The latest iPhone update is here (and exactly when it was predicted to land). It includes several minor changes, bug fixes and an important update to those iPhones which run Apple Intelligence. Here’s all you need to know.
It follows on from iOS 18.2.1, a small update released on Monday, Jan. 6. Yes, that’s right, just three weeks ago.
Which iPhones Can Run iOS 18.3?
The new version of iOS 18 is compatible with any iPhone from 2018 onwards. That means the iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max and iPhone Xr from 2018 and all iPhones after that, including the iPhone SE in both its second- and third-generation models.
How To Get It
Software updates are easy! In the iPhone’s Settings app, click on General, then Software Update. After that, click Download and Install, and let the software work its magic. This is a smallish update, 511MB on my iPhone 16 Pro Max, so it should be with you quickly.
What’s In The Release
Unlike iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2, there’s no big Apple Intelligence features being deployed here. The next big Apple Intelligence update will come in iOS 18.4, expected in April.
In fact, one feature already live will be paused when you update to the new version. That’s because there have been problems with some specific notification summaries created by Apple Intelligence. These relate to news notifications and caused issues for news organizations. To tackle this, Apple has made a suspension, saying, “Notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable. We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update.”
This update also adds warnings that summarization can cause issues, and the summaries will now appear in italics. Apple Intelligence is only found on six iPhones: iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
There’s also one crucial change for these phones: from now on, Apple Intelligence is turned on by default. This is important: if you don’t want Apple Intelligence, you’ll now need to toggle it off in Settings under Apple Intelligence & Siri.
The new features are increasingly useful, but some parts of them need data, if ChatGPT is invoked, so you may not want to use that. On balance, I’d say it’s worth keeping the toggle turned to on, but the important thing is you make your own choice.
There are smaller changes coming: iPhone 16 series phones have a Camera Control and the AE/AF lock toggle is renamed as Lock Focus and Exposure. If you crop content when editing a PDF, Apple will now warn users that the cropped area is not removed from the PDF (which could save some embarrassment). And Messages will add a Genmoji entry to the + button, so it’s easier to create your own personalized emoji—this is another Apple Intelligence feature.
