Here are some iPhone features that are already available in your Android phone

In case you missed it, Apple announced a lot of new iPhone features at WWDC, though a lot of them are things Android phones can already do.

Innovation is innovation, and this involves bringing to the forefront existing features that already exist in other devices. Many users like to cling to Apple for falling behind in some aspects and then imitate Android, even though much of what has been released seems to be just a natural progression. A big part of it is also user demand for features that others have on different devices.

This is especially true for AI as models improve their semantic understanding, positioning them as great image editing tools or image creation assets in SMS/RCS messaging applications. We’ll break down some of the new iPhone features in iOS 18 that we’ve seen on Android phones for a while.

Customizable home screens

This is probably the biggest topic and huge topic on social media. At WWDC 2024, Apple announced that a big part of iOS 18 will be the ability to… Personalize your iOS home screen To a level Apple users have never seen.

Apps can now be placed anywhere on the screen, even if that means they sit all alone in the corner. The fixed app grid is gone, and app icon movement is no longer limited. This update also brings custom color palettes that turn app icons into different colors.

In Android, users know this as Material You. Material You is a feature that allows apps to change colors based on the background color of the wallpaper. Additionally, you can change the colors to a specific color if you wish through the home screen customization tools. In the latest versions of Android, this addition is reflected in almost every Android OEM.

Interestingly, Apple’s approach to the custom app icon feature on the iPhone is a little different from what Android did. Instead of requiring developers to create different variations of app icons in different colors, iOS 18 appears to shade each icon, which could lead to some flat and lifeless apps.

RCS and message scheduling

RCS on iPhone is a huge win for Android users as a whole. It allows both parties to exchange messages that provide more data than just an SMS. For example, RCS messages will allow users to see delivery and read receipts, theoretically typing indicators, and richer images.

Google’s Messages app offered RCS messaging to users several years ago, and has since taken a somewhat vocal approach to pushing Apple to do the same. It has taken some time, but iOS is now able to accept and send RCS messages.

Another feature that Android fans might use is scheduled messages. With most Android OEMs like Samsung and Google, users have been able to schedule messages to be sent at a later time. Undoubtedly, it is a feature that comes in handy most of the time. In Google Messages, simple as that Press and hold the send button To see the schedule window.

Now, iPhone users can also schedule messages to be sent at a specific time, just like on Android with the Google Messages feature.

Smart photo app

Android has long had the Google Photos app in its arsenal. With updates and changes over the years, the app allows users to find images in the search bar, even if they are searching through small details. This has been one of the strongest reasons why users use the Google Photos app instead of the stock app that comes on their devices. That has changed recently as many other manufacturers have beefed up their photo gallery apps to do the same thing.

Now, Apple has added an improved search system to the Photos app, which allows users to search for details in photos, including numbers, places, and other identifiers. The company also announced an editing feature for iPhone that is very similar to Magic Editor on Android or Galaxy AI. Circled people in the background will clear bystanders’ data, which is a huge advertising point for Android’s Magic Editor.

Artificial intelligence on board

Another big adjustment during WWDC is how Apple views AI on the iPhone and across other ecosystem devices. The change means that many applications will start using artificial intelligence features to improve writing, how to deal with notifications, and the way other features are presented.

It’s hard to compare what Apple did with this update to what Google did with Gemini. At the phone level, Gemini appears to be somewhat hands-off, and what Apple advertises seems to be all over the iPhone itself. It would be great to see Google implement some of the same quality of life features, like notification summaries.

Custom emojis

In this category, Apple wins without a doubt. The closest thing Android has to custom emoji is what’s available in the emoji kitchen or what’s possible with custom stickers in messages. Apple’s version lets you create custom emoji using AI in the style of Apple’s existing library of emoji.

Emoji Kitchen is quite different, in the sense that Google has created a large number of emoji collections manually, so if you choose two existing emojis to combine, there will be a cool but unsettling choice.

Frankly, it’s good to see Apple starting to implement its own version of some Android features. This means that competition between platforms and OEMs will increase, making everyone’s phone experience a little better.