Apple is still very much behind the curve when it comes to delivering fully formed AI tools à la Google’s Magic Eraser and Samsung’s Live Translate, but the iPhone is not totally bereft of machine learning (ML) magic.
The best AI features are the invisible time-savers; tools that work in the background to help us use our smartphones less, not more. For example, I’ve only recently come to appreciate just how much I rely on Apple’s ever-improving Siri Suggestions tool.
Siri Suggestions is the best example of your iPhone analyzing usage patterns and location information to anticipate your needs at any given moment. It guesses that you might want to send a photo of your dog to your family group chat, so it puts that group chat at the front of the sharing queue. You can also thank Siri Suggestions for automatically adding event details gathered from Mail (flights, reservations, etc.) to your calendar.
For me, though, Siri Suggestions is most useful in Search; specifically, it’s responsible for the tray of apps that appears when you swipe down on your iPhone’s Lock Screen or Home Screen. And I’m convinced that Siri’s ability to deliver apps that I genuinely need has improved drastically over the past 12 months, because it seems to make the right recommendation 90% of the time.
When I finish work and head to the train station, for instance, Siri Suggestions – without fail – has my train timetable app ready and waiting for me at the front of the app queue in Search. Or, when I remember in a frenzy that I need to complete my daily Duolingo lesson at 11pm, I find that Siri Suggestions has, more often than not, moved that particular app to the front of the queue.
It sounds silly and unimportant, but these recommendations save me seconds every day – I rarely need to scroll through four pages of apps to find what I’m looking for, because my iPhone has my routine nailed down. And sure, that’s not as impressive as having a phone that can teach me how to bake a lemon soufflé or work as an AI agent to make a restaurant reservation using information gathered from only my voice (you’ll need one of the best Pixel phones for that), but Apple does deserve credit for delivering some degree of AI functionality on its iPhones.
Indeed, this time last year, I wrote that smartphone manufacturers were missing the point of AI. “I’ve never felt compelled to superimpose my face into a group photo I wasn’t a part of using Google’s Best Take feature, or send my flatmate a weightlifting squirrel emoji using Genmoji on iPhone, or create infinite new wallpapers using Samsung’s Generative wallpaper tool,” I complained. “Apple, Google, and Samsung seem intent on marketing the heck out of their most superfluous AI features, rather than showing me how their latest products can actually make my everyday life easier.”
For the most part, I still feel the same way. However, the subtle improvements made to lesser-known features like Siri Suggestions have renewed my faith in the promise of AI on smartphones. Here’s hoping that, for the best iPhones at least, Siri 2.0 builds on that progress in 2026.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
