After test-driving iOS 27, my iPhone still doesn’t feel like it has made a substantial leap

Every June, after Apple wraps up its annual WWDC keynote, I install the latest iOS beta on my iPhone, watch the progress bar crawl to completion, and wait for the inevitable restart. For years, picking up my phone afterward felt almost identical to how it did before the update. 

I saw the same grid of icons, the same Control Center, and the same version of Siri until iOS 26 finally broke that pattern in 2025.

iOS 26 raised the bar. iOS 27 didn’t clear it

It was the first major update in years that made compatible iPhones feel genuinely different, and I’d give most of the credit to Apple’s Liquid Glass design language. With the redesigned Control Center and plenty of customization options (including the Clear Look for the Home Screen), iOS 26 actually felt substantial.

iOS 27, on the other hand, didn’t impress me quite as much. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s bad. The new Apple Intelligence features, especially the revamped Siri experience (first promised in 2024), along with the new Photos features, are impressive enough that I’ve written entire pieces about them

But if you ask me whether iOS 27 fundamentally changed how I use my iPhone 17 every day, despite the arrival of Apple Intelligence, the honest answer is no. And that’s a little surprising, at least for me. 

To Apple’s credit, the AI features are real, functional, and occasionally delightful. The catch is that their value depends almost entirely on whether they slot naturally into your routine.

The problem isn’t Siri AI; it’s me

Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried pretty much every major AI service to figure out which one works best for me, and most of them have already secured a place in my workflow. I pay Claude a monthly fee because it’s become my go-to for research, fact-checking, and crunching numbers. 

Gemini, on the other hand, is great at generating images and summarizing emails inside Gmail, while AI Mode has all but replaced Google Search for me.

Despite Siri AI’s conversational and agentic capabilities, I still haven’t found a compelling reason to use it every day. 

Yes, I asked the assistant to fetch photos using natural language, and it did a commendable job (for the most part). The Extend feature in Photos also impressed me. But neither is the kind of feature I return to regularly. Most of the AI I use is actually on my MacBook, and not on my iPhone.

So what else is actually new?

But what about the rest of the iOS 27 changelog? Respectfully, it feels like Apple is running out of room to reinvent the core iPhone experience or introduce a new one that doesn’t revolve around AI. 

Safari now auto-groups tabs by topic, while Notes lets you link to specific sections within a document. AirPods finally get a proper EQ slider in iOS 27, and Apple Wallet can scan loyalty cards. 

They’re useful under-the-hood additions that work in the background to improve your experience. The problem is that I’ve already moved on from several of these apps because they fell behind the curve for so long.

The little things are genuinely better

It’s not like there aren’t changes I appreciate. AirDrop, for instance, feels much faster in iOS 27. App launches are noticeably quicker, and switching between mobile data and Wi-Fi is much smoother. Apple’s Continuity features are all intact and arguably better thanks to the under-the-hood refinements (even if they still decide to throw a tantrum every now and then).

However, after willingly putting my iPhone 17 through beta duty and installing iOS 27 with both excitement and nervousness, I came away feeling less rewarded than I’d initially hoped. 

Maybe this is peak iOS

The more mature way to look at this might be that iOS has already reached a near-perfect state, both in terms of how it looks and the features it offers, and once we get there, every new feature or experience risks upending what already works.

I guess I need to re-evaluate my expectations for Apple’s annual updates. iOS 26 only felt so exciting and different because so many earlier versions looked exactly the same. 

While I wouldn’t call iOS 27 only a fresh coat of paint, it also doesn’t feel like the kind of leap it might appear to be, at least not if Siri AI and Apple Intelligence aren’t already central to how you use your iPhone.