher AI usage limits once you've upgraded your iPhone software.

FaceTime, volume control, and Apple Music

More iOS tidbits have been collected by MacRumors from a screen briefly shown during the WWDC 2026 keynote: dual phone numbers (using the same number on two iPhones), dual-camera support in FaceTime, speed improvements for AirPlay and AirDrop, and a new drawing app in Messages.

The arrival of iOS 27 will also usher in separate volume controls for alarms (high on many an iPhone owner's wishlist), support for Markdown formatting in Notes, the ability to extract video frames as photos in the Photos app, and a few tweaks to the Weather app that include a new Highlights view.

Continuing with upgrades to specific apps in iOS 27, we're going to get dedicated perimenopause and menopause support in the Health app, which Apple says will include "notifications about cycle deviations inclusive of perimenopause".

While there aren't any major changes to Apple Music, there are a few tweaks as spotted by 9to5Mac. These include redesigned artist pages and an update to the AutoMix feature that gives you more options for AI-generated transitions that seamlessly blend one song into the next in a playlist.

Photo slideshows, AirPods, and AI breaks

Another new feature spotted by MacRumors is a long-awaited upgrade: iOS 27 now lets us create slideshows from any photos and videos (rather than just specific albums) — something it's hard to believe the Photos app hasn't been able to do before now. Slide duration, transition style, and music can all be customized, and the slideshow can be saved as a video, too.

We're also indebted to Aaron Perris on X for digging into the iOS 27 developer beta with an impressive amount of diligence. Among the upgrades he's turned up are the ability to hide your location from someone in Find My (without notifying the other person), a redesigned AirPods settings page, the ability to temporarily disable alarms during recognized holidays, and more control over photo and video sync to iCloud.

There's also hidden code suggesting that the new Siri AI will recommend that you take breaks if you've been chatting with the digital assistant for too long. This isn't currently enabled or active yet, though, so we'll have to wait and see if it appears when iOS 27 starts rolling out to everyone.

We can expect more changes, bug fixes, and security patches to appear between now and the full iOS 27 launch — and then development on the software will continue (as it has with iOS 26). While the new AI features will get most of the attention, it's another significant update from Apple.

When I was doing all the testing for our Samsung Galaxy A57 review, I enjoyed how streamlined its software was compared to that of the best Samsung phones. But since publishing that review, I've been jumping back and forth between the A57 and another Samsung flagship, and I've got a more nuanced view.

Before the A57 (and, for a little while, after it), I was using the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which is pretty much the best Android phone money can buy. It has similar hardware specs to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with its biggest advancements instead coming in the form of new software tools and features.

Now, I know the Galaxy A57 and S26 Ultra aren't exactly comparable. The former is a mid-range phone starting at $549 / £529 / AU$749, while the latter is a premium phablet which costs a minimum of $1,299 / £1,279 / AU$2,199. That's over twice as much.

But from the right angle, they're the same phone. Both are the top models in their respective Galaxy categories, and they're undoubtedly the two best Samsung phones released in 2026 so far. If you've got the budget, you buy the S26 Ultra, while the A57 is designed to be a great corner-cutting alternative.

And for the most part, Samsung made the right corner-cutting calls. Zoom cameras? Gotta go. Blazing chipset? Not here. Stylus? Styl-off. But when I tested the A57, there were definitely a few absent software features that I missed from the S26 Ultra.

So come on, Samsung — please add these 5 software features to cheaper phones like the Galaxy A57 in future software updates.

Audio Eraser

Audio Eraser is a really nifty AI feature. It basically works as an on-device noise cancellation tool for videos you're watching.

The use case Samsung demonstrated during the feature's announcement — which I've since tried myself on several occasions — was for live sports events or recaps. Usually, the crowd is so loud that you can barely hear what's going on. Audio Eraser can identify the crowd noise and strip it from the audio, letting you hear the commentary and even sports noises.

It's also useful for eliminating environmental sounds, like the rush of the sea or roaring wind, helping you hear spoken words better.

Given that Samsung designs its hardware around its AI features these days, I wouldn't be surprised if iAudio Eraser is dependent on the power of the S26 Ultra's chipset. Still, surely a scaled-down version can make its way to the A57. Right, Samsung?

Search with Finder

I found Search with Finder so useful on the Galaxy S26 Ultra that I'm surprised it isn't available in all smartphones.

On Android phones, Finder is the search bar in the app drawer. When you can't find an app because you have no organizational system to speak of (no shame, I'm the same), you search for it in Finder.

But Search with Finder, as Samsung calls it, supercharges this little tool on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. It will search your entire phone for your target; boarding passes, tagged photos, and email attachments are all within its purview.

This feature was designed for messy organizers like me. I have no central system for organizing files, apps, or documents, and I'm often engaged in wild goose chases trying to find things on my phone. Not with Finder on the Galaxy S26 Ultra: if I'd lost something on my phone, it could find 'er (sorry).

Let me tell you, going from the S26 Ultra to the Search with Finder-less Galaxy A57 was quite a shock; in fact, its absence is what prompted me to write this article.

Search with Finder is basically just an in-depth search function, and I was really surprised when the A57 couldn't find documents I'd received in emails or videos I had saved to its internal storage. It feels like a natural function to bring to all of Samsung's phones, not just the A57.

Bixby to control your phone

This one's less of a "feature I love" kind of deal, but something that really makes sense when you think about it.

Bixby is given more responsibilities on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Oh, you haven't met Bixby yet? It's Samsung's on-board assistant, which most people either forget about or don't realize they're using.

In the S26 Ultra, Bixby can now directly change settings on your phone. If you tell it you're having a problem seeing the screen, or your eyes are aching, it can automatically turn up the brightness or apply the eye comfort shield mode...

... in theory. I found it quite unreliable at implementing any such changes. Much of the time, it just prompted me to do it myself, telling me to go into settings, even though the whole point of this new feature is that Bixby should do it for me.

Anyway, onto the Galaxy A57. This sort of phone is bought by those whose budgets don't stretch to the top Samsung model, but also by general users who just need a mobile from a brand they trust and aren't interested in top-tier features.

This kind of buyer is, if I'm not being too rude, a little technophobic. They don't know the correct word for certain features available on their phone — or perhaps even that those features exist in the first place.

A smart assistant that can directly tweak settings on your behalf makes sense, therefore, in a phone like the Galaxy A57. I can see seniors, for instance, getting loads of mileage from this kind of Bixby tool.

And, yes, I know I've said that it doesn't work all that well on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but I am quite surprised that the A57 doesn't offer more in the way of smart assistant tweakery like this.

Now Brief

What you're looking at above is Now Brief, a feature of Samsung's recent S- and Z-series phones. I like to call it 'Random Affirmations mode' because... well, you can see from the picture. The phone, an inanimate object, is wishing me well?

The point of Now Brief is that it gives you a brief overview of things you need to know. Commonly, it'd show me the weather, and usually a random news article yanked from a publication I'd never touch, as well as some other odd things if relevant: calendar events, reminders I'd made, fitness information I'd tracked, and so on.

I'm not going to pretend that Now Brief is a great feature just yet. It feels like it's missing one or two (or ten) extra data points before it's able to fulfill its purpose of providing a daily (or multi-daily) briefing of things I need to know. In the two months I used the S26 Ultra, Now Brief — more often than not — didn't seem to really understand what I wanted to know, and didn't pull information from many of my apps and tools.

But I see this being the kind of feature that Samsung refines over the next few years and One UI updates, and possibly (hopefully), in a while, it'll be a pivotal part of the smartphone experience.

Now and then, Now Brief became just that for me: I'd look at it and know everything I needed to know. I could put my phone back down, ready for the day (or at least the next hour). These instances were rare, mind, but they did occur.

Now Brief is a big miss on the Galaxy A57. People buying this kind of phone probably aren't power users like those who buy the S26 Ultra. They just want to be able to pick up their handset, see a quick summary of their notifications, events, and interests, and put it back down.

That's why I think Now Brief — even in its current, basic form — would fit really well on Samsung's cheaper phones.

Child accounts for Apple devices aren’t new, but at WWDC 2026, Apple made a big push into child safety, announcing various new and redesigned features that parents can make use of to keep their kids safe.

But these features don’t come at the expense of flexibility, as parents will be able to customize their child’s experience and access according to their needs and preferences.

These features and improvements will be rolling out with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 later this year, and we’ve detailed them below.

1. Ask to Browse

Apple had already solved the problem of kids downloading apps and making in-app purchases with the Ask to Buy feature, which requires parental approval for any of that. But now, the company is adding a similar tool for the internet called Ask to Browse.

With this, if you choose to enable it, your child will have to get parental permission before browsing new sites in Safari. So, rather than simply blocking unsuitable content, you can go a step further and only grant permission for specific sites.

2. Allowed apps

When you first set up a child account, you’ll be able to customize exactly which pre-installed apps the child will have access to.

You’ll be able to either choose specific individual apps, what Apple considers “essentials”, or a recommended set. Then, if they ever want to access others, they’ll need parental permission first.

This essentially extends the Ask to Buy feature to apps that are already on the phone, giving you total control.

3. Controlled communication

Apple is also making it easier for parents to control who their kids can talk to over Messages, FaceTime, and through the Phone app, with a requirement for kids to ask permission before talking to anyone new.

Plus, Communication Safety — a tool that already blurs nudity when detected in Messages and FaceTime calls — will soon also block gore and violent content when it’s detected in shared images and videos.

4. Time Allowances

With Time Allowances, parents will be able to set time limits for specific types of apps, such as ‘entertainment’, ‘games’, and ‘social media’, with different allowances for each category. And the feature also includes guidance based on expert research to help give suggestions on how long the limits should be set to according to a child’s age.

Additionally, you'll be able to set daily schedules to restrict the apps a child has access to at certain times of the day.

5. A Screen Time redesign

The Screen Time interface is also being redesigned so that it will provide an at-a-glance overview of how much time a child is spending on their device and which apps are being used most.

From Screen Time, you’ll also be able to make adjustments to app access with a tap, making managing and adjusting screen time limits easier.

We've published a deep dive into Apple's new Screen Time redesign elsewhere on TechRadar, if you're interested in learning more.

• iFixit has done a teardown of the T1 by Trump Mobile
• They've discovered that it's almost identical to the HTC U24 Pro from 2024
• The main differences are minor cosmetic changes, along with a slightly larger battery

One of the key selling points of the Trump Phone — or the T1 by Trump Mobile, to give it its official name — is its “American values”, with the official store page mentioning that phrase along with “American innovation”, “American-proud design”, and calling it a “proudly American” product. But you probably won’t be surprised to learn that there’s seemingly little of that American-ness in the phone itself.

You see, iFixit has finally got hold of a T1 handset and conducted a teardown, learning in the process that the phone is almost identical to the HTC U24 Pro — a 2024 handset from a Taiwanese brand that was seemingly produced in China.

There are a few differences here, but they’re mostly cosmetic, with the Trump Phone, of course, having that gold-colored finish, along with a slightly different camera block and speaker grille design.

Beyond that, the Trump Phone also has a slightly larger 5,000mAh battery — up from 4,600mAh in the HTC U24 Pro — but less powerful 30W charging, down from 60W in HTC’s phone.

But make no mistake — these are essentially the same handsets, with most of the components, specs, and internal layouts being identical.

More Asian than American

So, claims that the Trump T1 Phone contains any real American values, let alone that it could be “proudly American,” are hard to take seriously.

iFixit notes that markings on the phone say it’s “assembled in the USA”, which is notably different from being “made in America” — the latter of which has specific requirements from the FCC, which the Trump Phone seemingly doesn’t meet.

Supposedly, the device is being assembled from around 10 components by a team in Florida, but iFixit speculates that the chassis and screen are imported as a pre-assembled unit (likely from the same factory in China as made the HTC U24 Pro), with Trump Mobile’s team probably just adding things like the battery and camera module — all of which will likely also have been built elsewhere, but just perhaps not put into the phone until they reached US shores.

So, if you want a phone that’s more than superficially American, this isn’t the handset for you.

That said, the Trump T1 does at least have a similar price to the HTC U24 Pro, so it’s arguably not the total rip-off you might have expected it to be. iFixit jokes that, "against all expectations, the T1 is actually well priced when compared to the equivalently specced U24 Pro, and the only things you give up are the 60W fast charging and your dignity." We couldn't have put it better ourselves.

• Siri AI is getting a new gesture in iOS 27
• It’s taking over the well-established Notification Center gesture
• That breaks 15 years of muscle memory and may be hard to get used to

When Apple introduced Siri AI at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 8, it understandably wanted to make its AI-enhanced virtual assistant become a key part of people’s everyday lives. But in doing so, it looks like the company has taken a step that could annoy a significant portion of its user-base.

That’s because invoking Siri AI involves a new gesture: you swipe down from the top of your iPhone’s screen. Well, it’s new for Siri, as swiping down on your iOS display previously launched the Notification Center. That means users of the best iPhones could be left frustratingly confused after they update to iOS 27.

The iOS Notification Center is where you see and interact with all your alerts on your iPhone. Apple has used the swipe-down gesture for the Notification Center since 2011, meaning we’ve had 15 years of training to reinforce this gesture. Having Siri AI take over this swipe movement is going to take some getting used to, if it does indeed make it into the final version of iOS 27.

The Notification Center hasn’t been banished entirely — in iOS 27, you’ll be able to load it up by swiping downwards from the top-left corner of your display. Thankfully, that gesture isn’t used by any other iOS feature, so we’re not going to be left with a cascading set of muscle memory disruptions. But it’s still something that a lot of people won’t be familiar with.

The new order

While I understand Apple’s desire to make Siri AI as prominent as possible, I anticipate I’m going to make plenty of mistakes swiping in the wrong place until I get used to the new arrangement. After all, I’ve had an iPhone since the days of the iPhone 3GS, meaning I’ve gone through those full 15 years of swiping down to get the Notification Center. Undoing that kind of habit isn’t always easy.

As well as that, swiping down from the top-left corner is an entirely new action, as no other feature currently occupies that space. It’s not like I’ll be used to interacting with that side of the screen from past experience.

Still, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Apple, it’s that its gestures are incredibly intuitive and can be learned with very little effort. When the iPhone X came along in 2017 and changed not just one gesture but the entire way you used iOS, it only took me a day or two to feel entirely comfortable with the new arrangement. I’ve got my fingers crossed for similar good luck this time around.

And besides, if Siri AI proves to be even half as impressive as Apple implied at WWDC, I’ll be happy to have it in such a prominent place on my iPhone. The Notification Center isn’t going away — it’s just having to make way for the new kid on the block.

I admit, I was confounded by Apple’s 20-minute Child Safety feature detour during its all-important WWDC 2026 keynote. After all, it’s a set of features that have warranted, at best, a passing mention at previous events. This year, though, Apple bombarded us with a cavalcade of existing, upgraded, and entirely new tools (we've rounded up five of the biggest new Apple child account features elsewhere on TechRadar).

The intention, it seemed, was to prove it’s dead serious about protecting your children from not just online threats but the very real danger of too much digital access.

While Apple hasn’t directly addressed why it went so hard, it is clear to me at least that it’s in tune with changing moods toward our digital experience, especially as it pertains to children. Studies show that excessive screen time is potentially damaging to cognitive development and behavior. A direct causal relation between social media use and teen mental health is harder to establish, though it's difficult to ignore the dual rise in social media and mental health issues. Overall, parents know that digital use — too much of it; the wrong kind — is a potential issue for their kids, and now they're actively looking for ways to manage it.

Perhaps Apple was right to devote so much time to this set of features. Still, I’m not sure it did anyone any favors with the overwhelming and slightly haphazard way it was all discussed.

I recognized many of the tools as already existing, but they were all slightly altered and enhanced. It wouldn’t be until later that I would learn exactly what was new and the crucial change Apple made to help get ahead of wily kids and teens who always know how to game the system.

So, to start from the bottom, it’s worth mentioning that Apple rewrote Screen Time’s entire architecture. Even how it works with iCloud is different (updated infrastructure).

This matters because, as you might’ve read elsewhere, crafty teens figured out how to game previous versions of the old Screentime Time Allowance and schedule controls. They did so by messing with the device’s clock. This trick apparently could extend screen limits significantly.

Apple, no doubt, is a student of all these teen screen time hacks, and the controls appear more robust. Re-architecture is likely aimed at those kinds of hacks, and if, for instance, your child learns the PIN code to authorize access to, say, a website or for a message chat, the system now automatically alerts the parent that the PIN code was used on one of the children’s devices.

A process of simplification and enrichment

Apple’s goal here was not only to strengthen the tools but also to ease the application. New devices can, in roughly six minutes (we timed it), guide a parent through the comprehensive parental control setup — I’ve seen it in action and it is impressive. You’ll make a fair number of decisions along the way, but it all appears sensible.

The ease is also because this is merely a starting point for managing your child’s digital learning experience (most of the presets are, it seems, in line with some guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics).

Over time, parents can and probably will dig into the now (when iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 ship this fall) voluminous settings that, for example, not only allow parents to block nudity but gore and violent images (though it’s not clear if it can do anything for words that describe such acts) across messages, AirDrops, and even communication in FaceTime.

In the case of violence and gore, if the content is detected, the communication is, for younger users, blocked (a parent could enter their PIN to see what triggered the action). While the system won't always send an alert to the parent, it can automatically end communication if it detects illicit content.

App and Web Sites under control

Developers don't just set their own age brackets for apps: each one goes through a rigorous questionnaire with answers mapping to specific age ranges. As for what happens when apps and games are upgraded and how Apple prevents non-age-appropriate content from seeping in, it uses another test to confirm that the existing age range still applies.

In addition to approving apps that your child can download, even those that are age-approved, parents will have control over which websites kids can visit. Every request shows up on the parent’s device, where they can investigate and then allow or deny.

Similar controls also exist for messages. If anyone who is not pre-approved or in the Family group tries to message your child, the child can ask for permission, and you’ll again get the approval notice. At this point, you can add that person to the approved list, and then they’ll be able to freely message.

Your groups

One of the big updates is in how the system manages time allowances, with new groupings and certain classes of apps, like phone and messages, always open in case of emergencies. You can even create your own app groups and add and remove apps.

So much of this is about tailoring the control to your child and your own family’s rules and restrictions. No family is alike, and so no two Child Safety and Screen Time settings necessarily need to be alike.

The setup walkthrough happens on new devices, so when it comes time to upgrade to iOS 27 and iPadOS 27, parents might first need to check which older devices still support the new software. If the systems don’t, the granular control might not be consistent.

Unfortunately, the Child Safety system can’t tailor the settings after a period of learning how you and your family use the devices. Though it seems you could use the new Describe a Shortcut to build a shortcut that watches usage insights and then changes settings based on those learnings.

Overall, I wouldn't say Screen time is now unrecognizable from its previous iteration. Still, the interface does feel somewhat cleaner and better organized, which I think is important because parents who dig into this are not interested in learning new tech management skills; they just need help protecting their kids from bad apps, websites, people, and their children's own sometimes too-intense screen habits.

Apple spending so much time rebuilding and enriching Child Safety and Screen Time and then talking about it during WWDC 2026 may have a dual effect. It could improve the lives of those who upgrade, but it might also open the eyes of parents who have been struggling to manage their kids’ digital lives without knowing there’s at least a partial solution already in their hands.

• Android 17 QPR1 beta 4 is now available
• This includes the Screen Reactions feature that Google recently announced
• Beyond that, it mostly contains bug fixes

Android 17 QPR1 beta 4 has started rolling out, and while this isn’t as feature-packed as the previous beta, it does include one major addition, along with numerous bug fixes.

The feature in question is Screen Reactions, a new tool that was unveiled at the Android Show, and which allows you to take recordings of both yourself and the screen of your phone at the same time.

It will turn on your selfie camera and record you in a movable and resizable window on top of whatever’s on your display, so it’s a really convenient way to record reaction videos without having to manually combine two pieces of footage.

Beating the bugs

But even if reaction videos aren’t your thing, this beta could still be worth grabbing, as it also fixes various bugs, such as one that would cause the mouse pointer to become invisible on external displays, one that causes the settings app to crash, one that causes recording with the 5x camera to exhibit frame jumps and jitter, and one that causes “severe 3D performance drops”, among others.

Of course, these are fixes for issues in the previous beta, so if you’re not already running an Android 17 beta, you might just be introducing more bugs by downloading this, rather than fixing any — but you will gain new features too, like the one above.

If you do want to grab this beta, you’ll need a Google Pixel 6a or newer — with the standard Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro not currently being eligible for it, even though they can get previous Android 17 betas.

But unless you have a spare phone to install it on, we’d recommend waiting for the finished release, which is sure to be more stable and is likely to land very soon — perhaps even this month.

I was in charge of live-blogging WWDC 2026 earlier this week, and keeping up with Apple’s device requirements for iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, and Siri AI felt like a job for someone with a photographic memory.

All three software packages have different entry criteria (and that’s to say nothing of iPadOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate), so after the show, I published an iOS 27 and Siri AI compatibility explainer, which will tell you whether your iPhone can support Apple’s upcoming iOS features.

I’m not going to repeat all those device requirements here, but a big point of confusion has been the exclusivity of Apple’s "most powerful on-device model", known officially as Apple Foundation Models (AFM) Core Advanced. Only three iPhones — the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air — have enough RAM (12GB) to access this model and, therefore, the very best version of Siri AI. But what does that mean, exactly?

According to Apple's press release on Siri AI, the two features exclusive to AFM Core Advanced are voice customization and more advanced systemwide dictation.

The former gives you the ability to customize the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s voice — anyone with access to Siri AI can still choose from a set number of Siri voices, but you’ll need an iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air to make Siri speak faster, slower, and with more or less enthusiasm.

The second feature — more advanced systemwide dictation — is arguably the more significant. It essentially means those top-end iPhones are more effective at converting speech into accurate text than older or less advanced iPhones. This updated dictation engine "automatically handles capitalization, punctuation, and formatting as [you] speak," Apple says, meaning you can "speak naturally and trust that [your] words will appear clearly, accurately, and as intended".

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that if you own, say, an iPhone 15 Pro, your Siri will be incapable of converting speech into text. Yes, Siri has been awful at doing just that in the past — anyone who’s tried to send a message using CarPlay will know what I'm talking about — but my understanding is that Siri AI, in being an entirely new version of Siri, will bring improved dictation at a foundational level (i.e. to all compatible iPhones).

But for those who rely on dictation to send messages or navigate their iPhone hands-free, the difference in dictation capabilities between the best iPhones and older models may be more consequential.

The capability gap will get bigger

At this point, it’s not entirely clear whether Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model will also result in noticeably faster query resolution for the iPhones equipped with it. Dictation is not the same as interpretation — Apple has only said that these iPhones will be better at the former, not the latter.

But given that AFM Core Advanced is a 20-billion-parameter model that only exists on iPhones with 12GB of RAM, it figures that these iPhones will be able to perform AI tasks more quickly than those equipped with Apple’s 3-billion-parameter AFM Core model and only 8GB of RAM.

Incidentally, more RAM also facilitates faster app loading and more seamless switching between apps, though the differences between iPhones on those fronts are already negligible (the iPhone 15 Pro feels just as fast to navigate as the iPhone Air, for instance). What's more, iOS 27 is making app loading and switching faster for all compatible iPhones, so having more or less RAM isn't a cause for concern outside of AI.

At the moment, then, it looks like owners of the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air are simply getting a more customizable Siri, and one more capable of converting speech into text.

That’s not ideal for iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 17 users who thought they were buying a phone “built for Apple Intelligence” — lawyers at the ready! — but these iPhones are capable of running all the Apple Intelligence features revealed at the software’s announcement in 2024 (so, actually, put down your pitchforks).

Of course, in classic marketing fashion, Apple’s small print on the matter leaves the door ajar for more features to be made exclusive to the AFM Core Advanced model: “Apple’s most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation, are available on…,” reads the press release. ‘Like’ is the operative word there — more hardware-exclusive features are surely coming down the line, ones which require more compute power than Apple’s base AFM Core model can provide.

But for the moment, I do think the furore is a little overblown. If you own an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone, you’re getting all but two of the features announced at WWDC 2026.

• Apple delivered exactly what users wanted at WWDC 2026
• Almost half of 1,500+ TechRadar readers wanted more AI features
• iPadOS, watchOS and visionOS all saw marginal updates

Now that Apple's annual developer keynote has wrapped and we've digested all the major updates from WWDC 2026, did Tim Cook deliver what users actually wanted to see? Based on 1,529 responses to a poll we ran last week, the answer is a resounding 'yes'.

Nearly half of the TechRadar readers who voted in our 'What we expect to see at WWDC 2026' poll (see some of the results below) told us that artificial intelligence (AI) — to be clear, I mean machine learning, not the sentient kind — was the number one update they most wanted.

Combining the results of the poll across our articles and social media profiles (680 readers cast their vote via our WhatsApp channel), we found that 47% were most excited for a new AI-powered Siri and various Apple Intelligence upgrades.

Of course, given that many of us had already been waiting for Siri to get an AI boost since 2024, a lot of the rumors leading up to the keynote strongly suggested that this was the year that Apple would finally deliver, making the announcement largely expected but no less fulfilling.

After such a long wait, many were pleased that most of the 75-minute-long keynote was dedicated to unveiling new AI tools being rolled out to its ecosystem. Most of these updates are coming to iPhone users, which is great news for the 42% of readers who most wanted to see new upgrades in iOS 27.

From the new Siri AI to a Liquid Glass fix that finally lets you adjust the opacity, we've rounded up our favorite new iPhone features coming to your phone in iOS 27, and it's a notable list of handy tools. Of the several new features we've highlighted, let us know which new iOS 27 update you're most looking forward to trying out when the software launches in September by voting in the poll below.

What were you least excited to see at WWDC?

Leading up to WWDC 2026, TechRadar readers confirmed to us that they were least interested in hearing about what updates were planned for iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro devices, with all three seeing under 8% in votes from our pre-show barometer poll.

Outside of the integration of AI and the latest updates coming to iPhones, it appears there just wasn't as much appetite for the rest of the brand's product lineup. It seems like Apple already knew this too, because it didn't waste any valuable time focusing on the minor software enhancements it's made to these platforms.

Instead, it was macOS 27 that saw the biggest refresh outside of the iPhone, with the rollout of macOS Golden Gate, which is getting most of the main features coming to iOS 27, including the Liquid Glass adjuster, better Search, improved parental controls, Siri AI, and the new AI image generator app, Image Playground.

All in all, Apple largely delivered on exactly what most of our readers wanted to see. Tim Cook finally made good on overdue promises and didn't drag out his last WWDC with minor watch face updates and niche spatial computing features that most of us can't use. Did Apple do enough this WWDC? Let us know in the comments below.

The opening keynote to Apple’s 2026 Worldwide Developer Conference has wrapped, and saying there’s a lot to unpack would be an understatement. Apple unveiled a brand new Siri experience, demonstrated more Apple Intelligence features, and even walked us through minor refinements we can expect to see across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, and Apple Watch.

The announcements were primarily focused on AI features, of course, but Apple spent a few minutes walking us through a complete redesign of the parental controls across all its devices.

As a father of three — ages 14, 16, and 18 — I have been hoping for changes and improvements to Screen Time for well over 10 years now.

Screen Time upgrades are coming

There’s an entirely new sign-up experience for setting up a new device, specifically designed to create a child account. Apple will then take the age of the child and fine-tune the device’s safeguards and offer a curated list of apps based on that age. A child account is required for kids under 13, and is optional for kids aged 13-18.

Safeguards include blocking adult websites, age-restricting access to age-appropriate content, and enforcing age-based restrictions regarding apps the child can install on their device.

I got especially excited when I saw that kids will be able to send website requests, much like the download requests they can send now.

When my kids were younger, we tried limiting their contact list to something we could manage, but as their friend circle grew and they exchanged more and more contact information, managing it became incredibly frustrating and difficult. With this update, set to be released this fall to everyone and out now as a developer beta, the child can send a request to communicate with a new contact.

There are several more features Apple is adding, such as adding bonus time in apps, along with a complete redesign of the Screen Time interface, which is very exciting and should make it easy to get a sense of in-the-moment settings, usage, and limits at a quick glance.

With bonus time, I'll no longer have to approve multiple time requests or edit limits with the intention of reverting them back the next day, but I’d ultimately forget.

It could all be for nothing, however

I hope parents take full advantage of all the additions and changes — but here’s the kicker: if Apple didn’t fix the underlying bugs in Screen Time that often allowed kids to get around the limits, all of it’s for nothing.

I’ve been playing whack-a-mole with my kids and them getting around Screen Time for years.

Just last week, I noticed my son had an increase in the amount of time he was spending in the Settings app on his iPhone. I’m not talking about going from nothing to five minutes. I’m talking about how he was spending anywhere from four to 16 hours in the Settings app.

Something was up, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. The usage limits I’d set for games and social media, along with his bedtime when his device effectively locks down, hadn’t been changed, but somehow he was in the Settings app all night long.

After a few days of this happening and his denying any knowledge of why it was happening, I did some Googling and discovered that when someone changes the date and time on their device, the Settings app often registers that change as app usage.

Why change his date and time? Because it tricks Screen Time into resetting his usage limits.

This was just the latest hiccup in my adventure with trying to keep my kids safe while also letting them be social.

Don’t even get me started on the years of pulling my hair out as Screen Time would randomly shut itself off or temporarily stop working for days at a time after an iOS update. And, of course, my kids would never say a word. I can’t blame them.

At one point, after months of accusing my son of figuring out some sort of hack to circumvent limits, Apple released a software update that explicitly addressed the exact bug. And boy, did I owe him a giant apology.

I’ve stuck with Screen Time because any third-party parental controls require a subscription and installing profiles on your kids’ phones — giving the company full access to your child’s activities, which has never sat right with me.

I’m hopeful Apple got the new Screen Time right for the next generation of young kids who are getting their first iPhones and iPads, but years of experience tell me not to bet against kids figuring out workarounds to pretty much anything in life, especially tech.

We have emailed Apple to ask if it’s harder to work around these, and will update when and if we hear back.

Schrödinger sock. That's how I describe the child's foot apparel that was not visible but brought to photo-realistic life by Apple Intelligence running on iOS 27 Dev Beta. The sock exists in the liminal space between assumption and reality. Only generative AI can make it real, even if the child in the photo was never wearing his other sock. Such is the power of the upcoming update to Apple's iOS and other platforms, and of the up-to-now relatively disappointing Apple Intelligence: Apple takes on Artificial Intelligence so carefully applied that it seemed woefully behind the competition.

But that was before.

Today, after its unveiling on Monday at WWDC 2026, we have the new Apple Intelligence and its powerful image-altering and creation tools that are the product of powerful off-device models built in cooperation with Google, or rather, that incorporate Google's generative models but apply them with Apple flair.

In the demo I saw, designed to show off the power of Apple Intelligence's new and enhanced Image Editing tools, we looked at the more powerful clean up that can do something Apple has never tried before in image editing: create something biological out of nothing, or at least infer the existence of something human we clearly cannot see. In this case, a child's socked foot. In the image (which I sadly cannot share here, but there are other examples above), the boy is seated on the floor, with one leg partially obscured by a large stuffed bear.

As before, we can trace over such distractions like a chair and the bear, and then tap Clean Up to remove them. Removal is something Apple Intelligence is already quite good at, but replacing large image parts or creating what should be there was really not part of Apple's generative image editing strategy. Now it is.

Like magic, we could see the rest of the child's leg and his other socked foot. No matter that this small boy might not have been wearing a sock on that foot, it got the same sock. As I said, we'll never know if that sock ever truly existed, but in the mind's eye of Apple Intelligence, it does.

Reframing the story

The other tools similarly stretch the bounds of memory and reality. Spatial reframing is a wild Apple Intelligence tool that applies a sort of 3D model to the image, letting you subtly rotate the subject and background this way and that to better frame your image. You can even grab and shift the subject a little bit. I watched them do this with an image of a woman sitting on the grass. I must admit that the final result did look better, and I guess no one will remember the less perfectly composed photos. At least you can always go back to the original, imperfect image to remember how things truly were.

Perhaps the best and least drastic of these generative image alteration features is the new expansion tool that, like AI tools in, say, Adobe Firefly, lets you basically extend the background in a photo to make it a better fit for a certain frame or wallpaper. It's something I could see myself using quite a bit, especially because it leaves the subjects alone.

Create something new

Yes, friends, we are officially entering uncharted Apple territory. For a company that prides itself on photographic excellence with one of the best cameras, sensors, and image pipelines in the business, it is now fully in bed with photorealistic imagination creation.

In one demo I saw, a young man wanted to create a flyer to promote a, I think, a bake sale for his friend, Phil. As before, Image Playground lets you choose seed photos and subjects from your Photos library, but where the old app would stick to basically comic book renderings of these subjects, the new app, with new Gemini-infused models backing it (they all live on Apple's Private Cloud compute), happily creates photorealistic images.

It's now a powerful tool, and I watched as we selected the subject (Phil) and described him piping a cake and with a bowl of fruit nearby. Soon, our buddy Phil appeared on screen looking very much like a master baker. No matter if the guy ever baked a cake in his life, let alone decorated one. He was doing it here. There's nothing real about this image, and while Apple likes to talk about maintaining the essence of our photos in the Apple Intelligence-powered Photo editing tools, this other land will create full-scale image narratives from whole cloth.

Yes, there is some sonic dissonance here.

Even so, Image Playground is now a vastly more powerful tool. After we gave Phil his fake bakery skills, we decided that the bowl of berries we requested for the image was not the right kind of berries. No matter, we simply used the Apple Pencil to select the berry bowl and then asked the app to switch it to blueberries. We also asked for a cupcake tower because Phil's baker bonifides were not quite strong enough.

The result was photorealistic perfection.

This is what you wanted, right? We all said Apple was behind. Now it's pulling even with the rest of the generative image world. It's progress, though I'm not sure to what end.

As artificial intelligence (AI) worms its way further and further into our daily lives, one increasingly popular way to edit photos is to use AI to help adjust your images in ways that would normally be impossible after the fact.

Yet this is also a deeply contentious subject among photographers, as it blurs the lines between reality and fiction. If you can go back in time to shoot an image from a different angle, for example, why not just go the whole hog and drum up something entirely artificial?

Apple has decided to enter this swirling storm with the iOS 27 updates it showed off at WWDC 2026, and one feature in particular has piqued my interest.

Apple calls it Spatial Reframing. The idea is that you can load up a photo whose composition is not quite to your liking, then use AI to adjust its angle and framing to get the result you wish you’d captured the first time around.

Instead of messing up a once-in-a-lifetime moment or taking multiple photos in the hope that one is right, you just need to shoot once and edit later if necessary. Not only might that help improve my images, but it could also free up storage space on my devices and in the cloud. It could be just what I’ve been needing to take my iPhone photography up a notch.

Ending a bad old habit

Here’s how Spatial Reframing works. When you tap the Edit button on an image in the Photos app, there’s a new Tools button on the right-hand side. Tap it, then select Reframe. Once Apple Intelligence has analyzed your picture, you can touch and drag it to adjust its framing and perspective. The feature also lets you zoom in and out and will generatively infill content where needed.

There are other AI image-editing tools in iOS 27 too, including improved Clean Up capabilities and an Extend option that can generate additional content around your subject to expand the photo’s dimensions.

Those new tools look interesting, but it’s Spatial Reframing that could be the most useful of the bunch for me.

You see, I’m one of those people who are never entirely satisfied with the images they capture. Whenever I line up my iPhone to take a photo, I end up snapping several from different angles, just in case I look back later and decide my original framing was off.

As you can imagine, this fills up my storage space fast and makes sorting through my pictures a chore. I don’t want to miss a moment thanks to poor composition, but I also don’t like the burden it puts on me and my storage. Not to mention the extra cost of needing a more capacious iCloud library to accommodate everything.

But with Spatial Reframing, I might finally be able to let go of that bad old habit and just settle for a single shot at a time, content in the knowledge that I can go back later and reframe my photos if anything appears to be off. That’s the kind of AI boost I can get behind.

A controversial move

That said, Spatial Reframing certainly isn’t without its critics. AppleInsider, for example, said it has the potential to create “nightmare fuel” and isn’t quite ready for prime time.

YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss, meanwhile, had his own reservations, saying: “You’ve already got a perfectly fine photo there of your two real children. Why would you turn that into a fake AI image that never happened just to make the angle more aesthetic?”

And I can understand why some people are reluctant to embrace any kind of AI intrusion into photography. Apple seemed to be aware of that at WWDC 2026, promising that it has a “deep respect for the craft of photography” and that its tools would “help photographers enhance their images in ways that respect the original moment.”

But how true is that when you’re changing an image into something it never was in the first place? Removing small distracting aspects from a photo is one thing — after all, photographers already do this by taking multiple snaps and combining them into one, obliterating pesky crowds and photobombers in one fell swoop — but reshooting a picture from an angle that you were never standing at might feel like it’s leaning too far into artificiality for a lot of people.

Me? I don’t mind it so much because my goal isn’t to pass off my images as something they’re not. I’m not about to use AI to edit an image and then enter it into a competition or present myself as a more competent photographer than I actually am.

Instead, I want to use this tool to help cut down on unnecessary images and ensure my pictures come out the way I intended, even if I didn’t notice a small error in the original composition.

Sure, Spatial Reframing is not going to revolutionize my skills overnight. But if it can prevent me from feeling the need to waste time taking image after image throughout the day — and save me money on iCloud+ storage upgrades in the process — then that’s good enough for me.

I come here to celebrate Apple delivering. It's not overshooting the mark with the new Siri AI, which it unveiled at WWDC 2026, but it is finally delivering on the promises it made at WWDC 2024.

Sure, it's beta (again), and there's a wait list (again), but I've now seen it at work, in person, in live and potentially unpredictable demos. Siri AI, as it's now called, works across platforms, and it has the potential to change how you use your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

While I waited for my access to the new Siri on my iPhone 17 Pro, I visited one of the countless rooms in Apple's massive Apple Park headquarters, where I round-robined through a series of stations at which I could see Siri AI in action on iOS 27 Dev Beta, iPadOS 27 Dev Beta, and macOS Golden Gate Dev Beta. This is all a work in progress.

I'll admit that while I was probably most interested in the new Siri on the iPhone, I was most surprised by how it works on the iPad. On every platform, this smarter, more aware, and more personable Siri looks different than before. It's bigger, brighter, floatier (I made that a word), and it has a new sense of confidence.

On the iPad, you can summon Siri with your voice, but you can also swipe down from the top of the screen, and a sort of black teardrop will form until it releases from the top of the screen and is displayed as the small Siri AI window. It's a nice, classy touch.

Of course, you can type into Siri, and I watched as we searched for top PGA golfers, and I noticed how anxious new Siri was to get to work, auto-filling answers before we'd even finished our query. Since it initially had just 'Top PGA Golfers', it quickly spit out Jack Nicklaus before refining on the fly to more contemporary players like Scottie Scheffler.

I also noticed during this process a new 'working' iconography that looks unlike any previous form of Apple's 'Please wait for an answer' spinner. Sometimes Siri AI seems whip-fast; other times, you can watch that icon spin as it works. There's no obvious sense of, "Oh, it's heading out to the Private Cloud Compute for that."

I watched here and on other platforms as Siri AI effortlessly kept context, without demanding a restate or telling us it couldn't answer that, and "did we want to check the web?" or "Use ChatGPT?" In fact, ChatGPT appears to have been almost fully deprecated here. It does not show up as an option, though I believe you can still request it.

As we dug in on Scheffler's career, Apple was quick to show me how Siri AI always shows its sources. I appreciate the care.

The little Siri AI window that appears in a session can be easily expanded, and then you're suddenly in the new Siri app. Apple takes a slightly different approach here than, say, Gemini or ChatGPT: the chat window is familiar-looking, but the conversation history is card-based, with almost headlines for your query topic, and either a brief summary or image. I did not see an option for a tighter list form, which I might prefer.

iPhone, meet the new Siri

On the iPhone 17 Pro Max, we summoned Siri with a long press of the power button, which launched that new, large, almost alien spaceship-like floating blob. I say 'floating' because throughout the demo I noticed that Apple had made the effort to put very subtle shading under the new Siri interface so that it looks like it's floating just above the screen. It's a neat little effect.

Siri AI's superpower is not that it's smarter or more chatty (in fact, Siri will steer you away from conversations that might be better had with humans or, say, mental health support professionals); it's that it understands you through the data on your phone.

This is where the fulfillment of a promise comes in. Siri AI really does appear to know the contents of your phone in a way that could be truly helpful. Its needle-in-the-haystack approach means that, if you have a thread of memory about a bit of data, something someone mentioned to you in an email or message, Siri can dig it out for you.

In the demo I saw, we asked about a "podcast our sister recommended recently," and Siri searched across first-party apps (developers will have to build hooks into Siri AI in future versions of their apps) and pulled up a casual mention of a Sherlock Holmes podcast in Messages. Again, once we had that detail, we only had to say, "Play it," and Siri launched the podcast app.

The obvious benefit is the end of endless searching and then backing out and finding the right app. I could imagine a lot of your daily interactions with your iPhone getting done through Siri AI. Of course, much of this will depend on developers of apps like WhatsApp, Gmail, and others building in those Siri connections.

Still, the power here is exciting. Taking someone's lengthy emails full of useful but disorganized details and turning them into, say, a useful Camping Gear list in Notes is a significant leap from the current and endlessly disappointing "Sorry, I can't do that" Siri.

Over the course of my demo, I watched as Siri pulled up random references relating to queries about travel and meteor showers. It's sort of a de-randomizer. Like all good AI, Siri AI can see the patterns in your endless reams of data, and make sense of it.

I also got a look at Siri in the Camera app. That's right, it now has a menu item right next to 'Photo,' and once launched it works a bit like Visual Intelligence. Choosing it does mean that Siri can 'see what you see,' which may or may not comfort you, but if you're wondering what you're looking at or, say, want Siri to help you make a choice, it's ready. I did notice that the Camera app takes a photo of whatever Siri is analyzing.

At one point, we mispoke in the demo, but Siri sussed out the proper prompt and results without any intervention from us. Kind of impressive.

In a demo where it helped me decide which book to read next, I listened as Siri's new 'expressive' voice told me why I should read Blindsight next. I noticed, though, that the new voice sounded a bit odd. I don't know if the emotion sounded forced or missing, but I'm assuming this is an element that's still being tweaked in iOS 27 Dev Beta.

Spotlight on the Mac

Most of my Mac demo revolved around how Siri AI transforms Spotlight, the Mac's system-wide search engine. You can, it turns out, still use it to launch apps like Preview, but the new interface almost compels you to go further with the words, 'Search or Ask'.

Ask basically transforms Spotlight into a generative search box where almost any general knowledge question is welcomed. We asked about the Hawaiian islands for families. If the system deems the question as 'complex,' it will default to Siri and Apple's world Knowledge Engine. That's right, even though the new Siri is using, in part, Gemini Foundation models, Apple is not using Google's Search knowledge graph.

Once you launch a search, you're inside Siri, and you can keep that window open while you multitask on other desktop chores.

In Apple Intelligence, you select text and right-click to access AI-powered writing tools, but the new Siri is embedded in more subtle ways that still give you full access to its new power. We selected a bunch of text in Notes and, while we could still have Siri rewrite it, Writing Tools-style, we can also use this as a launch point to weave together other Apple first-party app capabilities. In this case, we asked it to use the notes to draft a structured email in Mail.

Again, this is a pair of first-party Apple apps working together, and Apple is well aware that your email client may not be Apple's Mail.

Overall, it's still just a glimpse of what Siri AI can do, but I find it a promising one, especially for beta software. The plumbing clearly works, and if you allow it, Siri can finally see across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to understand you and your needs. It's been a long time coming, but I think Apple finally got this right.

• Apple's WWDC on June 8 contained several big announcements
• …including CarPlay updates for video streaming while the car is 'parked'
• You can now browse favorite videos from iPhone, on your CarPlay display
• It raises concerns, when a key reason for collision is failure to look properly (at the road around you)

Apple's just wrapped a busy WWDC event. At the conference on June 8, the Cupertino giant announced an AI-overhauled Siri, a long-awaited AirPods equalizer, AI-powered Apple Photos editing, and more — see our roundup of 17 things we learned at WWDC '26 for more.

But another piece of news was delivered to developers, so it kind of went under the radar. Apple has announced an update to CarPlay coming with iOS 27, which will likely be coming to iPhone users from September (though you can download the developer beta now). As well as upgrades to navigation and "voice-based conversation apps", the update will introduce video apps.

That's right: soon, you'll theoretically be able to watch Netflix TV shows on supported car screens (which is, of course, how the creators intended you to see them), or swipe through YouTube (or even TikTok) while you're waiting at the airport — or potentially even at a traffic light. What a joy. What a world we live in.

In an Apple Developer video explaining the changes, the brand's Car Experience Engineer, Chris Whitney, stated that people will only be able to use the feature "when they aren't driving" but later gave use cases wherein a vehicle could potentially be idling, rather than parked.

We've reached out to Apple for clarity on this, but the ability to beam videos to your car's display when your vehicle is turned on (albeit in park and unable to roll, for instance), makes me very cautious. Consider that "ineffective observation" of the roads around us while driving is regularly listed by solicitors as one of the top reasons for road collision incidents in the UK, where I reside, and I hope you can see my concern.

Roads could get more dangerous

Apple forbidding the playing of videos when a vehicle is actually moving is obviously intended to stop people focusing on the big game while they're barreling down a highway. But it's not enough.

As far as I can tell initially, there'd be nothing to stop you popping on some YouTube Shorts while you're waiting for the lights to turn red (other than the fact that few people watch YouTube Shorts) or queuing at a drive-thru. What I'm saying is, it may still be easy to watch videos with CarPlay when you, as a driver, are a threat to other people.

Distracted driving is a massive threat to road users; according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2024, over 3,200 people were killed and 315,000 injured from distracted driving. The agency repeatedly cites mobile phone use as major source of said distractions. I accept that tapping on your CarPlay screen is a step up from fiddling with your phone, but it's not a big step up — not in terms of how safely you're driving.

Crucially, road danger exists whether or not you're in motion on said road. Anyone who's had a professional driving lesson knows that you're taught to be aware of your surroundings when you're behind the wheel. I remember being drilled on all the angles to check before pulling out onto the road; you need to give it time and attention. And you need to keep both hands on the wheel.

In conclusion, you need to give the road your time and attention, not the screen in your car. You may be obsessed with the documentary about a Lego shop stealing $200,000 in Star Wars sets, but if you're streaming it in your vehicle when you should be watching the road, you're a risk.

And, if Apple does let you stream videos when you're on the road (waiting in traffic, idling at the airport, etc), you could miss an important change in light or situation, become flustered, and then be a huge risk to others as you rush to get going without checking your mirrors for bikes.

As you can tell from those stats I cited earlier, distracted driving isn't new, and I'm not claiming that Apple has introduced it. But it is encouraging it, with features like CarPlay video playback, which feels irresponsible. CarPlay should reduce distractions and safety concerns, not introduce them.

So, as someone who's frequently on, or near, the concrete, please don't use it! Roads are dangerous enough as it is, and if people are streaming videos in their car display instead of checking their angles, it'll only get worse.

• References to a foldable phone have been found in iOS 27 beta code
• These references weren't present in iOS 26
• They strongly suggest both that a foldable phone is in the works and that it will be launching soon

The long-rumored iPhone Ultra could be the most exciting iPhone of the year, as this is set to be Apple’s first foldable phone. And if there was any doubt that it’s coming soon, that’s largely been put to rest by some code found in the first iOS 27 beta.

As spotted by Sam Henri Gold (via 9to5Mac), some code in the iOS 27 developer beta mentions “foldState” and “angleDegrees”. The first of those seems like an obvious reference to a foldable phone, and the second presumably refers to the different angles you could have the screen open at — so, again, a clear hint that a foldable phone is coming soon.

If that wasn’t enough, they also found a check for the total number of built-in displays, which would be completely unnecessary if a foldable device isn’t on the way, since the answer would always be one with a conventional phone.

Probably launching this year

Not only are these clear signs of an Apple-made foldable phone being in the works, but they strongly suggest it’s coming soon — likely in time for the finished launch of iOS 27 in September, especially as 9to5Mac has verified that iOS 26 didn’t have any of these references.

So, while it’s always possible the iPhone Ultra will be delayed, right now, it looks like Apple plans to launch it this year — just like most recent release date leaks have suggested.

In which case, you can probably expect it to land alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max in September, with the base iPhone 18 and the iPhone 18e reportedly not launching until early next year.

When Apple talks about how it used Google's Gemini foundation models to build the all-new Siri, without using the Gemini app, it can start to sound like semantics. But a deep dive with the team that built the Siri we were promised almost two years ago quickly disabuses you of that notion.

"This is the amount of the Google assistant we use, which is none," said Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, on Monday, just hours after Apple finally unveiled the Siri we'd been promised two years ago during Monday's WWDC 2026 Keynote.

Wearing his trademark tight blue dress shirt, Federighi sat alongside Sebastien Marineau, VP Software at Apple, Amar Subramanya, VP, AI, at Apple, and Apple's VP of engineering, Mike Rockwell, on the small Developer Center stage, a relatively intimate setting compared to the vast outdoor Keynote venue situated just outside the vast Apple Park ring.

It was in this darkened hall, with outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook and his successor, John Ternus, looking on from front-row seats, that Federighi and company dug into the thorny architectural details of building a more personable, contextual, and deeply integrated Siri that spans the Apple ecosystem. They were, in a way, celebrating the late delivery of a promise but also reckoning with the reality of what the tumultuous past 24 months have wrought.

From a macro level, Siri is now a vast and complex system that includes one very powerful local, multi-model model and a series of even more powerful cloud-based ones that all live in some versions of Apple's Private Compute Cloud.

The models feature names like AFM Core, AFM Cloud Pro, and ADM Cloud Images. "Every model is a significant leap based on quality and operation compared to previous generation models," said Subramanya.

I was inclined to agree after seeing demos both during the architecture talk and later during one-on-one demos. Think of Siri AI and the Siri App as Siri unleashed.

Siri reborn

It has, it appears, full knowledge of your first-party Apple app capabilities and can quickly make the leap from a query in one app to the contextual information sucked right out of, say, Messages. It appears to know that the image of a month's worth of planned soccer games you just opened on your desktop is a schedule that it can add to your calendar.

It sees images on the desktop and through the camera. It remembers the context of a conversation and uses a more convincing voice to guide you through the most complex tasks. In a word, this Siri seems smart.

But Apple would not have gotten here without Google, and, it turns out, Nvidia.

Just how involved was Google? Apple makes no secret of its use of Google Gemini foundation models, but the scope of its involvement was thrown into stark relief by a schematic Federigi used to explain the inner workings of Siri's architecture.

A model collaboration

As you can see, there are boxes for all the new models and system components; all of them are color-coded, but with just two different colors: solid blue for Apple's own builds, and a sort of mix of blue and white for Apple and Google co-developed models. Every single model is co-developed. Apple's solo work is largely in what sits over all of this.

Here's how Apple explained the clockwork to us. The system starts with, naturally, speech recognition, which produces the query text. After that, it's the job of the all-important System Orchestrator to build a prompt and send it to the foundation models. It's also at this stage that Apple's system decides if the query will be handled within the large, 20 billion parameter AFM Core Advanced model (up from 3 billion on the current Siri model) or be sent to Apple's Private Cloud compute and one of the larger models, which includes AFM Cloud, AFM Cloud Pro, and ADM Cloud (for a diffiusion model for image generation).

A smarter way of parsing parameters

One of the big innovations here, and why Apple can have such a vastly large model on your iPhone, is in how it handles parameters. Normally, because each query can have many different requests and require a variety of parameters, all those parameters are loaded into memory at once to meet the demands. It's a huge strain on memory and battery life and, with 20 billion parameters on Apple's AFM Core Advanced model, simply not practical. So they built something called a "scarce model."

"Unlike the server models, what core advance does is it looks at the entire request, chooses the right set of parameters, and then locks them in for the entire request. And so you're not having to reload parameters with every token and this dramatically cuts down the cost of loading these parameters," said Subramanya.

Even though these models are co-built with the latest Gemini models and will be updated with future Google Foundation Model work, at no point in that pathway is Google Gemini taking the wheel.

Instead, Apple took the same approach it's taken for most of its innovation partnerships. It identifies the best-in-class component or technology and then has the partner build a bespoke version. In this case, the collaboration is, perhaps, richer, since Apple is co-building these models, but its interest in Google's AI capabilities stops short of the app client.

The customer experience is and should feel completely Apple.

Apple, Google and Nvidia, perfect together

The back end, or cloud side, is a far more collaborative effort than you might expect from Apple. For a company that's built its name on privacy and security, it's been forced to work with third-party partners to wrench their cloud offerings into secure spaces that satisfy both Apple and its customers' demands and expectations of privacy.

The idea of Private Cloud Compute (PCC), originally introduced with Apple Intelligence in 2024, is a cloud space big enough to accommodate models too large for on-device computation, while also replicating the privacy structure found on local devices. That's easier to do when you control all the servers, but in the new world of Siri AI, Apple has opened up PCC to Google and a new Apple Intelligence partner, Nvidia.

To run far more powerful models like AFM Cloud Pro, Apple needed "the latest technology from NVIDIA, and so we set out to extend private cloud compute to third-party cloud," explained Subramanya.

Nvidia was already working on something it called confidential compute, but it didn't meet Apple's stringent PCC criteria. "We set out to design this with Google as a collaboration," said Subramany. The solution comprises, in part, Nvidia GPUs and redundant security components from Intel and Google.

The moment of truth

In essence, Apple's Private Cloud Compute now lives on Nvidia and Google servers, but Apple execs insist, "Apple devices can only talk to software signed by Apple," meaning that if these systems do not have software signed and verified by Apple, Siri won't connect with them.

This is unquestionably a vastly different Siri than the one you might be using on your iPhone 17 Pro today, but it's also quite similar to what Apple demonstrated but did not deliver in 2024 or 2025. Federighi and company didn't rehash all the hurdles and false starts of the past 24 months, but VP of Engineering Mike Rockwell did offer a rare glimpse into what was clearly a pivotal moment.

"Last year, we had actually built a first version of this that was sort of incremental on top of the original Siri...and we had it working, but we didn't feel it was really delivering on the vision and the experience that we wanted to do, and so we also had a design which required much more extensive changes. And we decided to go with that. And so we went back, and we rebuilt Siri from the ground up," said Rockwell.

What's not clear from this is if this was the moment Apple realized it couldn't go it alone, it needed Google and its powerful Gemini models to fulfill its vision, but without somehow letting the Gemini experience take over.

Siri AI is that successful melding of Apple's original vision for artificial intelligence with, perhaps, the best generative models in the business. And like all the best consumer software experiences, you don't have to know how the sausage is made, just that it works exactly as Apple promised and you want it to.

We've been waiting a long, long time for Siri to get the AI glow-up it sorely needed, but at WWDC 2026, it finally happened: Siri AI is real.

That wasn't the only thing Apple announced at its annual developer conference, but it's fair to say that it was the main event, with more than half of the relatively short (only 75 minutes!) show dedicated to it.

Still, there were several other notable reveals both on stage and afterward. Here are the big things we learned.

1. Siri AI is the smarter, AI-powered Apple assistant we've been waiting for

It’s been a long two years, but we're nearly at the end of the winding road leading to Apple’s AI-powered, next-generation Siri — or at least we will be soon.

At WWDC 26, Craig Federighi ushered in Siri AI, an entirely next-generation personal assistant that delivers on what Apple originally set out to do at WWDC 2024, while adding some new tricks and a slightly updated look.

There’s a lot here to unpack — check out our first thoughts on the new Siri AI for more — but whatever you think of it, Siri AI is a big upgrade.

The assistant will now extend out from the Dynamic Island on the iPhone, creating a more integrated experience. Apple has also greatly expanded Siri’s world knowledge and contextual understanding, plus it's also multimodal: it can see what’s on your screen to gain broader context for a given request, and it can use your camera view as a set of eyes to help answer questions or respond to queries in real time.

That’s just scratching the surface. For instance, Siri’s voice has been updated to sound more expressive (see more on that below), and the assistant can now be customized to better suit your preferences.

Safe to say it took a while, but if you’ve already taken the leap and downloaded the Developer Beta, you can join the Siri AI waitlist now.

• READ MORE: Apple just gave 'Siri AI' its biggest upgrade ever — whether iPhone users asked for it or not

2. But Siri AI isn’t coming to the EU… because Apple says it needs to protect your privacy

The 27 EU countries won’t get Siri AI in iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 because of the EU’s “extreme interpretation of the DMA [digital markets act]” that means that if it offers Siri AI’s features there that access your personal data (but process it on the device), it must also allow other AI tools on your iPhone to access your data too, but with no restriction on where that data goes (other than the EU’s data laws, of course).

Apple says it tried to create workarounds that balanced the EU’s aim for less lock-in with Apple’s aim of privacy, to no avail: “Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the EU… The European Commission said no.”

• READ MORE: iOS 27 and Siri AI compatibility explained — confirmed device requirements for Apple's new software updates

3. You’d better buy a new device if you want the best version of Siri AI

The new Siri AI is going to quietly have two different flavors. The regular version is available on iPhone 15 Pro or later, iPad mini (A17 Pro) or later, iPad models with M1 or later, Mac with M1 or later, Apple Vision Pro, Apple Watch Series 10 or later, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later, and Apple Watch SE 3.

However, Apple says that its “most powerful on-device model and the features it enables, like expressive voices and more advanced dictation”, are only available on super-new devices. That means iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPad (M4) or later with at least 12GB of memory, a Mac with an M3 or later with at least 12GB of memory, and Apple Vision Pro (M5).

All of this means that a lot of pretty recent and expensive devices are being left behind by Siri AI altogether, including the iPhone 17, iPhone 14 Pro, and the original Apple Watch Ultra. The brand-new MacBook Neo isn’t powerful enough for the best Siri model, either.

4. You can make Siri AI’s voice way less annoying…

…or more annoying, if you want! The point is that it’s now really customizable, in a way that rivals Alexa+ by letting you make your voice assistant your kind of vibe.

You can choose from five basic (and much more natural) voices, and then you can change the pace and expressivity within each of those voices.

Fast and simple expression for efficiency’s sake? No problem. Slower and more expressive because the kids like interacting with it? Go for it. It should help make you want to interact with Siri’s voice more — at least it would, if it were actually coming to Apple’s HomePod smart speakers…

5. Apple's also expanded its AI-powered photo editing chops

If you’re a fan of Clean Up in Apple Photos, you’re going to be pleased to know that Apple’s expanding its AI-powered photo tools… though it’s not a throw-anything-at-the-wall approach, as the design is that these tools respect the original photo.

Firstly, Clean Up will be faster and able to tackle larger removal jobs, and will sit alongside two new features. Extend will let you stretch the borders, and only the borders, of an exciting image. This can help you achieve a rule-of-thirds shot with a portrait or rebalance an image.

More intriguing is Spatial Reframe, which, with a pinch-to-zoom or a twist of your finger on the screen, lets you adjust a shot's perspective. It’s really neat, and the demo looks impressive, as it lets you adjust the camera's position after you’ve taken the shot.

6. All of which means that Apple’s changed its approach to AI and images

Before today’s upgrade to Siri AI and Apple Intelligence, Apple was pushing the line that its approach to AI images was unique. It told us it wanted to preserve the original moment when it came to photos, so it didn’t try to make any AI image generations or image edits look too realistic, and the images you could make with Image Playground looked like AI images, not real ones.

Now, with the new Apple Intelligence features, Apple seems to have abandoned that approach entirely, and with new features such as the Extend, Clean Up, and Spatial Reframing described above, it's letting you make AI enhancements to images that look very real indeed. Image Playground now also features the ability to create realistic images.

So why the switch? Well, maybe that now that Apple has had longer to get user feedback, it has realized that this is what people actually want from AI images, or maybe it’s that until it switched to its new Gemini-powered foundation models for its AI, it really didn’t have the ability to deliver this level of realism. Either way, it's a big change in approach.

7. Siri AI in Vision Pro gives us a glimpse of what Apple AI Glasses could be

One of the most interesting examples of using Siri AI was in Vision Pro, where the user could look at a floating virtual browser window with a shopping site and ask a question about how a product would fit into their life, and the system knew what they were looking at and could give a totally context-aware answer.

It’s thanks to the eye-tracking camera in the Vision Pro, and it’s easy to see this as being the long-term goal for the much-fabled Apple Glasses. Cameras on smart glasses right now see so many things at once; it’s not an elegant system to just ask a question about what you’re facing — you could actually be looking at 20 different things.

Combining cameras on the outside of the glasses with eye detection would mean that your eyes become a way of directing the AI to one specific thing — literally, your focus becomes the software’s focus.

We’re a long way from moving it out of goggles and into glasses, but it’s easy to see that this is the future… maybe.

8. The next macOS is… Golden Gate

Seeing what Apple’s crack marketing team comes up with as a name for the next version of macOS is now something we look forward to annually, and after a bit of a runaround between the team and Craig Federighi — including some excellent visuals— we finally learned that macOS 27 is called macOS 27 Golden Gate.

It will arrive with some changes to Liquid Glass, mainly a slider to adjust the overall transparency level (more on this below). This is good news, especially since on the Mac it could be a bit hit-or-miss in macOS 26.

As with the other platforms, Apple is also taking the opportunity to fine-tune a bunch of macOS features under the hood to make it feel a bit smoother. And as the name hints, there’s a really nice new wallpaper on the horizon. Lastly, Siri AI will be supported here on Macs — or at least those that can support it, of course.

• READ MORE: macOS 27 Golden Gate announced at WWDC 2026 — here's everything you need to know

9. Search on Apple devices is about to get much better

Apple's on-device search is getting a major overhaul for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, with a fully revamped experience in Spotlight, Photos, and Mail that should make it far easier to find what you're looking for.

The key, Apple says, is the 'device index' — essentially Apple's catalog of everything on your device, whether in Photos, Mail, or saved somewhere. This index has been made "more stable, more efficient and more comprehensive of content both old and new," Apple says, and that in turn should mean you get better results when you search — and that you get them more quickly.

It's a quality-of-life improvement rather than a big update, sure, but it's the kind of thing that Apple has traditionally excelled at getting right, so it's no bad thing in our eyes.

10. macOS 27 is the end for Intel Macs

As you might expect, Macs with Intel chips won't support Siri AI — but there's worse news still for owners of those devices: Apple confirmed that macOS Golden Gate is the first version of the software to work only on Apple Silicon.

Yes, it’s the end of an era for sure, with the announcement meaning that the clock is officially ticking down for the many, much-loved Intel Macs out there.

Apple will keep updating previous versions of macOS for a while with core security updates and basic maintenance, and macOS 26 in particular will get quite a few releases along these lines — but this will be it for new features, and we can expect Intel versions of software to stop being supported in many cases, too.

• READ MORE: Apple quietly kills off support for Intel Macs and MacBooks

11. AirPods are finally getting an EQ

It seems incredible that we’ve never been able to tinker with AirPods’ sound profile, given that they’re approaching 10 years old as a product. But a custom AirPods EQ is finally coming as an option in iOS 27.

You’ll be able to use a super-simple interface to adjust the frequencies, with a waveform on the screen, and you can play a song right from that interface as you’re changing things to hear instant results.

• READ MORE: AirPods are finally getting a custom EQ in iOS 27, this is not a drill!

12. Apple admitted it got it wrong on Liquid Glass (sort of)

Apple was very proud of itself when it launched its Liquid Glass design update last year, using superlatives such as "delightful", "elegant," and "beautiful" to describe it. Well, exactly a year later, it seems it wasn't quite so elegant or beautiful after all.

That's because iOS 27 and Apple’s other software updates will introduce a new slider that lets you adjust how transparent the Liquid Glass elements are, from completely clear to fully opaque.

Now, Apple didn’t actually say it had got it wrong the first time round with Liquid Glass; obviously not. Instead, it said that all users are different, and so it was offering the slider so that people could choose what worked best for them. But come on — a fully opaque Liquid Glass is not Liquid Glass. It's, I don't know… solid perspex or something. Still, if it makes iOS easier to use, then we won't complain.

• READ MORE: 7 new iPhone features coming to your phone in iOS 27 — from the new Siri AI to big Liquid Glass upgrades

13. Apple is taking online safety very seriously

Apple took a surprisingly large chunk of time out of its presentation to focus on parental controls, highlighting new tools that allow parents to manage which apps children can access, how long they can spend on different apps, and encouraging app developers to adopt tools it has developed to help keep kids safe online.

It also showcased new tools to protect children from messages from strangers and from explicit content, and Apple placed such importance on the topic that Tim Cook even used his closing remarks to discuss it yet again.

These announcements come in the wake of governments all over the world focusing on legislation designed to protect minors online, with this segment feeling like Apple proving it’s ready to proactively respond to parents' concerns rather than waiting to get pushed by laws.

14. Apple's Password app is about to get better still

Apple might be using its next-generation of Apple Intelligence to power one of the most useful features ever, and it will likely make you switch to the Passwords app if it works as promised.

It’s already a safe haven for all your usernames and passwords, and when the time comes to change the latter, the app easily creates a new one. It will even warn you when it might be time to update, for instance, if your password appears in a data breach.

Now, though, with iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, the Passwords app will actually handle the step of changing the password for you on whatever service it’s for. We’ll need to see exactly how this works, but I've been dreaming of this for years.

15. tvOS is getting some small changes

Apple didn’t really mention tvOS in its keynote, but there are some changes coming to the Apple TV 4K. These include a bunch of speed improvements — including when launching apps, using Control Center, and connecting over AirPlay — plus a few smart home upgrades, including Thread 1.4 and on-device processing of HomeKit security camera footage.

There will also be a redesigned Podcasts app, support for Hi-Res Lossless in Apple Music (previously limited to the Lossless tier), and the ability to use AI to auto-generate subtitles for shows that don’t have them, which is one feature we’ve been hoping for for a few years.

Notably lacking from the list? Siri AI. It seems like it would be really useful, enabling you to ask all kinds of questions about movies you’ve seen, where you know an actor from, what kind of show you watch next… but there are rumors that a new Apple TV 4K is coming later this year. Perhaps that will have a beefier processor capable of running the new and smarter assistant.

16. But Home is missing out almost entirely (again)

Apple made a few soft-touch improvements to Apple Home, with grouped event notifications, searchable AI-generated summaries for security camera footage, and improvements to Shortcuts — but that was about it.

Did we get Siri AI for Home? We did not. Were we surprised? We were not. And unless we get new hardware in September, it seems unlikely we'll see any genuinely worthwhile updates to the platform now.

• READ MORE: Siri AI’s new voice customization could have trumped Alexa+, but scant HomeOS updates stall the win for Apple

17. Tim Cook signed off as CEO, but without much screen time

This was Tim Cook's final WWDC as CEO — and presumably his final Apple event, given that John Ternus will have taken over by September. It was therefore a little strange that he spent so little time on screen, with Craig Federighi and a cast of a thousand (just about) Apple employees instead taking us through the updates to Siri and iOS.

Nor did Ternus appear; this is perhaps not surprising, given that he's a hardware guy, but all the same, it felt like Apple missed an opportunity to mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next.

Again, there was plenty of that kind of thing around Apple's 50th birthday earlier this year, and maybe Cook (and Ternus) didn't want to take the focus away from Siri AI. And let's face it, he's always been more content to let Apple's devices and software do the talking, rather than hogging the limelight himself. Either way, it is the end of an era — and one that Ternus will have a tough job to surpass when it comes to success.

iOS 27 has been officially revealed — and if you're an iPhone owner, that means there's a very long list of software treats heading your way.

The final version of iOS 27 won't actually be released until September, but an early developer beta is available to download now and a public beta will likely follow in July.

But what exactly do you have to look forward to? I've been using iPhones since the 3GS (yes, I'm that old) and below are the seven biggest iOS 27 features that I'm looking forward to taking for a spin.

1. A new Siri AI

Yes, it's finally happening. Two years after Apple originally announced a more personalized version of Siri, a next-gen assistant called Siri AI is finally coming — well, as long as you live outside the EU and have a very recent iPhone.

Siri AI appears to be the conversational assistant we hoped to see back in 2024. Based on Apple's new Foundation Models (which were built with Google), it understands your "personal context" — so can answer questions by pulling information from across your messages, emails, photos, and more.

It'll also be available in a dedicated Siri AI app, which lets you go back to old conversations that it remembers, and you can also use iCloud to sync your conversations privately across devices. A Siri mode in the Camera app will also boost the iPhone's visual search — for example, letting you get nutritional info about your hastily-concocted dinner.

Unfortunately for those in the EU (which doesn't include the UK), Apple has said that Siri AI won't be available there due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). But for the rest of us, it looks like iOS 27's biggest upgrade — the only downside is you'll need an iPhone 15 or newer to use it (and an iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone Air to use the version with expressive voices and more advanced dictation).

2. Liquid Glass finally gets a slider

If you're not a huge fan of Liquid Glass on iOS 26, we have good news — Apple has admitted that its critics had a point and has given us an opacity slider to adjust the effect to our liking.

The new slider will let you tweak how, well, glassy the effect is in areas like tabs and menus. Apple says it can go from "ultra clear" to "fully tinted" (which basically removes the effect).

Liquid Glass will also now apparently do a much better job of diffusing any content that's behind the effect, which should be a boon for readability.

3. The Passwords app can change your passwords for you

Here's a smaller iOS 27 update that could be one of its sleeper hits — the Passwords app will now be able to change weak or compromised passwords for you.

The app currently tells you if any of your passwords have been leaked or appeared in known security incidents. But rather than fixing those passwords manually, in iOS 27 you can tell the Passwords app to automatically change and update them to something that's strong and secure.

Apple says the feature will let you update the passwords on "eligible accounts", so it remains to be seen how wide that support is, but it certainly sounds like a potential time-saver.

4. Apple Photos gets new editing tricks

Apple Photos has slowly been catching up with Google's photo editing trickery on Android — and iOS 27 will see it take another solid step forward with three features that you'll find in its 'Tools' section (above).

The first, Clean Up, already exists but is apparently getting a "big upgrade" that will help you remove distractions in a more realistic way. As its name suggests, the 'Extend' tool also lets you expand your photo in the same way as Photoshop, using generative AI to fill in the details.

Lastly, there's an even more fancy tool called 'Spatial Reframing', which uses on-device spatial models to help you tweak the perspective. It's a bit like 'Spatial Scenes' from iOS 26, which let you convert 2D photos into 3D, only you get to save the perspective change into your photo.

In a slight dig at Google, Alok Deshpande (Apple's Director of Camera and Photos Software Engineering) said: "At Apple, we have a deep respect for the craft of photography, and so our goal for bringing AI into the Photos app is to help photographers enhance their photos in ways that respect the original moment". Touché, Apple.

5. Speed improvements

If you've been frustrated with how sluggish iOS 26 feels on your iPhone, particularly if you're on an older model, then iOS 27 could improve things.

According to Apple, iOS 27 will feel much snappier than its predecessor thanks to range of bug fixes and performance boosts. It claims that app launches will be up to 30% faster, AirDrop transfers will be 80% quicker, and loading new snaps in Photos will be 70% faster.

These boosts, and others across Wi-Fi and cellular connections, will likely vary depending on which model you're running (iOS 27 compatibility goes back to the iPhone SE (2020) and iPhone 11 series), but it's promising news for those on older devices.

6. A Screen Time overhaul

Apple's built-in parental controls on the iPhone, called Screen Time, are still a work in progress, but fortunately they're getting a big facelift in iOS 27.

In Safari, a new 'Ask to Browse' feature means kids need to ask their parents when they want to browser a new website. Stronger 'Communication Safety' features in the Screen Time settings also blur content that might contain nudity, gore or violent content.

Lastly, 'Time Allowances' gives parents a suggested starting point for the maximum time their child is allowed on certain apps or categories of apps like 'Entertainment' and 'Games', based on their age. There's no doubt Apple had one eye on EU and UK regulators with its new Screen Time boosts, but they certainly look useful for parents.

7. Shortcuts gets an AI upgrade

Shortcuts is one of those apps is loved by a few, but it too confusing for truly mass adoption. Well, iOS 27 might finally change that thanks to a new Apple Intelligence upgrade that lets you describe the shortcut you want using natural language. We've settled on called this 'vibe-cutting'.

Rather than adjusting all your inputs and variables manually, you can type something like "when I'm leaving work message Pedro I'm on my way with my ETA" and the Shortcuts app will automatically pull together all the apps and system actions you need.

Even Apple admitted that the current Shortcuts system in iOS 26 "can feel, well, complicated". So this promises to be a pretty big step forward — and is one we've wanted to see for quite a while.