According to Mark Gurman BloombergApple has big plans for iOS 18. In the subscriber-only Q&A section of the Today newsletter Open Gurman said iOS 18 could be the “biggest” software update in iPhone history.

“I’m told the new operating system is considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, iOS updates in the company’s history,” he wrote.

Gurman said he plans to share more details about specific iOS 18 features and changes planned in the future, but we already know about two new features that are likely to be included in the update, as noted below. iOS 18 will be released in September, and the first developer beta will be released during Apple’s annual WWDC developer conference in June.

RCS support

In November 2023, Apple announced that it would support the RCS cross-platform messaging standard in the Messages app on iPhone “later” in 2024, so based on that time period, it’s likely to be an iOS 18 feature.

RCS support will lead to the following improvements to standard messaging between iPhone and Android devices:

• Higher resolution photos and videos
• voicemail
• Typesetting indicators
• Read receipts
• Exchange messages between iPhone and Android devices over Wi-Fi
• Improved group chats, including the ability for iPhone users to leave a conversation that includes Android users
• Improved encryption compared to SMS

These advanced features are already available for iPhone-to-iPhone calls with blue bubbles via iMessage, and most of the features are also available in third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. RCS support on iPhone will extend the functionality to green bubbles in the Messages app.

Smarter Siri

Gurman expects iOS 18 to feature generative AI technology that will “improve the way Siri and the Messages app ask questions and autocomplete sentences.” He said Apple is also exploring generative AI features for other apps on its platforms, including Apple Music, Pages, Keynote and Xcode.

Information Apple reportedly plans to add comprehensive speech patterns to Siri to allow users to automate complex tasks; this is a feature that will include deeper integration with the Shortcuts app. The report states that the feature is expected to be released in an iPhone software update coming in 2024 (which will likely be iOS 18).

Generative AI gained popularity in 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that can answer questions and other prompts. Google and Microsoft launched similar chatbots last year as more companies entered the market. Chatbots are trained on broad language models that allow them to respond like humans.