iOS 18: Seven India-specific features coming to iPhones this year

The new iOS 18 comes with support for Indian language numerical for clock, multilingual Siri, nine new languages support on Keyboard and more.

Last month, Apple offered a sneak peek at the new features of iOS 18 including the Apple Intelligence coming in iPhones.

Currently, iOS 18 is available for testing only to registered developers. With the latest update, Apple is bringing several India-specific features including support for Indian language numerical for clock, multilingual Siri, nine new languages support on Keyboard and more.

Here are India-specific features coming with iOS 18:

New customisation option for Lock Screen and Contact Posters: Once the iPhone gets updated to iOS 18, users will be able to personalise the time on the lock screen with Indian numerals from 12 languages-- Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, and adjust the font colour and weight to create exactly the look they want for their Contact Posters.

Live Voice Mail transcription: iOS 18 offers support for Indian English voice message transcription.

It also enables iPhones to support Live Caller ID. It will be able to identify calls made to iPhones.

Multilingual Siri: With the iOS 18, Siri will finally be able to support nine Indian languages including Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, and Tamil.

Siri will be able to perform actions such as setting alarms and timers, launching an app, getting directions, playing music or checking the weather using English mixed with a local language. It should be noted that Siri can understand the aforementioned nine languages, but will not be able to respond in the same language, but in English. For now, it can respond only in Hindi to Hindi queries.

Apple iOS 18 comes with several India-specific features.

Dual SIM control comes to Control Centre: Once the iPhone gets updated to iOS 18, users will be able to switch between dual SIMs right from the control centre on the lock screen.

Multilingual Keyboard: It will support Kannada, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu in addition to English. On iPhone 12 and newer models, users can type phonetically with Latin characters in English and up to two additional Indian languages for a trilingual predictive typing experience. It also supports Hinglish, a mix of English and Hindi typing as well. Users can try the trilingual predictive typing experience in Messages, Notes, and other supported messenger and social media platforms on the iPhone.

Improved language search on iPhone: With enhancements to language search on iOS 18, users can be able to easily find the word they are looking for in the spellings that they are accustomed to, without having to consider the spelling style that the content is composed in. For instance, different spellings like “অঙ্কন” and “অংকন” in Bangla, “चंद्र” and “चन्द्र” in Hindi, etc. can now be looked up regardless of which spelling is typed. Initially, enhanced language search will be available in Assamese, Bangla, Devanagari, Hindi and Gujarati.

Alphabetical Keyboard Layouts: After updating to iOS 18, the keys on the keyboard will be arranged in an alphabetical order, vowel and conjunct keys on the layouts change dynamically based on what the user is typing making it easier to find the correct character type. iPhones will support alphabetical layouts for 11 Indian languages- Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu.

Translate app now supports Hindi: After upgrading to the new iOS 18, the translate app will be able to translate English, Spanish and several other international languages to Hindi and vice versa.

Hindi will also be supported on Safari webpages and other systemwide translation features, including apps like Notes.

The new iOS 18 is scheduled to be released to all eligible iPhones as a free software update later this year in September.

List of iPhone models eligible for iOS 18 update:

iPhone 15

iPhone 15 Plus

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro Max

iPhone 14

iPhone 14 Plus

iPhone 14 Pro

iPhone 14 Pro Max

iPhone 13

iPhone 13 mini

iPhone 13 Pro

iPhone 13 Pro Max

iPhone 12

iPhone 12 mini

iPhone 12 Pro

iPhone 12 Pro Max

iPhone 11

iPhone 11 Pro

iPhone 11 Pro Max

iPhone XS

iPhone XS Max

iPhone XR

iPhone SE (2nd generation or later)

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