iOS 18: The Latest Free Upgrade for iPhone Users

Apple has just unveiled a swathe of new features coming to iPhones as part of the next free iOS software update, but many models of the popular smartphone are set to miss out. That’s because a lot of the new features are based on artificial intelligence (AI), and Apple claims most of these goodies can only run on the newest iPhone hardware.

Image: Apple/Getty

The tech giant announced several new features for the brand new iPhone software, iOS 18, at the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) at Apple’s California HQ on Monday. The event is held every year to tease what’s coming to the iPhone in a few months’ time, allowing developers to get to grips with the new tech and work it into their apps.

iOS 18 is due to come as a free software update later this autumn, but many new features - dubbed by Apple as ‘Apple Intelligence’ - will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, the two most expensive iPhone models. It looks like many of the AI smarts won’t even work on the iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Plus, phones that are barely nine months old.

“iOS 18 also introduces Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that combines the power of generative models with personal context to deliver intelligence that’s incredibly useful and relevant,” Apple said in a press release.

Some of these Apple Intelligence features include using AI to help you rewrite text, create images from prompts, and a vastly cleverer Siri.

Image: Apple Vision Pro

But if you have an older iPhone than the very latest top-of-the-line model, it looks like these features won’t be available to you.

One piece of good news is Apple is promising to bring iOS 18 to iPhone XS and later - that’s a phone that came out way back in 2017, seven years ago. Aside from the AI features, Apple showed off how iOS 18 brings a big visual overhaul to iPhones, letting users finally - just like Android has always been able to do - put app icons anywhere on the home screen, and even change the colours of app icons to your liking.

There are also big visual changes to apps such as Photos and even a whole new Passwords app that all iOS 18 compatible phones are sure to benefit from. You’ll be able to change the two shortcut icons on the lock screen for the first time to something other than the torch or the camera, plus new emoji reactions and text effects in the Messages app look like they’ll bring it closer in line with what you can do in more visually advanced chat apps such as Telegram.