Siri’s New Island Home: Massive iOS 27 Leak Reveals Radical Redesign
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg
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Although we’ve heard quite a bit about what to expect in iOS 27 from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman over the past few weeks, most of it has been described in words, leaving the actual look and feel of Apple’s next major iPhone software update to our imagination.
Thankfully, realizing that a picture is worth a thousand words, Gurman has shared some visuals put together by his team at Bloomberg to give us an idea of what we can expect from “the revamped Siri interface, a new chatbot-style app and other major iOS 27 changes.”
We’ve already heard that Siri is expected to take up residence in the Dynamic Island with a Dark Mode interface, but now we’re getting a look at how this will play out in practical terms.
To be clear, these aren’t “leaked” images, per se, insofar as Gurman isn’t sharing anything that actually came from an iPhone running iOS 27. Instead, they’re renders “based on information viewed by Bloomberg and people with knowledge of the company’s plans.” It’s not even clear whether Gurman and his colleagues have seen the actual screenshots or simply had received enough details to envision them, as the word “information” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Still, what Gurman offers is a fun sneak peek at how certain aspects of iOS 27 are likely to appear in the final version, although he also hedges a bit since it’s unclear what stage the designs were at when sources shared them, or even if they were only one of several designs that Apple is testing in parallel.
Gurman isn’t sharing any new information here on what’s coming in iOS 27; today’s report is merely a game of “show-and-tell,” illustrating many of the concepts he’s shared previously.
For example, the new Siri is expected to live in the Dynamic Island in iOS 27, popping out with a new animation for handling voice-based queries and searches. While the location is changing, users will still be able to trigger this in the same ways as before — by voice or holding down the iPhone’s side button — but Apple is also said to be adding a new method where users can call up Siri by swiping down from the top-center of the iPhone, adding a third swipe-down gesture alongside Notification Center and Control Center, which are initiated from the corners.
This will provide a “revamped Siri experience designed for getting things done,” Gurman says, but it also sounds like it echoes the Spotlight search feature that’s already been available on the iPhone for years — except that it’s likely to be accessible from within any app.
This menu also shows the same interface in the current iOS that displays Siri Suggestions. That includes eight frequently used apps, functions like recent web searches or features like recording a voice memo. There’s also a panel for showing the weather in the morning or evening.
Mark Gurman
Gurman also shares concept images of the dedicated Siri app that’s expected to launch with iOS 27. While this will be similar to ChatGPT and Gemini, Apple reportedly plans to set it apart by using a card-style list of conversations and what appears to be a more immersive view for results.
The Camera app in iOS 27 is also expected to gain Siri smarts with integrated visual intelligence, while also becoming much more customizable, with “widgets” that offer the ability to choose the controls you want to appear when snapping photos. This will allow users to adapt the default Camera app for a range of needs, from focusing on the basics to setting up a more “pro” rig with quick access to buttons for depth, exposure, and more.
While the Apple Intelligence features in the Camera app won’t necessarily be new — this sounds mostly like a new way to access visual intelligence — Apple is reportedly bringing new generative AI features to the Photos app for post-production, with “Reframe” and “Extend” AI editing modes that can do things like changing the perspective of a photo or filling in additional portions of an image that weren’t in the original shot. Gurman adds that Apple is “also testing natural language prompt-based editing of photos so you can ask via voice or text for specific edits, like cropping or changing colors,” although that may not come until a later iOS 27 point release.
