iOS 27, Siri becomes smarter but not in Europe

Siri’s revamp is at the heart of this transition. Apple’s voice assistant receives a substantial structural update thanks to the integration of Google’s Gemini models, which operate under the hood to ensure more fluid conversation capabilities and better understanding of the visual context. In addition to operating within individual applications, Siri will now be accessible via a dedicated standalone application. In terms of security, company top management reiterated the centrality of privacy, specifying that the data will be used exclusively for the execution of requests and that the processes will remain verifiable by external experts. The bad news is that Siri AI, the name of the new version of the assistant, will not be available in Europe, at least initially, due to issues related to European legislation.

The suite of features linked to Apple Intelligence extends across the entire operating system, introducing advanced panel management in Safari, automatic password updating and greater interaction between apps. The Messages app will benefit from AI-suggested replies, while the Phone app will be able to retrieve information from Mail and Messages during calls. The collaboration with Google has also guided the development of the new generation of Apple Foundation Models, the calculation engines that drive the entire smart infrastructure of the device.

Among the aesthetic and functional innovations of iOS 27, the possibility to customize the Liquid Glass interface stands out, introduced last year and subject to conflicting opinions from users; iPhone owners will now be able to reduce their visual impact or take advantage of a new layered approach for icons. There is also news for Image Playground, the image generation application that is re-proposed with strong system integration and the promise that no user-generated content will be used for model training.

Device fragmentation receives a decisive response: iOS 27 will guarantee backward compatibility up to the models in the iPhone 11 range, promising an increase in performance that translates into 70% faster opening of photos and 80% faster AirDrop transfers. Substantial innovations also affect the Spotlight search system, entirely rebuilt to improve file availability, and the Photos application, which gains generative photo editing tools such as “Reframe” to change the perspective of the shot and “Extend” to expand the edges of the images.

Finally, attention to the user experience is reflected in the parental control tools, which provide automatic restrictions for children under 13 on downloads and browsing, and in the updating of the Health app. The latter introduces the monitoring of symptoms related to perimenopause and menopause, entering a rapidly expanding segment of digital health. The picture is completed by improvements to the system’s voice dictation, now capable of eliminating interludes and correcting punctuation independently, and the Quick Commands application, which will allow the creation of complex automations starting from simple textual instructions in natural language.