There were no signs of Apple’s improved intelligence in the launch of iOS 26.5 this week, which must have come as a relief to Google as it talked up its seemingly new but seemingly very familiar AI features in Android.
We’ve long suspected that Apple will save its Apple Intelligence and particularly Siri features to iOS 27, since this is expected to be announced soon at WWDC 2026. But the lack of any improvements with iOS 26.5 means that Apple has now left Siri down for over a year.
That said, it’s now been almost a year since iOS 26 was released, so it’s time to review what we had. And then it’s time to turn to iOS 27.
But if we’re all expecting big things from Apple’s upcoming announcements, so is Google. This could just be bragging rights since the new Apple Intelligence will rely heavily on Google Gemini, but it appears to be more.
Google announced a slew of Gemini-based features for Android, seemingly just to get ahead of Apple. Oddly enough, though, you’re going to recognize a lot of what Google announced because you already have it on your iPhone.
But also this week, the Trump T1 Android phone is reportedly about to ship, and Apple added a way for us to save on annual App Store subscriptions. Or at least some of them.
BONUS: Subscribe via Patreon or Apple Podcasts to listen to woozad+, the extended edition. One thing we got with iOS 26.5 this week is a beta version of RCS Messaging, which turns out not to have resolved complaints from iPhone and Android users trying to text each other.
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