How Apple's iOS 26 and Google's Android 16 will change our phones

NEW YORK—For nearly two decades, every smartphone has worked pretty much the same, whether you bought an Apple iPhone or a smartphone running Google's Android: you have a grid of colorful apps that you tap on. But this year, Apple and Google finally went their separate ways.

Apple's next mobile operating system, iOS 16, coming this fall, features a transparent aesthetic that mimics the look of glass and makes apps and buttons blend in with the on-screen content. Google is doing the opposite with its new operating system, Android 16, which features brighter, more eye-catching colors.

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These are merely cosmetic changes that may represent the beginning of a larger divide between iOS and Android. Google is also strongly pushing to integrate its AI-powered chatbot, Gemini, to automate tasks like writing emails, editing photos, and creating shopping lists. In contrast, Apple has released a small set of AI features and postponed the debut of a revamped version of Siri due to technical challenges, so the company is focusing on making its software interface more appealing.

What this means for you, the consumer, is that your tech experience could vary dramatically depending on the type of phone you buy in the coming years. With Google delving into the depths of AI, Android users will soon have phones that analyze their data to perform many tasks for them, but it remains to be seen whether they'll appreciate it. Apple phone users will get attractive, more polished software, which is more of the same.

Below, we've rounded up the highlights of the changes coming to our smartphones with the imminent arrival of iOS 26 and Android 16.

iPhone apps are disappearing and Android is becoming more interesting

When Apple introduced iOS 26—which gives its software a new numbering system based on the fiscal year it's released—at a software conference last month, it announced a new software interface it calls Liquid Glass, referring to a translucent aesthetic that mimics the look of glass. For example, an app icon or button could change appearance to match the lighting and colors of the photograph behind it. Apple is applying the glass-like aesthetic to its other devices, including iPads and Macs, to make the experience more consistent across its ecosystem.

In contrast, at Google's software conference in May, the company unveiled Android 16's new design, dubbed Material 3 Expressive, which makes the phone's display look more like pop art. You can choose a color theme to change the overall look of the software interface: a purple theme includes pink app windows, plum text, and dark purple buttons, for example. Google said its goal was to offer users a more emotional connection with Android.

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However, both design changes seem like a distraction from the real transformation our phones are undergoing, driven by artificial intelligence.

Google tries to make Gemini the star Android app

Like its predecessor, Android 16 features Gemini, which allows users to interact via voice or text to streamline tasks on their phones.

In recent years, Google has expanded Gemini to control various applications, such as its note-taking app, Google Maps, and YouTube. The chatbot is based on generative artificial intelligence, a technology that uses complex linguistic models to predict which words go together.

This allows Android users to hold down their phone's power button to wake up Gemini and speak into the microphone to ask it to do things like:

— Generate a shopping list for guacamole in your notes app.

— Find out how long it takes to walk to the nearest movie theater.

— Generate a list of ingredients from a cooking video you're watching on YouTube.

In other words, while Android 16's most striking new feature is its colorful interface, the real driving force behind Android appears to be Gemini.

Apple continues to play catch-up with AI

In iOS 26, Apple is expanding its Apple Intelligence AI, which debuted last year, with new features including automatic language translation and the ability to search the web using screenshot data—tools Android users have long enjoyed.

Real-time translations can work within some of Apple's communication apps, such as Messages and FaceTime. For example, during a FaceTime call with a family member who speaks your native language, you can see translated subtitles in a speech bubble on the screen. (Google launched a similar tool in 2021.)

The new iPhone software also uses artificial intelligence to optimize tasks with information from a screenshot. For example, if you take a screenshot of a website with the date and time of a concert, a suggestion will appear to add the concert to your calendar. Or if you take a screenshot of a bag you're shopping for, you can tap a button to search the web for similar bags. (This is similar to Google's Circle to Search tool, which lets Android users draw circles around objects to perform image-based searches. Many users have called this feature a "gimmick" because it's rarely useful.)

As for Siri, Apple was supposed to launch a revamped version of its AI-powered virtual assistant this spring to rival Google's Gemini, but those plans were postponed indefinitely after internal testing revealed it was inaccurate on nearly a third of requests. For now, users can talk to the old-school Siri and redirect some requests to OpenAI's popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies have denied the lawsuit's allegations.)

What does all this mean?

Every major consumer technology company is redesigning their products to incorporate new AI technology into the software we use every day, and all the tools are still making a lot of mistakes.

In other words, there's no rush to jump on this bandwagon. But at this rate, Android users will be able to experience what it's like to have an AI phone—a device that uses your apps for you—before iPhone owners. c. 2025 The New York Times Company .

By Brian X. Chen, The New York Times.