iOS 18 Phone App: All The New Features

The iPhone app in iOS 18 is getting a big version bump with the introduction of Apple Intelligence and adding several interesting improvements, so stick around to find out what that means.

More About the New Features of iOS 18

The best feature of this is call recording. In iOS 18, you will be able to record phone calls directly in the Phone app. Simply answer or make a call to begin recording and press the record button on the upper left.

A notification will warn everyone on the call that recording has started, which repeats for each user who is making recordings. From there, they can listen to the recording in Notes — but only by opening a note labelled with the date and time of your call. Play the recording back or click through for more information.

The ability to transcribe and summarize conversion is another new feature. Calls in the Notes app, are transcribed and you can search through them to see the kind of messages that were received while listening or reading. The transcription can be displayed next to the playing audio and will update in real-time. Click on “Summary” for a quick overview of the call, and you can search to find keywords or phrases. Transcripts can also be duplicated, put into various different notes, or saved in the Files app.

As part of iOS 18, the Recents tab is also gaining a search feature that will let you type to locate specific calls or voicemails with figuratively similar names, phone numbers, and dates. Numerous search parameters can be added to your results. For users with dual SIMs, switching between them has been simplified. Instead of navigating through the Settings app, you can now use a Control Center toggle to swap SIMs.

A smaller change is contact suggestions when dialling, which intelligently gives you quick access to contacts by typing part of their number. The new software also supports T9 dialling, which lets you enter numbers that match up to letters when trying to locate a particular contact. These features will be available with iOS 18.1, not in the initial iOS 18 release, and will require an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16.

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