Full disclosure: I am writing this before Amazon Prime Day. If the iPhone Air is not currently on sale in your region, then you should only pay its $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price if a) you have a bottomless supply of cash or b) you simply must own Apple’s most beautiful iPhone (and make no mistake: the iPhone Air is Apple’s most beautiful iPhone).

But I will eat my hat if there aren't any meaningful deals on the iPhone Air by the time you read this. It's already been discounted by as much as 30% in both the UK and Australia this year, and as such, I have a hunch that Amazon will run similar deals during its annual Prime Day sale (if you’re in the US, look out for carrier-based offers on Apple’s best iPhones).

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

If you can snag the iPhone Air for around 20% less than its retail price this week, I’m utterly convinced that it’s the best-value phone purchase you could make right now — for two reasons.

Firstly, you will not find a nicer-looking — and nicer-feeling — phone than the iPhone Air without spending silly money on one of the best foldable phones. The Air measures just 5.64mm at its thinnest point and is some 41g lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro, despite boasting a larger 6.5-inch display.

You might not think you care about having a thin and light phone — I also didn’t to begin with — but trust me: once you start using a device of such svelte proportions, you won’t want to go back to a regular-sized phone.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent picture of me with a group of tech content creators showing off our current phones of choice:

All four of us test the best phones for a living, and all four of us settled on Apple's super slim iPhone as our personal handset of choice.

The second reason why a discounted iPhone Air is the best-value phone purchase you can make right now is less obvious. Not only is this Apple’s most beautiful iPhone, but it’s also its most powerful: like the iPhone 17 Pro, the Air boasts an A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM.

Now, I don’t usually highlight chipsets as a reason to buy phones — the iPhone 17e’s A19 chipset, for instance, is plenty fast enough for most people — but the iPhone Air's A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM combination has suddenly become more significant than most people realize.

Here's an extract from a recent article in which I explain why the iPhone Air is future-proofed in a way that only the iPhone 17 Pro can match:

At WWDC 2026, Apple announced its all-singing, all-dancing Siri AI assistant, which will soon be available on all Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhones (read: the iPhone 15 Pro and upwards) 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 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.

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.

I genuinely believe this under-the-radar feature makes the iPhone Air almost worth its regular $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price, but if you can pick it up for significantly cheaper than that during Prime Day, it’s a bona fide bargain.

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.

• 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.

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.

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."

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• 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.

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.

Apple unveiled iOS 27 at WWDC 2026 today (June 8), but not every iPhone will support the new software upgrade when it lands later this year.

Despite offering some of the best software support in the industry, Apple regularly leaves a handful of iPhones out in the cold when releasing a new version of iOS — the iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max, for instance, can’t run iOS 26.

Unusually for Apple, though, that list hasn't got longer this time round: the iPhone SE (2020), iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max, all of which you might have expected to lose support this year, will still be able to run iOS 27.

That's great news for older iPhone users (as in, users of older iPhones — we're not ageist) who want to make use of Apple’s upcoming software features — all of which you can read about in our WWDC 2026 coverage.

iOS 27 support list

Here’s the full compatibility list for iOS 27:

• iPhone SE (2020)
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone SE (2022)
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air

Accounting for the expected iPhone 18 and its siblings, iOS 27 will be supported by around 34 iPhone models, which is an impressive showing of software support on Apple's part.

It’s also unlikely that any iOS 27-compatible iPhones will be left waiting for the update, since Apple tends to make new versions of iOS available to all models in one fell swoop (take note, Samsung).

It’s worth noting, however, that even though older models like the iPhone 11, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13 will support iOS 27, Apple Intelligence — which includes features like Clean Up, Live Translation, and Apple's new AI-powered voice assistant, Siri AI — will remain locked to the iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

Siri AI support list

As above, only those devices already compatible with Apple Intelligence will support Siri AI. The full list is as follows:

• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPad models with M1 or later
• MacBooks with M1 or later
• MacBook Neo

Importantly, though, not all Siri AI features will be available on those iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks.

Specifically, expressive voices and more advanced dictation — which are powered by Apple’s "most powerful on-device model" — are limited to the devices listed below:

• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPad Pro models from 2024 and later (7th generation onwards)
• iPad Air models from 2026 and later (8th generation onwards)
• MacBook Pro models from 2023 and later
• MacBook Air models from 2024 and later

Additionally, those iPads and MacBooks will need to be equipped with at least 12GB of memory to be capable of running those advanced Siri AI features.

Siri AI also won't be available in the European Union (EU) or China at launch: "Unfortunately, due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple will not be able to ship Siri AI in the European Union with the release of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. Over the past several months, EU regulators did not accept any of Apple’s proposed solutions to bring Siri AI to the EU while safely supporting other virtual assistants," the company explained in a blog post.

So, frustratingly, there are quite a few criteria you'll need to meet if you're hoping to try the best version of Siri AI on your Apple device.

iPadOS 27 support list

As for iPads and iPadOS 27, specifically, Apple has confirmed that the iPad 10.2-inch (2020), iPad Air 10.5-inch (2019), and iPad mini 7.9-inch (2019) won’t support iPadOS 27.

Here’s the full compatibility list for iPadOS 27:

• iPad models from 2021 and later (9th generation onwards)
• iPad Air models from 2020 and later (4th generation onwards)
• iPad Pro models from 2017 and later (2nd generation onwards)
• iPad mini models from 2021 and later (6th generation onwards)

Side note: almost all iPad models are available in multiple sizes and in Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi + Cellular configurations, so, in the interest of readability, I’ve grouped the above models into dated categories.

As mentioned, neither iOS 27 nor iPadOS 27 is expected to be released until September, but if you're interested in trying a pre-release, developer-focused version of the former, here's how to download the iOS 27 developer beta.

iOS 27 has been a topic of conversation for months now, but finally, following WWDC 2026, Apple's next iPhone-based software upgrade has been officially unveiled — and better yet, there's a beta version out now.

This is a developer beta, so it's primarily intended for people developing iOS apps, but it's accessible to anyone. Note, however, that a public iOS 27 beta will likely follow before long, and might be more stable, so you may prefer to wait for that — or for the finished release, which is expected to land alongside the iPhone 18 series in September.

If you are set on downloading the iOS 27 developer beta, though, then it's quite straightforward to do. We've detailed every step below — from signing up as a developer (if you haven't previously done so) to actually downloading the beta to your phone.

Before you start, it's worth backing up your iPhone, just in case something goes wrong with the installation of the beta or with the beta itself.

How to install the iOS 27 developer beta on your phone

To become eligible for the iOS 27 developer beta, you first need to enroll in the Apple Developer Program. Fortunately, this is easy to do. So if you’re not already signed up for this, just head to the enrollment page and click ‘Start your enrollment’. Then sign in with your Apple ID, and click ‘Continue enrollment on the web.’

You’ll then be asked to fill in your name and address, and you’ll have to select your ‘entity type’ (which, in most cases, will be ‘individual’), then accept the agreement. This will take you to a payment screen, but if you just quit out from here, you should still be enrolled in the free tier of the Apple Developer Program, which is all you need to access the betas.

Alternatively, you can use the Apple Developer app to enroll — just select the ‘Account’ tab in the app and then sign in to your Apple account.

With that done, actually downloading the iOS 27 developer beta is simple — on your iPhone, just head to Settings > General > Software Update, and then tap ‘Beta Updates’ followed by ‘iOS 27 Developer Beta’.

After following that process, the latest developer beta should appear as an option to download. So, tap that and follow the on-screen instructions to install it.

Then, just sit back and wait for it to install — note, though, that this is a large update, so the installation may take a while, and your iPhone will reboot during the process.

Siri's sandbox of information is so limited at times that it's enough to make you want to throw your iPhone into the abyss, but then we'd have to worry about the clueless digital assistant not knowing or understanding what's going on:

Siri: "Wait. Did he just throw us into a ditch?"

Also Siri: "Do you want me to use ChatGPT to answer that?"

Still Siri: "I guess, but why don't I know?"

Siri again: "I can't answer that question."

In the two years since Apple promised a new, exciting, and far more intelligent and self-aware Siri, the rest of the AI world has moved on. The environment Siri might have entered in 2026 is vastly different from the one it faces now.

Understanding the phone in your hand and all the data you share with the device or a cloud-based network is essentially table stakes. Just look at Google's Gemini-infused I/O. It was wall-to-wall AI, and questions about what you might let Google do with your data appeared as an afterthought.

The assumption is that, if you're under the Google umbrella, you will tie together your email, docs, spreadsheets, location, shopping, clothing, eating habits, health, you name it, all in a quest to have an AI that actually understands and works for you.

Time for a different approach

Apple's adherence to the principles of security and privacy is, while laudable, starting to sound, if not quaint, then antiquated.

If you use AI, you expect it to understand your intentions and the context of every request based on the corpus of information it has about you.

Apple's slow, steady, heck, plodding approach to the fast-moving world of AI has done it no favors. Sure, I appreciate caution, but this comes across as stumbling and then dragging an unwilling corpse over a massive suspension bridge. On one side is the safe island of Apple Intelligence, with unsatisfying image creation, a lack of self-awareness, and a dimwitted Siri that relies on powerful friends to feed it the answers. On the other side is the land of Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude.

In that world, call it "AI-landia", rules and caution are for suckers. These AI giants move faster than the speed of thought. Nothing is more important than a better frontier model, especially one that outdoes its nearest competitors.

Don't be fooled by calls for temperance or caution. Any of these AI companies would sell its youngest offspring for the world's best Frontier Model.

In the meantime, I'm sitting here just hours before Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2026) keynote (Monday at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST), feeling less than confident that Apple will finally deliver the goods.

Even with the promised help from Google, which should be providing some Gemini juice to Apple's own frontier models, I remain unconvinced. Apple is cautious to a fault. Recent rumors say it will once again release the next Siri as a beta. Haven't we seen this show already?

Asking Siri a simple question

It's time for Apple to throw caution to the wind, get the new Siri out there as a full release, and then iterate the heck out of it to fix any issues. That's not Apple's way, of course, and for much of its 50-year history, such care has worked in its favor. Now, though, things are different. Apple has never been perceived as falling this far behind in one of the most important spaces in tech history.

Think of it this way. Imagine if, a decade after the explosion of the modern World Wide Web, Apple didn't have a web browser and wasn't even using its own protocols to help you connect and navigate the internet. Maybe they were worried about viruses or that the Internet is such a wild, uncontrolled space.

That never happened, obviously, and mainly because Apple is usually canny about knowing when and how to enter a market. Sure, it can be a purposely late, to let other people fail or falter while it fixes all their mistakes with the near-perfect product (iPod, iPhone, Bluetooth earbuds, smartwatches), but it doesn't partially release half-baked products and then say, "Whoops, hold on, we got it, almost, here it comes, just a minute..." Or at least it didn't…

Generative AI is not a failing or unrealized category that Apple can reinvent and invigorate. Apple knows this, but it just seems stuck or confused.

In search of an Apple that plays out of touch but secretly gets it, I asked Siri, "What should I expect for WWDC 2026?"

Siri: "Do you want me to use ChatGPT to answer that?"

It could have said, "Just wait and see," or "Wouldn't you like to know?"

No wink and nod, no sly, digital grin, just flat confusion and a call on big brother AI, who knows everything.

I'm not encouraged, but I hold out hope.

What do you think? Can Apple save Siri and pull off another industry-shaking surprise? Let me know in the comments.

Apple’s first foldable iPhone — expected to be called the iPhone Ultra — still exists mostly in rumors, supply chain whispers, and analyst notes, but the prospect already feels less niche than it did a year ago.

There’s clearly an appetite among iPhone owners for something new. Apple's yearly upgrades have become smoother, faster, and more polished, but also more familiar. Better cameras, brighter screens, and faster chips are nice and definitely still matter, but they rarely change the basic shape of the thing in your pocket.

I’m not convinced that the form factor itself is what will make Apple's debut foldable succeed, though. Samsung, Google, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, and others have already proved that foldable phones can be impressive, useful, and surprisingly refined. Apple won’t be arriving in a category that needs rescuing. Its advantage is simpler than that.

If the iPhone Ultra goes mainstream, it will be because Apple makes a foldable that feels like the most natural iPhone upgrade in years. The device, if and when it releases, should feel familiar when closed, more capable when opened, and never quite as strange as the idea of a folding iPhone probably should be.

Apple doesn’t need to invent the foldable

Relatively speaking, Apple is very late to foldables, which is sometimes treated as a problem. In this case, though, it may be a gift.

The first wave of foldable phones did the awkward work, proving that flexible screens could survive real life, hinges could be trusted, and apps could adapt. Some of that took years, and some of it is still being worked out.

But the category no longer feels experimental in the way it once did. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold series has become thinner and more polished; Google has pushed the Pixel Fold line towards a more phone-like shape, and so on. Foldables are still expensive and imperfect in 2026, but they are no longer weird concept devices that only tech enthusiasts dream of.

All of this gives Apple a different job: it needs to persuade iPhone owners that a folding iPhone makes sense.

Ultimately, this is where Apple tends to be most dangerous. The company rarely needs to be first for a new device type to land properly. With the iPhone Ultra, the pitch is less about joining the foldable future and more about getting an iPhone that can do a little more when you want it to.

The hinge is only half the battle

Of course, the hardware still has to be excellent. Apple can’t stroll into the foldable market with a chunky design, a distracting crease, or a hinge that makes people nervous every time they open it.

A foldable iPhone Ultra would almost certainly sit at the top of Apple’s range and cost thousands of dollars, so the screen, outer display, cameras, battery life, and durability all need to feel worthy of the price.

But polished hardware only gets Apple through the door.

As mentioned, rival phone makers have already shown that foldables can be thin and powerful devices. A cleaner crease or stronger hinge might make the iPhone Ultra easier to trust, but it won’t explain why people should change the way they use their phone. That job belongs to the software.

The real pitch is a bigger iPhone

Most people don’t wake up wanting to buy a foldable. They want a better phone — one that makes everyday things a little easier without asking them to rethink everything, and that fits within their price bracket. That's where the iPhone Ultra could feel different.

Closed, it needs to be a normal iPhone; opened, it has to become something more useful without feeling like a separate device. Reading an article, checking travel plans, editing photos, watching videos, replying to emails, or using Maps should simply feel less cramped.

That sounds obvious, but it is essentially the whole pitch. A foldable iPhone does not need to replace your iPad, and it probably won’t be the best iPhone for most people at first (I can't see it dethroning the iPhone 17 for value). At the core level, it just needs to make the regular iPhone feel a little limited once you've seen what the dual-screened Ultra can become.

iPadOS may hold some clues

The iPhone Ultra's inner display can’t just be a stretched iPhone screen. If Apple wants it to feel genuinely useful when opened, it needs a software language built for more space: apps that resize cleanly, multitasking that feels natural, and a layout that gives photos, video, and documents room to breathe.

In recent times, Apple has already been moving the iPad in that direction. iPadOS updates have made multitasking, windowing, accessing files, and arranging apps feel more flexible without simply turning the iPad into a Mac.

A foldable iPhone would need to implement a lighter version of that idea: its software should be more capable than iOS on a normal iPhone, but still simple enough to feel like an iPhone the moment you open it.

For me, the multitasking experience will be where the iPhone Ultra sinks or swims. Foldables are often sold on their multitasking capabilities, but multitasking on these dual-screened devices can often still feel like work, mostly due to software-related issues. Apple’s version needs to make common pairings — Safari and Notes, Maps and Messages, FaceTime and Calendar, Photos and Mail — feel obvious, useful, and easy to return to later.

The goal should not be to make the iPhone behave like a tiny laptop or iPad; it should be to make everyday phone tasks feel less cramped, with the extra screen appearing exactly when it helps.

The ecosystem is Apple’s secret weapon

The iPhone Ultra could look radical by Apple's standards while still behaving like the safest upgrade imaginable. It would still be your iPhone for AirPods, Apple Watch, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, Apple Pay, MagSafe, Find My, the App Store, and all the home comforts that make switching away from iOS feel like a huge grind.

That familiarity is probably Apple's strongest card and could do more for foldables than any single spec. The company can essentially sell buyers the most capable version of a device they already use all day. The shape changes, but the experience stays recognisably "iPhone".

The hinge, crease, thickness, and price of the iPhone Ultra will dominate the conversation before Apple shows anything official. That much is inevitable, because those are the easiest parts of a foldable iPhone to imagine and critique ahead of any real-world, hands-on experience with the product itself.

But the iPhone Ultra wins if those details fade quickly once people start using it.

Apple's real trick might be making its first foldable feel invisible, or at least not radically different from the iPhones its customers have come to know and love. That, I think, will be the key to the iPhone Ultra's success.

Jony Ive was at the heart of Apple's design philosophy for generations until he left the company in 2019 to start his own venture. But his influence throughout his nearly 30-year tenure at the firm is undoubtedly still prevalent in the company's products today.

Wonder in simplicity

Ive has been responsible for some of the technology industry's most iconic designs, with landmark devices including the iMac, iPod, and the iPhone.

He delivered his thoughts on the potential for technology to transcend the mundanity of the ordinary when promoting the first generation of the iPad in 2010.

Describing the iPad, Ive sought to explain how Apple's core philosophy when engineering this device — by all accounts a game-changing piece of kit — was to strip away any and all complexity and clunkiness.

When you achieve this, the thinking goes, users are left with technology that hides the engineering smartly and makes the device as accessible as possible. They then stop questioning how the technology works and instead focus on their experience using it.

Simplicity in modernity

Jony Ive's new venture, LoveFrom, continued to work with Apple until 2022 before the relationship between the designer and the tech giant ended.

The company has since embarked on various projects, both in and outside the tech world, but the New York Times reported in 2024 that Ive's company was collaborating with OpenAI on novel AI-native hardware. OpenAI later announced it would acquire Ive's AI venture, IO, for $6.5 billion in May 2025 ahead of a push toward a wearables-centric future.

There's scant information on what this hypothetical new AI-native device might look like or how it might work. Also unknown is how it might coexist with smartphones, which are increasingly being stuffed full of AI functionality. Whether a new device gains traction might hinge on how well it cuts through complexity — and with Ive at the helm of its design, it's something consumers would certainly expect.

2026 could be a big year for foldable phones, as Apple is rumored to finally be launching a foldable of its own, reportedly called the iPhone Ultra.

This could push foldable phones into the mainstream, and Samsung — as well as welcoming the competition from its biggest rival — looks set to cash in, as it’s reportedly launching a foldable phone in a new wider form factor, so that it can better compete with Apple’s device, which itself is expected to be quite wide.

This new phone was once referred to as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide but is now rumored to be launching simply as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, with the more familiar, narrower model said to be landing as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

Obviously, we don’t know for sure how the iPhone Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 will compare just yet — nor even whether they'll officially launch — but thanks to leaks, rumors, and previous foldables, we’re starting to get a good idea of what to expect.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: price and availability

We haven’t yet heard much about what the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 might cost, but there’s a good chance it will either be in line with or slightly cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, since it will reportedly have one fewer camera and sit beneath the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. That would mean a starting price of $1,999.99 / £1,799 / AU$2,899 or less.

As for the iPhone Ultra, leaks suggest that it might start at over $2,000 (around £1,485 / AU$2,785), which could mean it’s at least slightly more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8.

As for availability, it’s likely that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 will launch in July, alongside Samsung’s other 2026 foldables. If it really launches with that name, it will probably be available globally, though there's a chance Samsung could limit the Galaxy Z Fold 8 to a few regions to test the waters, just as it did with the Galaxy Z Tri-Fold.

The iPhone Ultra will probably launch in September alongside the iPhone 18 Pro series, though there has been some talk of a possible delay until 2027. Whenever it does land, it’s likely to be sold globally.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: design and display

The iPhone Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 might have quite similar designs, with both being rumored to have wider, shorter screens than typical book-style foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.

This form factor could give you a more widescreen experience when they’re unfolded, but would leave you with a slightly squat device when folded shut.

Going by dummy units, the iPhone Ultra might be 117.71 x 84.27mm when folded, and come in at 11.02mm at its thinnest point and 16.57mm at the camera bump. It could be just 5.24mm when unfolded, though some other leaks put it at a slightly slimmer 4.5mm when unfolded and between 9 and 9.5mm when folded. We’ve also heard repeatedly that there will be no visible crease on the iPhone Ultra.

Various leaks also suggest that it will have a roughly 5.5-inch cover screen and an approximately 7.8-inch foldable display.

As for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, that phone might have a roughly 7.6-inch main screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and weigh around 200g according to TechManiacs. That same screen size, along with a 5.4-inch cover display, has been put forward by Android Headlines, which adds that the phone will be 123.9 x 161.4 x 4.9mm when unfolded and 123.9 x 82.2 x 9.8mm when folded.

So, Samsung’s phone might be marginally smaller — at least in terms of screen sizes — and thinner than Apple’s, though there’s a high chance it will also have a more visible crease.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: cameras

It’s expected that the iPhone Ultra will have two cameras on the back: specifically, a wide and an ultra-wide, both of which will be 48MP, according to leaker Digital Chat Station. The iPhone Ultra is also expected to have cameras in both its screens, and while no specs have been leaked yet, they might be 18MP like the selfie cameras on the iPhone 17 line.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 likewise looks set to have a dual-lens camera, and as with the iPhone, you’ll probably get wide and ultra-wide lenses. Leaks also point to similar numbers of megapixels, with both sensors apparently being 50MP. The phone is also almost certainly going to have a camera in each screen, with these rumored to be 10MP.

So, on paper, there might not be much to choose between these phones when it comes to the cameras, but it will be interesting to see how they compare in practice.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: performance and software

The iPhone Ultra will almost certainly have the same chipset as the iPhone 18 Pro Max if it launches this year, which likely means a top-end A20 Pro chipset. Leaker Fixed Focus Digital suggests the phone could also have a vapor chamber, which would further boost performance.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, meanwhile, is likely to have a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, which is also very powerful — this is what you’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example.

So, both of these should be very powerful phones, though the iPhone Ultra, with its slightly newer chipset and rumored vapor chamber, could have the edge in terms of performance.

As for software, the iPhone Ultra will likely run on iOS — specifically the yet-to-launch iOS 27, if it lands in September — though there's a small chance that Apple could debut some foldable-specific software for its first foldable device.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, on the other hand, will run Android — most likely Android 17, overlaid with Samsung’s One UI. These are both highly capable operating systems, so it really comes down to personal preference as to which is best.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: battery

The iPhone Ultra could have a surprisingly high-capacity battery for a foldable phone, with one leak putting it at 5,800mAh. A slightly earlier leak from Lanzuk puts it at between 5,400mAh and 5,800mAh, but even at that lower end, it would still have a lot of foldables beat.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is rumored to have a 4,800mAh battery — so not as good as the iPhone, though still better than the 4,400mAh-equipped Galaxy Z Fold 7.

iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 rumors: early verdict

Based on what we’ve heard so far, the iPhone Ultra could have a more powerful chipset and a bigger battery than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, as well as a less visible crease.

But it could also be thicker and have a higher price, and there may not be much to choose between the two phones' cameras and screens.

So, it’s sounding like the iPhone Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 might be quite evenly matched overall. We'll likely find out for sure before the end of the year, as we're expecting Samsung to debut the Galaxy Z Fold 8 in July, and Apple to debut the iPhone Ultra in September.

Which foldable phone are you most excited for? Let us know in the poll or comments section below.

Android and iOS each have their own security features, and while there’s a lot of overlap between the two software packages, they also have some significant differences in their available tools.

So, if you’re hoping to keep your phone safe from threats both online and in person, the approach you’re able to take may differ, depending on whether you own one of the best iPhones or best Android phones.

Below, then, we’ve looked at the key security features offered on each operating system, designed to protect you across a range of scenarios.

How they secure your device against online threats

The most common threats most of us face on our phones are of the online variety — things like viruses and other malware. Fortunately, both Android and iOS have tools to limit these risks — if you use them.

For one thing, it’s worth setting up two-factor authentication on the account you use to log in to your device, be that an Apple account or a Google one, as this makes it much harder for hackers to access or take control of your account. In fact, you should use two-factor authentication anywhere it’s offered, but especially for these accounts.

It’s also worth using a password manager, so you can more easily create and keep track of complex, unique passwords, and both iOS and Android have password managers built in. That said, third-party options are sometimes more feature-filled.

A VPN is worth considering too, to secure your internet traffic. However, while Google Pixel phones have a built-in VPN, most Android handsets don’t, and neither do iPhones — though if you have iCloud+, you can access Private Relay, which has some of the same protections, and both operating systems let you download third-party VPNs (here's our roundup of the best VPNs, if you're interested in getting one).

If you have an Android phone, you might also want to run an antivirus app on it — though again, these don’t come built in most of the time. iOS doesn’t allow for conventional antivirus apps, but it arguably doesn't have much need for them, as it largely keeps apps sandboxed anyway, limiting their ability to interact with the rest of the system.

How they ensure your apps are safe

Both Apple and Google take steps to ensure the apps listed on their official stores are safe. On Android, for example, there’s Google Play Protect, which checks apps for harmful behavior before you download them — and if you get them from third-party stores, they’ll be checked once they’re on your device.

On iPhone, Apple similarly uses automated scans for known malware in apps, and on both operating systems, employees review apps before listing them on the official stores to begin with.

There is slightly more risk on Android, though, simply because it allows you to download things from third-party stores, which may not have the same level of security. Outside of the EU, this isn’t possible on iPhones.

Beyond the checks that Google and Apple carry out, though, they also give you the ability to turn off any permissions you don’t want an app to have. For example, many apps may ask for location data, but they don’t always have clear reasons for needing it. Similarly, you might want to think twice about giving an app full access to your photo gallery.

And you should also consider stopping apps from tracking your use of other apps. They do this to serve you personalized adverts, but you’re giving up some privacy in the process.

On iPhone, you’ll be asked if you want apps to be able to track you each time you download a new one, or you can find a toggle for every app in the ‘Tracking’ section of the settings menu.

Android doesn’t put the option quite so front and center, but if you head to Settings > Google > Ads, you’ll find the option to delete your advertising ID, which has a similar impact.

How they prevent in-person snooping

Keeping your phone secure when you’re around people or when you’ve given someone access to your device requires a different set of tools, but both Android and iOS have some options available.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, specifically, then you can enable Privacy Display when using your phone in public, which keeps sensitive content obscured when not viewed front-on. But other Android phones don’t have this feature, and nor do iPhones.

The more widely available tools are mostly focused on keeping your device safe when someone else has physical access. For example, both iPhones and most Android phones have a way to hide apps so they won’t appear on your home screen. Generally, those apps will also then require a PIN or biometric authentication to access.

Additionally, you can choose to lock but not hide individual apps on iPhone. So people with access to your phone can see that you have them, but can’t open them. Some Android brands have a similar feature, or you can make use of third-party apps for this, but it’s not a tool that’s built into the version of Android that Google ships — though leaks suggest that might change with Android 17.

How your device data is kept safe from thieves

Finally, you need to consider how to keep your phone’s data safe if it’s stolen, and both Android and iOS have a selection of features to help with that.

For one thing, you should obviously have a lock on your phone, so that it requires a PIN or biometrics for anyone to access, and both iOS and Android offer this feature.

But beyond that, on iPhone, you can also make use of Stolen Device Protection, which — when your iPhone is away from a familiar location — will require Face ID or Touch ID authentication to access things like passwords and credit card details, with no option to use a passcode instead, so that it ensures you’re the person seeking access.

It also requires you to wait an hour before taking some actions such as changing your Apple password, giving you time to secure your account in case it’s a thief trying to do those things.

On Android, there’s a similar suite of tools, collectively called Theft Protection, which do things like using biometrics and other safeguards to verify it’s you accessing the phone, lock your screen if the device detects that someone took it and ran away, lock your screen shortly after your device goes offline, and lock it after repeated failed authentication attempts in apps and settings. All of which is designed to prevent thieves from accessing your data.

Additionally, both Android and iOS let you remotely lock and even wipe your phone in the event of it being lost or stolen, and they both have tools to help you locate lost or stolen devices, in the form of Apple’s Find My service and Google’s Find Hub.

You might also want to change your phone’s settings so that notification content is hidden when the device is locked, ensuring thieves won’t be able to read your notifications. This too is an option on both iOS and Android.

Apple is not on its back foot, but there's no question that it's under intense pressure to deliver a razzle-dazzle WWDC 2026 keynote on June 8 at 10AM PT.

It's been tradition over the past four or five years of quick in-person opening remarks before Tim Cook cedes the stage to a series of pre-recorded videos, but that may not cut it. It has to, for instance, tell and show, in real time, the product of deep AI foundation model work that it (and partner Google) is bringing to the all-new Siri.

We've seen videos before and then waited two years for a full Apple Intelligence delivery that never came. That won't work this time. What we want is to see the all-new Siri working on an iPhone 17, demo gremlins and all.

Being that vulnerable on stage will break with recent tradition and whisk us back to the Steve Jobs era, when, without a digital net, Jobs would demonstrate new hardware and software on stage. It's true, he occasionally admonished everyone in Apple's Town Hall at One Loop to "turn off their WiFi," but we'll never forget those moments.

Give us the "Cook" moment

I also think developer and media attendees will demand more than a brief glance at the outgoing CEO. This WWDC keynote will be Cook's swan song as Apple CEO before John Ternus takes over in September, just in time for the iPhone 18 rollout.

We'll want Cook to remark about his impact on the company, a video retrospective, and maybe even some frank comments about highs and lows ("Okay, maybe we went a little too far with Liquid Glass...").

Please, Apple and Tim, let's get real here and embrace the moment in a way that, again, no one will forget.

A series of live presentations

If I had my way, the entire keynote format would be switched up so that Cook engages with each platform lead to walk through the big changes coming with iOS 27 and the rest of the "27" platforms.

The biggest chunk should be reserved for a sit-down with Tenrus, who could walk Cook through the new Siri. It will all be far more impactful than an hour or more of videos, even the humorous ones featuring Craig Federighi's hair.

The hard truth

Any time I mention the possibility of "one more thing" at a WWDC Keynote, I'm reminded that it's not a hardware event...except when it is. The trash can Mac Pro made its debut there, as did the Vision Pro.

I think it's altogether possible that this WWDC 2026 keynote could be the one where Apple gives us a surprise glimpse of the iPhone Ultra (iPhone Fold).

As I've written before, a folding, and possibly two-screen iPhone would make special demands of iOS 27, ones that I think would be hard to hide from the public as dev and public betas start rolling out throughout the summer.

I'd suggest Apple embrace the sea change and reveal that "Of course, we're working on a folding device!"

Tim Cook holding the iPhone Ultra prototype over his head as the company announces an important new entry in the iPhone lineup is quite the image. It will be a brief look, and I'm sure Apple will offer scant details, but can you imagine the excitement and satisfaction for Cook, who will not have the opportunity to do so in September when I suspect the iPhone Ultra officially launches alongside the rest of the iPhone 18 lineup.

The other possibility here is that Cook gets to preview Apple Glasses, maybe even casually walking out on stage wearing the AR spectacles and not revealing the fact until he closes the keynote. People would lose their minds.

For all the success Apple has had in 2026 (mostly thanks to the MacBook Neo), it's clear it's lagging in key areas like foldables, AR, and especially AI. Business as usual will not suffice.

So this is my call to Apple: Don't play it safe, don't prerecord those videos. Leave the comedy behind, and go for an all-live event with high stakes and real impact.

That, my friends, will be a WWDC keynote for the books.

2026 will be the year foldable phones sink or swim. Samsung has been chipping away at the category for several years now — its latest book-style foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 7, is the best foldable phone money can buy — but these niche, expensive devices still represent less than 3% of the global smartphone market.

Could that be about to change? Apple is strongly rumored to be launching its first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Ultra, in September, and I’ve been itching to ask Samsung for its thoughts on whether Apple’s entry into the foldable market will boost or threaten its own success.

Given that the iPhone Ultra doesn’t exist yet, and that Samsung rarely acknowledges its competitors by name, I’ve been waiting to broach the subject with the Korean tech giant — but in my preparation for this year’s Galaxy Unpacked event, I stumbled across a revealing 2025 interview in which Samsung addresses the potential implications of a foldable iPhone head-on.

Here’s how the President and COO of the company’s Mobile eXperience (MX) division, Won-joon Choi, responded to questions posed by Bloomberg’s Shery Ahn about growing competition in the foldable market:

Shery Ahn: How does Samsung think about competition? Because you have so many Chinese makers coming out with foldables with good cameras.

Won-joon Choi: You know, rather than focusing on the competition, I think we have been focusing on our consumers. What is the experience that we can bring to consumers, and how complete are those experiences? I think healthy competition with other companies will bring more innovations, and then bring more benefits to consumers. So we are welcoming others to join this category, which we created back in 2019.

SA: Even if Apple comes out with a foldable next year, which is what people are saying, how do you keep that edge?

WC: We've been doing this for many years, and we have accumulated a lot of technologies and know-how. Having another global company join this category, I think it's good for the industry, and also, it's going to be great for consumers.

Now, for obvious reasons, Samsung isn’t going to publicly admit that it’s fearful of Apple’s entry into a market that it’s dominated for years, but I do think Choi was being more honest than diplomatic in his response.

The emergence of improbably thin and lightweight foldables like the Honor Magic V3 and Oppo Find N5 forced Samsung to step up its game with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and I expect that the market-leading IP68 durability rating of the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold won’t be market-leading any longer once the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrives later this year.

Choi’s assertion that “competition with other companies will bring more benefits to consumers” has already proven itself to be true, then; and if Apple delivers something unique with the iPhone Ultra — whether that’s a hardware- or software-related innovation — you can bet that the likes of Samsung, Honor, and Oppo will endeavor to replicate that innovation in their own future products.

As for whether “having another global company join this category” is “good for the industry,” Choi will likely be proven right about that, too.

Counterpoint Research predicts that global foldable smartphone shipments will grow 20% in 2026 following Apple’s entry into the category, and I suspect that this rise will be driven by existing iPhone users upgrading to a foldable iPhone, rather than existing Galaxy Z Fold users switching to a foldable iPhone. The market will expand, but I don't think Apple will eat Samsung's lunch (existing foldable-averse Android users aren't going to be convinced by an iOS-powered foldable, that's for sure).

Of course, Samsung won’t want consumers to forget that it stuck by and popularized foldable phones when other companies wouldn’t — just as it pioneered the large-screen phones we’ve all become accustomed to using today.

But Choi’s addendum — “we are welcoming others to join this category, which we created back in 2019” — suggests Samsung won't simply share the foldable stage with Apple without reminding buyers of its heritage in this long-existing market.

We’ve finally reached that point in the year where all of the biggest tech brands have released their flagship phones for the 2025/26 season, so what better time to take stock of the landscape and highlight our favorite models from the past few months?

I’ve covered this very subject in a dedicated YouTube video, which you’ll find below, but if you’d rather read my words rather than listen to them (I’ve heard that before), scroll down for my roundup of the best phones you can buy right now.

A quick disclaimer: I’ve only included phones available for purchase in at least one of TechRadar’s core reader regions — namely the US, UK, and Australia — so China-only models like the Vivo X300 Ultra and Honor Magic 8 Pro Air are excluded, despite being great products in their own right.

iPhone 17 Pro

Let’s kick off with a phone you’ve all seen and heard about already: the iPhone 17 Pro.

I tested the regular Pro model, but everything I’m about to say also applies to the larger iPhone 17 Pro Max (though with that phone, you do get a larger screen, a slightly bigger battery, and up to 2TB of internal storage, which is, quite frankly, ridiculous).

On the design front, the iPhone 17 Pro boasts a stunning Super XDR OLED display, an aluminum chassis, a dedicated Camera Control button, and all of the usual bells and whistles that we’ve come to expect from Apple's best iPhones.

This is the only non-Android phone on my list, and the only device to use a chipset that isn’t made by Google or Qualcomm. But Apple’s A19 Pro chipset is just as powerful as the competition's (in some cases, it’s more powerful), and in this price range, it’s hard to separate phones by performance alone.

Apple has paired that chipset with 12GB of RAM and a dedicated vapor cooling chamber, meaning the iPhone 17 Pro can handle 4K video editing and triple-A games with ease.

One area where we *can* separate the iPhone 17 Pro from the Android crowd is software – for good and bad reasons.

iOS 26 is probably the easiest OS package to master, and even if you don’t like the look of Liquid Glass, it features some genuinely life-improving tools like Call Screening and Adaptive Power Mode.

Apple’s AI features, though, leave a lot to be desired, especially when it comes to things like image editing and voice assistance. At the time of writing, we’re still waiting for Siri 2.0, so if you’re looking for a true AI companion, you’re better off choosing a model from Samsung or Google (we are, however, expecting to hear more about Apple’s future AI plans at WWDC 2026 on June 8).

The iPhone 17 Pro’s cameras, meanwhile, are among the best of any phone we’ve tested. Our favorite of its three lenses is the 4x telephoto, which also offers access to an impressive 8x zoom by way of a sensor crop. At those shorter zoom lengths, the iPhone 17 Pro is ridiculously good, and it’s also among the best phones for portrait photography, high-res video recording, and selfies.

What’s more, the iPhone is the only phone on this list to have a front-facing camera that uses subject tracking to automatically keep you in the frame *and* that lets you switch between portrait and landscape modes. It sounds like a fad, but Apple’s Center Stage camera is the real deal.

There’s also a nice Dual Capture mode on the iPhone 17 Pro, which lets you record from the front and rear cameras at the same time, so this is definitely the best phone for content creators (its ProRes and ProRes RAW support is a boon for videographers, too).

All told, then, this is the most technologically advanced iPhone Apple has ever made, and if you’re already embedded in the Apple ecosystem, it’s the obvious flagship choice.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Of all the phones on my list, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra offers the most unique features, with special tools for photographers, artists — and even those who just like to scroll through TikTok.

Yes, the Ultra uses the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, and yes, it’s got more than all-day battery life, so in terms of performance and endurance, it’s right up there with the best phones around. But where else can you get a built-in stylus for note-taking and precise video editing? Or a Privacy Display that stops prying eyes from viewing content on your screen?

There’s Super Steady Horizontal Lock for stabilizing videos even when you turn the phone a full 360 degrees, and DeX for transforming your mobile interface into a desktop PC.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra offers something special for every type of user, and although Samsung’s OneUI software can be convoluted at times, this is a phone that rewards exploration and those willing to dig through its many customization options.

And, of course, being a flagship Samsung phone, the Ultra’s cameras are some of the best around (which, to be honest, is true of every phone on this list, so apologies in advance for the continued repetition).

The S26 Ultra is as versatile as camera phones get, but it’s especially good at night photography and zoom photography.

The 200MP main camera picks up so much color and detail that pictures are never grainy, even in low light, and you’ve got two telephoto cameras to pick from here, which can’t be said for a lot of phones on this list.

Samsung’s AI features like Audio Eraser and Object Eraser are also industry-leading, so there’s plenty of scope for tidying up your photos and videos once you’ve shot them.

What you don’t get with the Ultra is any form of magnetic charging, but if you’re not easily overwhelmed by having hundreds of settings and features at your disposal, then Samsung’s latest flagship is an absolute beast of a phone.

Google Pixel 10 Pro XL

Of all the phones on this list, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL is the one that will likely get replaced soonest, but there’s still a good few months to go until the Pixel 11 line is unveiled (we’re anticipating an August launch). That means, if you’re into Pixels or you want to try out Google’s hardware for the first time, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is the best option available now.

So, what do you need to know about Pixel phones? First, they run the cleanest version of Android you’ll find on any phone, because, well, Android is owned and developed by Google. There’s no bloatware or unnecessary apps, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL gets the latest and greatest AI features straight from Google’s production line.

With genuinely useful features like Call Screen, Magic Eraser, and Photo Unblur, this feels like a phone that’s at the cutting edge of smartphone software, and its built-in Gemini assistant is leagues ahead of Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s Bixby.

Now, the Pixel 10 Pro XL isn’t the performance powerhouse that both the iPhone 17 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra are, so this isn’t the phone to buy if you’re planning on loads of 4K video editing or super high-end mobile gaming.

Having said that, Google’s Tensor G5 chipset is absolutely powerful enough for most people, and you won’t have any problems streaming, scrolling, and gaming on most titles.

As for cameras, the 10 Pro XL’s lenses are supremely versatile, even when not used in combination with those aforementioned AI editing features. They deliver accurate colors and plenty of detail at every focal range, and you can get some really great zoom shots with the phone’s 48MP telephoto lens at 5x optical zoom.

In other words, the Pixel 10 Pro XL is a clean, easy-to-use Android phone with the best software around, but it’s not a heavy lifter in the same way that other flagships on this list most definitely are.

OnePlus 15

The OnePlus 15 is the jack-of-all-trades pick among the best flagship phones. It’s not full of flashy AI features, and it doesn’t look particularly unique, but this phone delivers in pretty much every other way you could hope for.

Its display, for instance, is as bright and colorful as the rest, but a refresh rate of up to 165Hz makes the OnePlus 15 extra suited to high-end gaming.

Under the hood, the phone’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset can tackle whatever you throw its way, and it’s paired with an almighty 7,300mAh battery, which is the biggest and longest-lasting of any phone we’ve ever tested.

Honestly, this thing lasts for days (and days, and days), with our reviewer managing to eke out almost three days of use from the OnePlus 15 on a single charge. It can also charge at up to 100W (or 80W if you’re in the US), and OnePlus will actually include a charger in the box, which is definitely a luxury these days.

On cameras, the OnePlus 15 gets a trio of 50MP snappers, all of which deliver detailed and well-balanced photos. It’s not quite as impressive a camera phone as some of the other phones on this list, but the OnePlus 15 is particularly good as an action camera for fast-moving subjects.

As for downsides, there are no built-in magnets, and OnePlus’ software isn’t quite as feature-packed as other OS packages. But as an overall offering, the OnePlus 15 is probably the best-value flagship money can buy.

Rumors are also swirling that OnePlus is winding down operations outside of Asia, so this might also be the last OnePlus flagship phone you’ll ever be able to buy.

Oppo Find X9 Ultra

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra isn’t officially available in the US, but if you’re living in Europe, it’s probably the best camera phone on the market.

I won’t spend too much time on the Ultra’s other specs, as it really is a device that’s all about photography, but like the OnePlus 15, it boasts a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a gorgeous 6.8-inch display, and a long-lasting silicon-carbon battery.

On the back, you’ll find four high-res cameras: a 200MP main lens, a 50MP ultra-wide lens, a 200MP 3x telephoto lens, and a second 50MP 10x lens. The last of that quartet is the most exciting, as it’s almost like having a built-in external teleconverter for the Find X9 Ultra, though Oppo does actually sell a 300mm teleconverter lens for the phone, should you want to extend its zoom capabilities even further.

Regardless of which lens you use, you can expect exceptional detail and clarity from the Find X9 Ultra in all lighting conditions

Its default image processing gives you vibrant and contrasty images, but if you want photos that look more like they were shot with a DSLR, you can switch to the phone’s Hasselblad Master mode, which is not something you’ll find elsewhere.

Oppo even throws in a 50MP selfie camera for good measure, so the Find X9 Ultra really is at the top of the pile when it comes to smartphone photography.

Is it heavy? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. But this phone wears its USP on its sleeve, and it’s worth considering if you’re serious about cameras.

Xiaomi 17 Ultra

Like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is another photography-focused smartphone from China. It too is available in Europe, though US buyers aren’t so lucky once again.

The 17 Ultra rivals the Oppo Find X9 Ultra with a 50MP 1-inch main lens, a 50MP ultra-wide lens, and a single 200MP telephoto lens — but don’t be fooled by the Xiaomi phone’s smaller number of cameras compared to its compatriot.

I say that because this phone’s 200MP telephoto lens features a mechanical optical zoom, giving you a continuous optical zoom range of between 3.2x and 4.3x. The 17 Ultra will also maintain optical-quality zoom up to 17.2x, so this really is another champion when it comes to zoom photography.

Xiaomi’s partnership with Leica means colors captured with the 17 Ultra are vivid without looking cartoonish, skin tones are well reproduced, and there’s minimal noise even in low-light scenarios.

The 17 Ultra isn’t quite so adept at video as the iPhone 17 Pro or Oppo Find X9 Ultra, but only when it comes to very specific features like lens switching in 4K and using that mechanical zoom lens for specific frame rates and video codecs.

As for the phone’s non-camera specs, the 17 Ultra sports a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 6.9-inch OLED display, and a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery.

In our testing, we managed to use the phone for two days on a single charge, which is in line with most other models on this list, save for the stupidly long-lasting OnePlus 15.

All told, then, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is another extremely impressive phone for a very specific type of user. But hey, that might be you!

Honor Magic 8 Pro

Lastly, we have the Honor Magic 8 Pro, which rounds out our trio of Chinese phone picks that, unfortunately, aren’t available in the US.

Honor’s latest flagship doesn’t put quite so much emphasis on crazy camera hardware as the Xiaomi or Oppo, and should instead be thought of as a great all-rounder like the OnePlus 15.

There’s the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset for lightning-fast performance, the long-lasting 6,270mAh battery in regions outside of China, and the 6.7-inch OLED display that makes the health of your eyes a priority.

On that last point, the Magic 8 Pro features high-frequency PWM dimming for reduced eye strain, and can intelligently adjust the color temperature of its display according to your local sunrise and sunset times. These features might sound gimmicky, but they make an already good-looking display even more enjoyable to use, and you might feel a bit less guilty about scrolling for hours on the Magic 8 Pro.

The phone is also awash with AI features, though they vary wildly in quality. There’s a dedicated AI Button, but it’s essentially a dupe of Apple’s Camera Control button, and while the AI Photos Agent lets you upscale images and remove reflections with ease, the AI Settings Agent and AI Memories apps are pretty much useless by comparison.

Still, these tools are there to be used, or not used, so you can still enjoy the best bits of the Magic 8 Pro without engaging in its hit-and-miss software.

And a quick word on the phone’s cameras: its three rear lenses deliver plenty of color and detail, particularly in nighttime environments, though Honor is guilty of some rather aggressive AI processing if you zoom in much further than the Magic 8 Pro’s 3.7x optical capabilities.

So the Honor Magic 8 Pro is a strong Android contender that performs well in most areas, though it’s not as specialized as some of the other phones on this list.

And there you have it: my roundup of the best flagship phones you can buy in 2026. Every model has its own strengths and weaknesses, but rest assured that, whichever you choose, you’ll be getting a powerful, long-lasting, and versatile phone for your money.

Which model is your favorite? Let me know via the poll below, or feel free to vote with your keyboard in the comments. Please also tell me which phones you’re most excited to see released in the coming months.

• Smartphone shipments could drop by 13.9% this year
• That would bring them to the lowest levels since 2013
• The fall is largely thanks to rising memory prices

2026 looks set to be a bad year for the smartphone industry, as it’s predicted that shipments will fall 13.9% year-on-year. That would mean 1.08 billion units shipped, which is the lowest annual volume since 2013.

That’s a huge drop and a massive change in direction for the industry, which, prior to 2026, had seen nine consecutive quarters of growth.

This 13.9% drop prediction comes from Counterpoint, which is revising its previous forecast of a 12.4% drop. So, in other words, things are getting even worse than previously predicted.

This downward trend is largely driven by the ongoing memory supply crisis, with AI gobbling up much of the available RAM, leading to steep price rises. As a result, Counterpoint predicts that “the sub-$150 segment faces an effective permanent removal in some markets.”

With cheap phones disappearing, brands that focus on low-end devices and emerging markets will particularly struggle, which is part of why Samsung and Apple are reportedly the “most insulated” brands — that and the fact that they have integrated supply chains.

Smaller drops and even some increases

As a result, iPhone shipments are expected to remain broadly flat this year, according to Counterpoint, and to grow by 5% next year. Samsung, meanwhile, could see a 4% drop this year, which is far less than the industry as a whole.

The only other brand that Counterpoint highlights as being in good shape is Huawei, which actually managed to grow 1% in the first quarter of the year. This was apparently achieved by it keeping its prices static in order to grow its market share.

Conversely, Xiaomi’s shipments dropped more than any of the other top five phone brands in quarter one, with a 19% drop.

The big winner of all this, though, looks to be the refurbished market, which is predicted to grow by 13% this year, as new phones become too expensive for many buyers.

Counterpoint predicts that the market won’t rebound until 2028, but the landscape could be very different by then if some brands fail to weather the storm.

• Our poll found that over half of you aren't interested in the iPhone Ultra
• But 35% said they either would buy it or would consider it
• The results are mixed, but they suggest the iPhone Ultra could be quite popular

The upcoming iPhone Ultra could be a big gamble for Apple — it’s set to be the company’s first foldable phone, which is a type of device that remains niche, despite Samsung’s best efforts.

The form factor won’t appeal to everyone, and the price probably won’t appeal to anyone, so will many people actually buy it? Well, we ran a poll asking exactly that question a few weeks ago, and now the results are in.

In total, there were 1,612 votes across WhatsApp and Kwizly, with 357 people saying they would upgrade to the iPhone Ultra, 1,036 saying they wouldn’t, and 219 being undecided.

Better than it might sound

That might sound like the iPhone Ultra is destined to fail, but with roughly 35% of voters going for either 'yes' or 'maybe', things might not actually be that bleak for Apple’s upcoming phone — especially when you consider that some of the voters will probably be Android users who have no intention of buying any kind of iPhone.

So, while the iPhone Ultra may not be as popular as the iPhone 18 Pro Max, these results suggest there is at least some hope for it, and that it might even do better than devices like the Plus, Air, and mini models Apple has released over the years.

That would be good news not just for Apple but for the wider foldable phone industry, as it could finally push these devices into the mainstream.

Of course, whatever polls say, a lot will ultimately come down to the price and specs, none of which have been revealed just yet. But assuming the iPhone Ultra isn't delayed, we’ll hopefully find that information out in September.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra are the two most obvious choices if you want a no-compromise flagship phone in 2026.

Both are big, powerful, expensive, and built around the same basic promise: you get huge displays, elite cameras, long battery life, high-end performance, and a growing number of AI tools if you're willing to pay the high asking price.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max and Galaxy S26 Ultra are also very different phones. Apple’s flagship is the cleaner, more tightly integrated option, offering iOS and MagSafe. Samsung’s Ultra is the more maximalist device, with the S Pen, a sharper display, a more flexible camera setup, and a software experience packed with Galaxy AI and Google-powered features.

For many people, this choice will come down to ecosystem.

If you already use Apple products like the Apple Watch, MacBook, and iPad, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has an obvious pull. If you prefer Android, multitasking, stylus support, and more control over how your phone works, the Galaxy S26 Ultra makes a very strong case.

But there are still big differences in price, design, display, cameras, performance, software, and battery life between these two phones — so let’s break them down.

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: specs comparison

Before we dig into the details, here’s an overview of both phones’ key specs:

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: price and availability

The iPhone 17 Pro Max went on sale in September 2025, with prices starting at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,149 for the 256GB model. The 17 Pro Max is also available with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB of storage, with the top configuration rising to $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,799.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra arrived later, in March 2026, and starts at $1,299 / £1,249 / AU$2,149, making it slightly more expensive than Apple’s flagship in the US, slightly more affordable in the UK, and level in Australia at launch.

It's worth noting that the Galaxy S26 Ultra's storage runs from 256GB to 1TB; there is no 2TB option, unlike with the iPhone.

Both phones are widely available through their makers, carriers, and major retailers, so this is less about finding stock and more about finding the right deal that suits you.

Winner: Tie — unless you specifically need 2TB of storage, in which case the iPhone 17 Pro Max takes it.

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: design

There is no getting away from the fact that these are both very large phones, but Samsung does more to make its Ultra feel slightly more manageable.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra is slightly taller and wider than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, but it is much thinner at 7.9mm and noticeably lighter at 214g.

The softened corners also help it feel less slab-like than older Ultra models, while the built-in S Pen remains Samsung’s clearest hardware advantage.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the more dramatic redesign versus its predecessor. Apple moved to an aluminum unibody (which facilitates the inclusion of a new vapor cooling chamber), added a full-width camera plateau, and kept both the Action button and Camera Control.

As such, the 17 Pro Max feels like a clearer break from the previous few Pro Max models, and the new thermal design gives the changes a practical purpose beyond looks.

Still, the Galaxy S26 Ultra is the easier phone to live with day-to-day, giving you the same 6.9-inch screen size in a slimmer, lighter body, while also finding room for a stylus.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: display

Both phones give you an almost tablet-sized 6.9-inch OLED display with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, so either one is built for streaming, gaming, editing photos, reading, and general big-screen phone use.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has the brighter panel on paper, with a peak outdoor brightness of 3,000 nits, which gives it an edge if you often use your phone outside.

Samsung fights back with resolution and features. The Galaxy S26 Ultra’s screen is sharper than the iPhone’s display, and its 1-120Hz refresh range gives it the same smooth scrolling and power-saving flexibility you would expect from a top-end flagship.

Samsung's new Privacy Display feature also gives it a practical advantage in public spaces, especially if you often work from cafes or public transport.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: cameras

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has a simpler camera pitch: it's got three 48MP rear cameras, covering main, ultra-wide, and telephoto shots, plus a new 18MP Center Stage front camera.

Apple is offering a more balanced system than previous Pro Max models — especially now the telephoto camera can handle 4x optical zoom and 8x optical-quality shots — and the selfie camera is also a real upgrade; it uses subject tracking to automatically keep you in the frame, and lets you switch between portrait and landscape modes.

Samsung gives you more hardware to play with. The S26 Ultra has a 200MP main camera, 50MP ultra-wide, 10MP 3x telephoto, and 50MP telephoto for longer-range shots, plus a 12MP selfie camera with a wider field of view.

Its camera setup is less of a clean overhaul than Apple’s, but the extra lens and longer zoom range make it more flexible, especially if you often shoot subjects at a distance.

For video, the Galaxy S26 Ultra supports 8K shooting at 30fps, whereas the iPhone is capped at 4K at 120 fps. That said, with its Apple ProRes and ProRes RAW support, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is our favored option for consistent, high-quality video results.

This comparison is a close call because the iPhone 17 Pro Max has the stronger selfie upgrade, a very consistent rear camera setup, and impressive video capabilities. The Galaxy S26 Ultra still has the edge for pure versatility, with more lenses, more zoom reach, and the bigger main sensor.

Winner: Tie

iPhone 17 Pro Max camera samples

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra camera samples

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: performance and software

The iPhone 17 Pro Max runs on Apple’s A19 Pro chip, with improved cooling to help it hold high performance for longer.

The 17 Pro Max feels built for heavy use, from gaming and video editing to AI features, and iOS 26 also benefits from Apple’s usual joined-up approach, with the chip, hardware, software, and wider ecosystem all working together.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra counters with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, plus either 12GB or 16GB of RAM. It is a true ultra-premium Android flagship, with more flexibility for multitasking, split-screen apps, S Pen notes, customisation, and productivity.

Samsung is better for flexibility, stylus support, and Android customisation, but the iPhone’s combination of Apple silicon, iOS, cooling, and ecosystem integration gives it more cohesive performance in our testing.

Winner: iPhone 17 Pro Max

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: battery

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has a 5,088mAh battery, based on reported capacity figures (Apple does not share these details officially), and Apple rates it for up to 37 hours of video playback.

In our day-to-day use, it's comfortably an all-day phone, with enough headroom for heavy camera use, navigation, streaming, and gaming. It also supports fast USB-C charging and 25W MagSafe/Qi2 wireless charging.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a 5,000mAh battery, so there is very little difference between these two devices in terms of raw capacity, and indeed it carried well past 24 hours of operation in our testing.

Samsung has the advantage for wired charging, with 60W speeds that should get you topped up faster than the iPhone. The S26 also supports 25W wireless charging, putting it on par with Apple there, though there's no MagSafe-style wireless charging to speak of.

So, this comparison is close... again. The iPhone has excellent endurance and the convenience of MagSafe, but Samsung’s faster wired charging is more useful when you need a quick refill before heading out.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: verdict

The iPhone 17 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra are — unsurprisingly — close enough that the “best” choice depends less on raw power and more on how you actually use your phone.

Choose the iPhone 17 Pro Max if you want the smoother all-round experience. Its biggest strengths are consistency, ecosystem integration, long-term performance, and a camera system that feels easy to trust. It's also the better fit if you already use Apple's other products.

Choose the Galaxy S26 Ultra if you want the phone that simply does more. The S Pen, sharper display, lighter design, longer camera reach, faster charging, and broader AI toolkit make it the more versatile device, especially for power users.

Overall, the Galaxy S26 Ultra wins more individual categories, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max may still be the better buy for many people. Samsung has the stronger spec-sheet argument; Apple has the more cohesive flagship experience.

Winner: Tie (sorry!)

• Acoustune unveils new ATX001 hi-res Bluetooth dongle
• Plugs into USB-C port to enable aptX Lossless and LDAC wireless connections
• Costs $75 / £57 / AU$107, so it's pretty cheap

Acoustune is a Japanese audio company, best known for its wired and wireless in-ear monitors that look like they'd belong on the set of a Transformers movie (and cost roughly their budget too). But its new device looks a lot more normal — and surprisingly affordable.

The company has unveiled the ATX001, which is a wireless dongle you plug into a USB-C port to add aptX Lossless and LDAC audio streaming to that device. In theory you could any kind of device, but the real benefit would be for the best iPhones, which don't already have the features it enables.

The price of this dongle? It'll cost you $75 / £57 / AU$107, which is a small amount less than we imagined. Its Japanese price when it was announced pointed to it being closer to the triple-figure mark, which would still be affordable for this kind of gear — but this price is a real winner.

Repairing an iPhone flaw

The point of a dongle like the Acoustune ATX001 is to make your iPhone compatible with various Bluetooth codecs, that aren't supported natively by Apple.

The ATX001 facilitates the LDAC codec as well AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD and aptX Lossless — as long as you have a pair of the best headphones or best earbuds that support these, which is a lot of them.

Unlike Androids, iPhones don't support LDAC or the various aptX codecs, so this dongle will make enjoying 'lossless' wireless audio a lot easier. Amongst audiophiles, such dongles are quite popular as a way to improve audio quality.

We found that Sony's 1000X The Collexion had a clear audio difference using these connections over regular Bluetooth, and iPhone owners couldn't enjoy that, just a recent example of why this kind of thing is useful.

The ATX001 works primarily through a smartphone app, but once it's configured on your mobile, you can use the dongle on other devices, and still control it with your phone. Acoustune lists games consoles or PCs as a possible extra use for the fob, with an in-box USB-A adaptor letting you connect it to various other gadgets.

One useful perk is that the ATX001 has pass-through USB-C. This means you can plug something else into the port — a charger, a connection to your Mac, a games controller — and still enjoy your improved Bluetooth audio.

One of the things I often tell people is that with their smartphones, they are now carrying their lives in their pockets. These are semi-precious objects offering access to every aspect of our personal lives and information. Despite this, many people don't treat them that way, and sometimes that cavalier attitude can lead to disaster.

Recently, I came across a disturbing story about a Best Buy employee who, while repairing her iPhone, allegedly accessed the customer's personal photos and then AirDropped a few to his personal phone.

Yes, these were intimate photos, and no, the woman didn't discover the alleged act until after she left the store. When I checked with Best Buy for comment, they sent me this:

"These allegations are deeply disturbing. Nothing is more important to us than the safety and data privacy of our customers. This person is no longer an employee, and we are working with law enforcement as they continue their investigation."

While the case is ongoing, there are many lessons here.

I have no thoughts about the kinds of pictures people take and store on their smartphones, but I have many on the multiple mistakes the woman may have made before this alleged image hijacking.

I'm not blaming her — the guy allegedly stole her personal photos, but my next thought was: "Has she never heard of hidden folders?"

A private space

If there are photos on your phone that, say, you wouldn't want your parents to see, then you can choose to hide them in a hidden folder that will only open with your PIN or biometric security.

On the iPhone, you open the image and select the three-dot menu, then select "Hide". After that, the image will no longer appear in your photo gallery. There will instead be a hidden folder that you can open, for instance, with Face ID.

On, say, a Samsung Galaxy Android Phone, you can send the image to a secure folder that, again, no one can open without access to your password or biometric security.

The rules of the service road

We don't know all the details of this exchange, but it is clear that the customer handed her unlocked iPhone to the Best Buy support agent, who could then apparently peruse virtually anything without some kind of lock or password on it.

I know, you're wondering how anyone can get their phone repaired if they don't unlock it first. Even if it's just troubleshooting some iOS-level complication, access to the phone's apps and data is essentially necessary.

But access to your private data is not.

When I've visited an Apple Store's Genius bar, I've noticed how often much of the work on a faulty iPhone is, where possible, done right in front of the customer. There are situations where it goes behind the scenes, to a place the customer can't see, but they're relatively rare.

Best Buy is an authorized Apple repair center; most of their on-site documentation seems to support the idea of care for your property and data. From Best Buy's Privacy Policy page:

"...our Geek Squad Agents are trained to never access data on a customer’s device provided to Geek Squad for service except in limited circumstances, and only to the extent necessary to perform the service, such when you ask us to recover your data."

This situation sounds different. Clearly, the phone left the customer's sight. What if, though, she had taken another step in protecting her personal data?

The nuclear option

If you're not already backing up your smartphone to the cloud, you should start now. Apple's iCloud lets you keep basically a carbon copy of your phone's data in its cloud (Samsung Cloud offers a similar service for its Galaxy phones), which you can then use to, say, upgrade to a new iPhone that will quickly feel as familiar as your old phone.

Most people only erase their phones when they plan to sell or trade them in, but if you plan on getting any repairs done, the first thing you should do is erase your device.

First, a full erase and restore might fix your problems (assuming they're not hardware-based). Second, a clean phone will let the technician focus solely on the platform and hardware and have nothing else to look at or stumble upon.

You cna also do this in a more limited way, say, byt signing out of apps, removing ID and credit cards.

Don't take a pass on this

I get it, for some, this might be too much. In that case, see the hidden folders approach above, but also take another step: Fix your passwords.

Far too many people are still using terrible, easy-to-guess passwords or, worse, using one password for all their apps, even their banking apps.

Do this before seeking repair:

• Add a password manager
• Create a hard to crack Master password (but one you can easily remember)
• Go through all your apps and service passwords and update them while allowing the password manager to create the passwords and store them
• Be sure to remove any privacy/security information from Notes, a place I know many of you store your passwords

If you do some, any, or all of these things, you can avoid the wrong people seeing the wrong information on the device that contains almost every detail of your life.

• Apple’s Crash Detection feature saved a driver’s life in Wales
• The woman plunged 330ft off a cliff while driving late at night
• Crash Detection automatically calls first responders if you can’t do it

These days, Apple’s best iPhones don’t just enable you to make phone calls and send texts — they could save your life, too. That’s exactly what happened when a woman plunged 330ft off the side of a mountain in her car, but thankfully her iPhone came to the rescue.

As detailed by the BBC, Natalia Sidorska was driving along a mountainside road in Denbighshire, Wales, late one evening to clear her mind. After taking a corner too quickly, she lost control of her vehicle, went off the road, and plummeted 330ft to the ground.

Her car rolled down the mountainside and came to a crashing halt. After opening her eyes, Sidorska realized the vehicle was on fire. After managing to escape and crawl away, she looked around to see her car explode just seconds later.

Unbeknownst to Sidorska, her iPhone had notified first responders and her emergency contacts using its Crash Detection feature, which is automatically activated as soon as it senses a hard impact. Luckily for Sidorska, emergency services arrived 20 minutes later. “I’m grateful to Apple for what the iPhone did,” she stated. “I don’t think that I would have been able to get help that quickly.”

A lifesaving feature

Apple introduced its Crash Detection feature in 2022, and the company has highlighted the many times it has saved people’s lives since then. One of its key strengths is its ability to work automatically. When it detects a crash, it starts a 10-second countdown. If the timer is not dismissed within that timeframe, your iPhone calls emergency services for you, meaning first responders can often be alerted long before you’d be able to do it yourself.

As well as that, Crash Detection can send your exact location to rescuers, helping them quickly find you and offer assistance. It also includes any important medical information contained within your iPhone’s Medical ID (if it’s been set up), which contains data on your allergies, special requirements, and other info that could prove to be vital in an emergency.

Crash Detection is enabled by default on the iPhone 14 onwards, the Apple Watch Series 8 and later, the second-generation Apple Watch SE onwards, and the original Apple Watch Ultra and later. To check it’s switched on for you, open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Emergency SOS, then make sure the toggle next to Call After Serious Crash is turned on.

You’ll also want to make sure iOS’s Emergency SOS feature can see your location and pass it on to first responders. To do so, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services, then switch on Emergency Calls & SOS.

Finally, it’s a good idea to fill out your Medical ID, which contains important medical information and a list of your emergency contacts. Open the Health app on your iPhone and head to the Summary tab, then tap your avatar. Tap Medical ID and fill out all the relevant fields. Also ensure you enable both Show When Locked and Share During Emergency Call to give this medical information to first responders if required.

With that, your iPhone will be ready to step in if you’re involved in a crash. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but once it’s set up properly, Crash Detection could be there to save your life, just like it did for Natalia Sidorska and countless others.

• More iOS 27 upgrades have been rumored
• AI images and AirPod settings could be refreshed
• There may also be streaming protocol changes

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is happening on Monday, June 8, and ahead of all the official software reveals that we're expecting, a reliable Apple tipster has leaked three major upgrades that are supposedly coming with iOS 27.

These come from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who has a good record when it comes to Apple predictions. The first upgrade is related to AI, and Gurman says the image generating capabilities of Apple Intelligence are "getting a big boost this year".

Right now, you're somewhat limited in terms of what you can make with AI inside Image Playground on the iPhone: the styles and editing options lag behind what's possible with the likes of Gemini and ChatGPT. With iOS 27, Apple plans to catch up.

Then there are new features relating to AirPods. Gurman says that Apple will "revamp" the controls and settings pages for its wireless earbuds, though Apple is stopping short of giving AirPods their own app (like the Apple Watch has).

We don't get too much detail about what this revamp might involve, but apparently the settings menus will be "more functional, better organized and more streamlined" — so it sounds like a better AirPods experience all round.

Casting protocols

The third upgrade we've got here relates to the EU. Apple has long been battling regulators in Europe, who want to see iOS made more open and accessible to third parties — which is why we now have alternative app stores for the iPhone in the EU.

With iOS 27, Gurman reports that Apple will allow other streaming protocols besides AirPlay to be set as the default. That means you might be able to set Google Cast as the default, native option for beaming audio and video to other devices, for example.

There have been several previous leaks around iOS 27 as well, and it very much seems as though AI will be the main focus (surprise surprise). For instance, we've heard that natural language prompts might be coming to the Shortcuts app.

It's also been rumored that the big Siri 2.0 upgrade is coming with iOS 27: it will finally have an interface and capabilities that put it on a par with AIs from Google, Claude, and OpenAI, we've heard (though with some help from Google with the AI models).

We will be covering all the build-up and reaction to WWDC 2026 here on TechRadar, as well as the event itself, so stay tuned. It will be the last event like this presided over by Apple CEO Tim Cook, before John Ternus takes over in September.

• A leaker claims the iPhone 19 Pro might have a quad-curved screen
• This is a feature a few Android phones have had previously, and we could see it return to popularity if the iPhone gets it
• A quad-curved screen can make bezels appear smaller

Apple isn’t one to dramatically change the design of its phones often, but next year — to mark the iPhone's 20th anniversary — we could see the company embrace a design feature that some Android phones used to have.

Specifically, the iPhone 19 Pro and iPhone 19 Pro Max might have quad-curved screens, according to leaker Digital Chat Station on Weibo (via GSMArena). That would mean all four edges of the screen would be curved, though we’d suspect it might only be a slight curve, especially on the top and bottom edges.

We’ve seen this idea before on phones like the Honor Magic 6 Pro and the Motorola Edge 60, so it's not a new concept, and dual-curved screens used to be very popular among Android phone makers (even if, these days, most Android devices have flat screens).

Follow the leader

However, if Apple really does launch a quad-curved iPhone, then it’s very likely that we’ll see a lot of Android devices following suit.

Quad-curved screens look striking and can reduce the visible display bezels, so they certainly have upsides. And it makes sense that Apple would want to turn heads with the iPhone 19 Pro line, since these phones will be the 20th-generation iPhone models (hello, iPhone XX?).

We’ve also previously heard that the iPhone 19 Pro could have an under-display Face ID component, meaning it'd either have just a small punch-hole camera or no cut-out in the screen at all. So, you might want to skip the iPhone 18 line and hold out for September 2027, when the iPhone 19 Pro series is expected to land.

• Google demonstrated Gemini Spark on an iPhone 17 Pro during Google I/O 2026
• Macs were also used during the keynote
• This probably wasn't an accident though, as Apple users make up a high percentage of potential customers for Google

If you tuned in to the Google I/O keynote yesterday, you might have noticed that, during a demo of Gemini Spark, an iPhone 17 Pro was used rather than a Google Pixel or any other Android phone. That might seem odd, but this almost certainly wasn’t an accident or an oversight.

After all, Gemini Spark and other Google software is available on iPhones — and Macs, which were also spotted during the presentation — and iPhone users make up a huge number of potential customers for Google.

According to DemandSage, there are around 1.56 billion iPhone users in the world, and in Google's home market of the US, the iPhone has a 57.24% market share. So iPhone users are a much bigger potential customer base than Google Pixel users, and if Google is primarily focused on the US, then they become its biggest potential customer base.

An easier sell

So, demonstrating that tools like Gemini Spark function well on iPhones makes sense, since getting iPhone buyers to use Google’s software is probably easier than convincing them to switch to Pixel.

Also, anyone who’s already using a Pixel phone or an Android phone in general is a Google customer already, and probably needs less convincing to use the company’s services. They’ll also probably assume Gemini Spark works on their devices, whereas there would be less certainty of that in Apple’s ecosystem.

So, while it might look odd seeing Apple devices being used during a Google presentation, this was almost certainly discussed and decided on in advance.

Might it also have been a subtle nod to Google's AI partnership with Apple? Quite possibly. In any case, we'll find out more about that relationship at WWDC 2026, which is confirmed to take place on June 8.

• Apple Sports is launching in 90 new markets ahead of FIFA World Cup 26
• A new visual tournament hub adds live formations, lineups, and team tracking
• As with other sports, we're expecting it to update in real-time for these games

While it’s not quite a hattrick, Apple is pulling a one-two punch of announcements for the Apple Sports app ahead of one of the biggest global sporting events of the year, kicking off next month: the FIFA World Cup 26.

For those who haven’t used it, the Apple Sports app is designed to be a one-stop shop for sports scores and live updates for most major games across categories. Be it baseball, soccer, football, tennis, basketball, or Formula 1, the app also supports larger tournaments.

Apple Sports is free and available to download in over 170 countries and regions, after the Cupertino-based technology giant added 90 new markets today. So if it wasn’t available in your home country yet, Apple might have added it to the list.

Fans of FIFA, though, will be pleased to know that you can get ready to track the tournament as a whole and your favorite teams ahead of the first match kicking off in June. The team working on Apple Sports is ushering in a new tournament view that will let you track any team from the early group stages through to the finals.

It’s a very clean visual look that presents a decent bit of information in an easy, glanceable fashion — of course, you’ll be able to click or tap to dive in deeper. Maybe even more interesting, though, are the visual formations that let you get a sense of the team structure and player positioning via photos spread across the pitch. It’s an easy way to view the starting lineup, see who’s on the bench, and follow how the competition is shaping up.

As players are subbed in and out, Apple Sports will update this view as well as the other stats. One of the more impressive parts of the Apple Sports app since launch is the speed at which it pulls in real-time data and presents it, often beating a TV or radio broadcast since there’s no delay.

It’ll be one to watch for the FIFA World Cup 26, but chances are Apple won’t let performance slip for such an important series of matches on a true world stage. In a shared quote alongside this expansion of the app, Oliver Schusser, Apple’s SVP of Music, Sports, Apple TV, and Beats, emphasized the importance of the data, saying:

“The World Cup unites fans across the globe, making it the ideal moment to bring Apple Sports to even more users. Apple Sports was designed to be fast and simple, giving fans an easy way to stay on top of scores, stats, and the action that matters most in real time.”

Much like we’ve seen with Apple Sports supporting Formula 1 and linking the experience to other parts of Apple’s ecosystem, you’ll be able to jump into Apple News if you’re in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia to see content about the World Cup. Unlike with MLS, Friday Night Baseball, or Formula 1, though, Apple TV itself isn’t broadcasting the games.

Even so, with a range of sports apps on the market — many of which cost money — Apple Sports is clearly trying to beef up its interface for the FIFA World Cup, and I’m keen to see how these features work in practice and the speed at which they update.

Let me know what you think about the updates in the comments down below. And yes, the Apple Sports app is still free and exclusive to the iPhone.

• Apple has sent out invites for WWDC, kicking off on June 8 with a keynote
• ‘Coming Bright Up’ tagline strongly hints at major Siri AI upgrades
• Expect the AI-powered Siri and Apple Intelligence to headline the event

While we’ve known Apple’s WWDC 2026 was set for the second week of June, we’ve been waiting for the Cupertino-based tech giant to formally announce its opening keynote, among other events, and give us our first tease at what’s coming in the form of an invite.

Most importantly, Apple has confirmed that its WWDC 2026 keynote will kick off at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 6 pm BST on June 8, 2026 (3 am AEST, June 9, 2026). This will likely be a pre-recorded special event, like we’ve seen from Apple in the past, but media, creators, developers, and other guests will watch it on a big outdoor screen at Apple Park.

It’s also expected to be Tim Cook’s last event as Apple CEO, with John Ternus taking over on September 1, 2026. In classic Apple fashion, the event will be livestreamed, and TechRadar will, of course, be live-blogging it.

And from the invite itself, I think it’s fair to say that Apple thinks WWDC will be pretty bright this year. Unlike past Apple events, there’s no tagline on the invite itself, but on the developer webpage, it reads “Coming Bright Up.” The invite itself features “WWDC 26” in a silver font with some shading, wrapped in a brightly glowing circle.

That circle could hint at a few things — Apple might have decked out its circular campus with glowing, bright LEDs, and the Special Event is taking place at Apple Park for guests, but it’s more likely hinting at features. It’s essentially two glowing circles — one exterior and one interior — and I’d bet it’s a tease for Apple Intelligence and potentially a glow around Siri, maybe even a new design.

I asked TechRadar’s Editor-at-Large, Lance Ulanoff, and he hinted it might be Siri within the Dynamic Island — and while we won’t know until Apple makes it official, it’s no coincidence that both of our minds went to Siri and how it might be integrated across the next generation of all of Apple’s platforms.

Apple has made it no secret that WWDC 26 will likely be the kickoff and formal update around Apple Intelligence and the more personal, AI-powered Siri, which has been delayed for many months. It was first teased and announced at WWDC 2024, and since then, it has never shipped, was rumored to be delayed, and then was formally pushed back by Apple.

Since then, CEO Tim Cook and other executives, including incoming CEO John Ternus, currently SVP of Hardware, and Greg Joswiak, SVP of Marketing, have all hinted that work is going well. Apple has also partnered with Google to use Gemini’s foundational models to help power its next-gen Apple Intelligence, and likely the new Siri.

Rumors have also heated up, teasing how the new Siri will work, how it will impact a range of applications, and how it represents the next leap for Apple Intelligence.

Either way, it’s highly expected that WWDC 2026 will be the launch point for Apple’s next-generation Siri, which will hopefully deliver on some of the original promises from 2024 and level them up to catch up with the likes of Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT. Privacy and Apple’s Private Cloud Compute will likely remain a key focus, and we’ll see how it's integrated with other updates.

Beyond Siri, you can expect the next generation of all of Apple’s platforms, including iOS, watchOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, homeOS, and visionOS, which should all jump from 26 to 27 as Apple continues with its new naming convention.

We’ll have lots more to unpack in the next few weeks before the event, and then on June 8 at 10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 6 pm BST (3 am AEST, June 9), TechRadar will be the place to be for our live coverage of Apple’s Special Event and our analysis in the hours, days, and weeks afterward.

In the meantime, vote in our poll below to let us know what you’re most excited for at WWDC 2026, and feel free to comment below with what you’re hoping to see.

• A leaker claims that Apple is having issues with the long-term durability of the iPhone Ultra's hinge
• As a result, the phone could be delayed
• However, the company has apparently completely solved the issue of a visible crease

Apple’s long-awaited foldable iPhone (which could be called the iPhone Ultra) has been widely tipped to finally launch this year, but now that’s not looking so certain after all, as a leaker claims the company has run into issues.

According to Momentary Digital posting on Weibo (via NotebookCheck), the iPhone Ultra could be “indefinitely delayed” due to hinge reliability issues, with it apparently failing to meet Apple’s quality control standards.

Specifically, it sounds like the phone doesn’t hold up to long-term use, with its hinge experiencing too much wear after being opened and closed a lot. It’s not clear whether Apple is struggling with this particular component more than other foldable phone brands, or whether its standards are just higher, but either way, if Apple can’t solve the problem, then the iPhone Ultra will apparently be delayed.

We think it’s unlikely that Apple would ditch the iPhone Ultra project entirely, though, especially this close to the finish line, so while Momentary Digital claims the delay could be indefinite, we reckon there’s still a good chance it could land in 2027 — giving Apple an extra year to find a solution.

Of course, there's also a chance that Apple could solve this issue in time for its annual September showcase. Or perhaps Apple will still debut the phone in September, but hold its release until 2027 — there are a few possibilities here.

One problem solved

We certainly hope the iPhone Ultra will still launch this year, though, especially as the same leaker also claims that Apple has largely solved the issue of a visible crease in the phone's screen, saying that it’s “visually creaseless” even after long-term use.

Other foldable phones do tend to have visible screen creases, although they’ve gotten smaller in recent years, and this was long believed to be unacceptable to Apple, which is perhaps why a foldable iPhone has taken so long. So, at least one problem might have been solved.

If the iPhone Ultra does still land this year, it will most likely do so in September, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.

News flash: there probably won’t be an iPhone 18 this year. Well, sort of.

If the latest rumors are true, Apple will release new iPhones in September, as it does every year. But for the first time since 2016 — when the original iPhone SE and iPhone 7 debuted at separate in-person events — it looks like the tech giant will be hosting two distinct launch events for its next smartphone lineup.

The first, in September, will likely be focused on the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and foldable iPhone Ultra, while the second could take place sometime in spring 2027 — or between March and April, for our Australian readers — and looks set to focus on the regular iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e.

From now on, then, Apple could essentially be splitting its iPhone launches into premium and affordable categories, with the pricier Pro and Ultra models arriving six months before the cheaper base and e models in any given year.

That strategy does get a bit muddled by the potential addition of the iPhone Air 2, which, if it does ever get released, is rumored to drop alongside the iPhone 18 and 18e at next year's spring event. I personally hope the iPhone Air 2 does see the light of day, though the rumors surrounding its existence aren’t conclusive — and if indeed it is in Apple’s plans, I think it makes more sense to have it launch in September, not spring.

But regardless of what happens with the iPhone Air 2, the fact remains that we’re likely to see September reserved for Apple’s Pro and foldable models moving forward, with everything else coming the following year.

So, yeah — big changes are a-comin’.

What happened to 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'?

As for why Apple could be about to rip up its tried-and-tested release playbook — which, it's worth noting, has yielded market-leading phone sales for the best part of a decade — we don’t have any official answers. But we can, of course, speculate as to the reasons for the change.

Firstly, almost every other smartphone manufacturer already staggers its smartphone launches. Samsung, for instance, has long hosted separate launch events for its Galaxy S and Z series phones, just as Google regularly launches its A-series Pixel phones around six months after its mainline models.

Having two separate iPhone launch events means Apple can keep momentum for its iPhones going throughout the year, rather than enjoying one big splash of publicity every September. It can also more effectively steal attention away from Android-focused events like MWC in March and those annual releases from Samsung and Xiaomi, which typically happen in the same spring period (I single out those two brands because they're Apple's two biggest competitors).

What's more, a biannual iPhone launch strategy means Apple can target two different types of consumers more effectively, which it clearly hopes to do if it plans to bundle its premium models into one event, and its more affordable models into another.

Secondly, the base iPhone 17 is selling very, very well. According to Counterpoint, Apple’s latest base model is the best-selling phone of 2026 so far, and with rumors swirling that Apple could downgrade the iPhone 18 to cut costs, it makes sense to extend the shelf life of the iPhone 17 as much as possible.

That cost-cutting strategy is also key to understanding why Apple could be about to mix up its release schedule.

Prolific iPhone leaker Fixed Focus Digital suggests Apple will bring "certain manufacturing downgrades" to the iPhone 18 to better align it with the iPhone 18e from a supply chain level. In other words, the iPhone 18 could be a worse phone than the iPhone 17 — or at least a largely similar one, which isn't something you'd expect from a successor — but only because Apple might deliberately reposition its base model as a stablemate of the e line rather than the Pro line.

Why? Because the iPhone 17's $799 / £799 / AU$1,399 price is clearly the sweet spot for consumers. If manufacturing costs are going up, it tracks that the iPhone 18 could cost more if Apple decides to make a phone that's objectively better than the iPhone 17. But if the iPhone 18's price tag creeps up, Apple risks alienating its mid-range customers and encroaching on the premium appeal of its Pro line. Differentiation is key, and hosting two separate iPhone launch events would help Apple maintain that.

It's Ternus time

It also makes sense that all of this could kick off under the tenure of new CEO John Ternus, who will succeed Tim Cook as the head of Apple from September.

Apple has, in all likelihood, been planning an iPhone strategy shake-up for some time now, but it's fitting that Ternus should be the one to introduce both a new iPhone category in the foldable iPhone Ultra and a new type of base model in the iPhone 18.

Will this new strategy pay off? It's true that, in being the world's biggest smartphone manufacturer, Apple has a lot to lose by messing with its golden goose product. But the MacBook Neo showed that Ternus and co. value budget-focused buyers as much as Apple's traditional target market, so to me, it makes sense that the iPhone should receive the same segmented treatment.