In the latest beta version of iOS 27, Apple has made significant adjustments to the visual form of Siri: when the user invokes Siri, a glowing "pill-shaped" light ball animation will expand at the top of the screen, replacing the light effect that travels toward the edge of the screen. This design integrates Siri’s animation with the display area of Smart Island, and at the same time cleverly obscures the real shape of the front opening in the dynamic effect, which is consistent with the visual strategy of other Smart Island animations.
However, judging from the way Apple presents it on other platforms, this "pill shape" is more like a transitional solution brought about by the hardware form. In the newly launched independent Siri app icon, the promotional materials for iOS 27, and the initial interface design on devices such as iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, Siri almost uniformly appears in the form of a round light ball. This means that the "pill-shaped" Siri on the iPhone is largely to comply with the width and position constraints of the current Smart Island module, rather than Apple's finalization of Siri's visual identity.
Along with rumors that the iPhone 18 Pro will further narrow the smart island opening, some analysts pointed out that Siri’s “slightly weird” pill shape in iOS 27 is actually paving the way for the future round shape. In a post, X user @MichalLangmajer compared the existing smart island shape of the iPhone 17 with the rumored width of the iPhone 18 smart island, indicating that once the opening is significantly narrowed, the Siri light ball currently extending from the smart island may be "closed" into an almost perfect circle, consistent with Apple's Siri image in other devices and icons.
Multiple reports indicate that the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models are expected to achieve a smaller smart island area by moving some Face ID components to the bottom of the screen. Tipster Ice Universe previously claimed that the opening width of the new phone will be about 35% smaller than that of the iPhone 17 Pro, shrinking from about 20.7 mm to about 13.5 mm. Photos of suspected prototypes and leaked images of screen protection glass that were exposed in March this year also echoed this changing trend to a certain extent, providing further evidence for the speculation of a “narrower smart island” and Siri’s circularization.
According to the current product pace, iOS 27, iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are expected to be officially released this fall. For users, Siri's transition from a "pill-shaped" to a round light ball on the iPhone is not only an external manifestation of the adjustment of the hardware structure, but also expected to be an intuitive signal for Apple in the new round of Siri reconstruction and interface unification.