What these changes mean for you is that your technology experience may differ drastically depending on which type of phone you buy in the coming years.

As part of iOS 26's interface changes, your iPhone lock screen can take on a new look with spatial photos available as the background image for your phone and an adaptive time feature that adjusts the look of the on-screen clock to fit with the other visual elements. We go through all the iOS 26 lock screen changes.

Apple has confirmed iOS 26’s public launch this fall, following the release of beta 4 to developers and testers with major UI and Apple Intelligence updates.

FaceTime "Communication Safety" feature: A newer addition to iOS 26 appears to be the FaceTime "Communication Safety" feature that pauses communications if and when nudity is detected. The feature appears to be a child safety feature that uses on-device detection, thus obviating any cloud-based privacy issues.

Apple's Liquid Glass makeover and expanded Apple Intelligence tools arrive this fall, but not every phone can make the leap.

The fourth developer beta of iOS 26 introduces 12 new CarPlay wallpapers. The new CarPlay wallpapers are based on the official iOS 26 wallpaper

Apart from the selection tool, other interesting iOS 26 updates for the Messages app include Polls, Live Translation with Apple Intelligence, typing indicators for group chats, updated message filters, and natural language search.

Looking at the home screens, the primary difference you'll find is that in iOS 26 the background of the dock and the search option that sits in between the dock and the home screen icons are more transparent and have a sheen to the edges, whereas in iOS 18, these are slightly darker.