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I’ve recently switched, lock stock and two smoking barrels, to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
I was an iPhone user for about a decade.
People don’t believe me. I keep receiving comments each day from naysayers who expect my return to the iPhone to be imminent.
You’ll be back, they keep saying.
Just wait until the next video, they say.
Much of this is because of the rod us YouTubers have created for our own backs in the form of our incessant “I’m switching” videos, where we don’t actually switch from the iPhone to the device we’re reviewing.
All I can say is that I have genuinely switched this time. My main SIM card (or eSIM, to be more specific) is now sitting inside the S24 Ultra, and I haven’t turned my iPhone on for a couple of weeks. I don’t want to, either!
I do, however, understand why people are questioning when I’ll return to Apple.
Could iOS 18 be the kicker?
WWDC is on the horizon
As the mercury rises (admittedly, very slowly in the UK) and June begins to swing into sight, all eyes are gradually turning towards this year’s WWDC.
It’s going to be a big one, isn’t it? Although, don’t we always say that?
However, there’s good reason to in 2024. Apple is, as always, seemingly sitting very tight on something until it’s ready to barge in with its own solution. This year, it’s AI – a now ubiquitous term that all of Apple’s competitors have adopted, big time.
Apple has started attaching “AI” to its products already. The M3 MacBook Air is, in their words, “the world’s best consumer laptop for AI”. That’s just a sniff of what’s to come at WWDC this year; I’d expect those two letters to be cast throughout the entire presentation.
Today, though, I want to focus on one specific element of WWDC which is likely to grab much of the spotlight come June’s big event: iOS 18. Will the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system offer enough temptation for me to head back into iPhone land?
Expected iOS 18 features that interest me
There’s no getting around the fact that AI is going to play a central role in the iOS 18 feature list. Reports vary, but some have suggested that Apple is spending as much as $5 billion every year on AI research.
Talks have also apparently been held between Apple and Google, with the former allegedly keen on harnessing the power of Gemini, Google’s hugely capable AI model.
Why build your own, eh?
Apple hasn’t stopped there, if you believe the reports. They’ve apparently also spoken to OpenAI about a partnership, which indicates that Apple is far more interested in ploughing its own development time into customer-facing AI features.
When it comes to the iOS 18 update, there’s no concrete evidence of what those features might be. Apple is expected to integrate AI into a number of its built-in apps, from Apple Music to Messages, but the way in which they’ll use it isn’t clear. This doesn’t bother me – in fact, it excites me; it’s refreshing to head into an event like WWDC knowing practically nothing.
Siri is an obvious candidate for a dose of AI. Apple’s assistant continues to lag behind the competition and has proven so frustrating to use for yours truly that I abandoned it long before I abandoned the iPhone. Once again, it’s over to Apple for the full reveal – no one seems to know what the next version of Siri will be like.
It’s likely that some AI features in iOS 18 will be limited to the iPhone 16 and its more capable neural engine, but one big question remains: will Apple go all-in with on-device capabilities, or mix in the cloud, too? The latter is going to take some explaining, isn’t it? Again, that excites me.
Some design changes are also apparently heading the way of iOS 18. Although it probably won’t look much different, Apple is at least reportedly finally giving users the option to rearrange their apps in any way they choose. You know – by creating blank spaces between apps and not being forever bound by the ludicrously frustrating Jiggle Mode.
I can’t get too excited about that particular design change (it’s long overdue) but suggestions that there might be some mild design cues taken from visionOS is rather interesting. I’m not sure what they’ll be (and, yes, I’m a Vision Pro user) but I’m intrigued to see what Apple might do as part of its desire to send us all towards a future of spatial computing. Will visionOS become the platform to which all other Apple operating systems must conform?
Other updates I’m less interested in
I’ve trawled through the rumour sites, and I’m afraid I’m struggling to find much more about iOS 18 that gets me excited.
There might be an Apple Maps update (you know, the bit when we all head to the kitchen to grab a hot beverage) in the form of the ability to create custom routes rather than choosing from those that the app suggests. Right… ok.
Then, there’s RCS, which is a cross-platform messaging standard Apple has promised it will integrate into the iPhone. Although it probably won’t be an iOS 18 specific feature, it is likely to arrive later this year. Regardless, I’m a WhatsApp user, so this is largely irrelevant for my use case.
Freeform is also apparently receiving a few new features (I’ve opened that app twice, and on both occasions had no idea what to do next). Oh, and AirPods Pro 2 might get a hearing aid mode, although Apple can’t market it as an actual hearing aid for the hearing impaired, so I’m not sure where they’ll go with that.
Will any of that send me back to the iPhone? Nope. Sorry.
Final thought (for now)
I’m looking forward to WWDC this year, mainly because I can’t wait to see what Apple does with AI and how they market it.
As for iOS 18, it needs to push really hard to tempt me away from the S24 Ultra for the rest of the year. It has the potential to do so, but, having written this blog post and ruminated on its contents, I’m not convinced the rumoured features are going to be enough.
Who knows – maybe there’ll be a One More Thing that swings it.
