iOS 18: Release date, AI, supported iPhones, and everything we know

iOS 18 is Apple‘s upcoming operating system for its iPhone models. Expected to be announced during the WWDC 2024 keynote, it’s heavily expected that Apple will feature on AI applications, as it needs to catch up with Google, OpenAI, and other players. Here’s everything you need to know about this upcoming operating system.

When will Apple announce iOS 18?

Apple CEO Tim Cook before WWDC 2023 keynote kicked off

If Apple follows the trend, Apple should announce iOS 18 during the WWDC 2024 keynote. The Worldwide Developers Conference usually takes place in the first week of June. While it was previously held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, ever since the pandemic started, Apple started pre-recording the WWDC keynote and then making a hybrid approach by inviting developers and media personalities to watch the presentation from the Apple Park, in Cupertino.

The company is likely to announce the WWDC 2024 dates in April.

Here’s everything Apple announced during the WWDC 2023 keynote

Rumored iOS 18 features

While we still have a long time before the WWDC 2024 keynote, and it’s harder to predict software changes as Apple has more control over this information, we still don’t know much about iOS 18 top features. So far, here’s what we heard.

Generative AI could be a key part of the iOS 18 foundation

Siri on the Vision Pro headset. Apple GPT — Siri on the Vision Pro headset. Image source: Apple Inc.

According to Haitong International Securities analyst Jeff Pu, iOS 18 could finally add generative AI features for the iPhone in late 2024. He suggested Apple is building a few hundred AI servers in 2023 and even more in 2024.

By combining cloud-based AI and on-device data processing, Apple would finally roll out its generative AI to iPhone and iPad users by late 2024, which means this would be part of the iOS 18 cycle.

This note comes after a few other reports about Apple’s future GPT. The Information shared that Cupertino is spending millions of dollars daily to train its large-language models – LLM for short.

While the publication said most of this investment would focus on AppleCare customers, the Siri team plans to incorporate these language models to make complex shortcut integrations much more accessible.

What’s interesting about this story is that people on the Apple team believe its most advanced language model, Ajax GPT, which Bloomberg already reported, might be better than OpenAI’s GPT. 3.5. Even though the other company is already working on better solutions, it’s good to know that Apple has dramatically improved in the conversational AI field.

New emojis

During every iOS cycle, Apple always adds new emojis. Even though they don’t come with the first major update, the company unveils them during the life cycle of the newest operating system.

Official iOS 18 download

iOS 18 hasn’t been officially announced. Therefore, neither can you test it or download its official version.

Supported devices

iPhone 15 Pro Max cameras — iPhone 15 Pro Max camera system. Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

With iOS 17, Apple ditched the iPhone 8 and iPhone X models from its lineup. The company will likely remove even more iPhones when iOS 18 is available, especially if the company focuses on AI applications.

While we still don’t know which models could be ditched with this next operating system update, here are all the iPhones that currently run iOS 17: