At the 2026 WWDC Developers Conference, Apple officially released the new generation of iPhone operating system iOS 27, taking "performance optimization", "interface readability" and "comprehensive upgrade of Apple Intelligence" as the three major focuses of this update, and confirmed that this version will be open to upgrades for models dating back to iPhone 11.
Apple emphasized at the press conference that the engineering team has invested a lot of effort in the bottom layer of the system over the past year to fix defects, optimize critical paths and rewrite some core components, making iOS 27 "significantly faster" in daily operations than iOS 26, and similar optimizations will also benefit other platforms such as iPadOS. Official example data shows: application startup speed can be increased by up to about 30%, the speed of loading new captured content in the photo application can be increased by up to about 70%, AirDrop transfer can be up to about 80% faster, and in the iPadOS file application, browsing and file transfer speeds can be up to 5 times faster than before. At the same time, the response speed of the device in scenarios such as switching between Wi-Fi and cellular networks has also been generally accelerated.
In terms of interface design, Apple continues to polish the "Liquid Glass" visual system introduced in iOS 26, and adds an opacity slider for the first time, allowing users to adjust the "frosted glass" intensity of interface elements such as tab bars to balance transparency and content readability. Liquid Glass is a major visual overhaul in iOS 26, but in early versions it caused readability controversy due to insufficient contrast between text and interface information. Apple subsequently improved this problem through multiple rounds of adjustments before the system was officially released; in iOS 27, users can further improve the reading experience based on personal preferences through new opacity controls.
In terms of intelligent experience, iOS 27 is positioned by Apple as an important carrier of "next generation Apple Intelligence". The system adopts a new underlying architecture and introduces "new Siri", emphasizing the device's contextual awareness of the content displayed on the screen, helping users obtain intelligent responses more closely related to current tasks in more scenarios. Apple Intelligence was first released at WWDC in 2024, but during the previous advancement process, Apple once lagged behind competitors such as Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. In 2025, it admitted that related upgrades "took longer than expected" due to delays in Siri's intelligent functions. It also reached a lawsuit settlement over the failure to deliver on some promised functions on time; earlier this year, Apple announced that it would introduce Google's Gemini artificial intelligence model in a major Siri upgrade to accelerate the implementation of product capabilities.
Despite this, Apple emphasized at this conference that iOS 27 represents a "new round of attempts" for Apple Intelligence. Through new architectural design and real-time understanding of screen content, it strives to integrate Siri and system-level intelligence into daily operations more naturally. In terms of hardware support, Apple confirmed that iOS 27 will support all iPhones currently capable of running iOS 26, which means that a large number of current models, including iPhone 11, can be directly upgraded to the new system to obtain comprehensive improvements in performance, interface, and smart experience.
