New versions of iOS are always a source of excitement for me, but iOS 26 has been even more so than usual. After the disappointment of Apple Intelligence last year, iOS 26 has more new features and improvements that I find genuinely useful.
It’s not without its irritations and disappointments either, as personally I’m still not sold on the Liquid Glass design it has introduced. But some of the other additions more than make up for that – particularly when it comes to calls and battery management.
Perhaps my single favorite of the new additions is Call Screening. With this, any number that’s not in my contacts will be asked why they’re calling before the phone rings.
Their answer will be displayed on my screen so I can choose whether to answer or not, armed with more information about them. And if I’m still unsure, I can get my phone to ask them for more details.
As someone who doesn’t love phone calls at the best of times and receives a large number of scam and spam calls, this is an amazing tool. In the past, if a number wasn’t saved in my phone I’d generally not answer unless I was expecting a call, but now I can make an informed choice every single time.
It’s a feature that’s made my phone start to feel more like, well, a phone again, because I actually feel able to usefully receive calls on it from people other than my contacts (most of whom will tend to text rather than call anyway).
Also on the phone front, there’s now a Hold Assist feature, which allows my phone to wait on hold for me and then send an alert when someone actually picks up the call. That way, there’s no need to listen to that 30-second loop of hold music for what can feel like an eternity.
I don’t often find myself sitting on hold (see my phone call aversion above), but when I do, this should make things far less painful.
Charging clarity
Another element of iOS that’s had a much-needed overhaul is the battery settings and charging details.
When charging, you won’t just see the battery percentage on the lock screen, you can also see an estimate of when it will hit 80% charge. If you want to see when it will reach 100% then you can head to the battery settings screen for an estimate of that.
It would be nice if this latter figure would also be shown on the lock screen, but I’m just pleased to see it at all, so I’m no longer left guessing how much I’ll be able to juice up my phone before I have to head out.
Also on the battery settings screen, you’ll now see an orange exclamation mark against apps that are using more battery than they probably should, which can make it easier to figure out if a rogue app is draining your phone’s battery more than it has any right to.
As someone who prioritizes battery life above almost anything else in a phone, this is a great feature for me, and can help reduce instances of battery anxiety, as I can find and troubleshoot problem apps, lessening instances of unpredictable stamina.
A simpler, slicker camera
Those are my favorite iOS 26 additions, but I’ll also give a quick shout out to the redesigned camera interface, which is now far less cluttered, as most of the photo and video options are hidden until you swipe across from either ‘photo’ or ‘video’ to find other related modes.
This makes for a much cleaner, more visually appealing viewfinder interface, and can also make it easier to find the modes you’re actually looking for, since you know a swipe one way will bring you to photo options, and the other to video modes.
So there’s a lot of good stuff here, and it goes some way to making up for the ugly, sometimes dizzy-making new look of the interface.
