Your Old IPhone May Not Support These New IOS 26 Features
Apple announced a ton of new features and changes to its products during the company’s big WWDC 2025 event. iOS 26 , in particular, is jam-packed with updates , with a long list of iPhones that support the latest update. However, some of these new features will only work on new iPhones. Even if your iPhone can update to iOS 26, you may miss out on the entire experience.
Most of the features on this list are powered by Apple Intelligence, Apple’s suite of generative AI features. As it turns out, Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. That includes the iPhone 15 Pro Max, of course, but also the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. If you don’t have one of those six phones, you won’t be able to use any of the Apple Intelligence features — both the existing ones released in the iOS 18 era and any new ones in iOS 26. That’s a little confusing, since there are plenty of iPhones that can run iOS 26 that aren’t those iPhones — mostly the iPhone 11 and newer — but that’s unfortunately how Apple wants it.
Here’s what you’re missing out on if you don’t have the new iPhone:
Live translation
Apple’s Live Translation features for iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe are looking great. Live Translation uses AI to translate text and audio in real time across apps and services. So you can see translations next to messages sent in a language you can’t read, or hear translations while talking to someone who speaks a language you don’t understand.
Visual intelligence
Visual Intelligence itself isn’t new this year. Apple Intelligence debuted in iOS 18.2 and lets Apple’s AI analyze everything that comes into your camera’s view. The feature was originally exclusive to the iPhone 16, but Apple has also brought it to the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max models.
With iOS 26, Visual Intelligence can now analyze the contents of your iPhone screen using screenshots as well. In addition to pointing the camera at something for Visual Intelligence to analyze, you can take a screenshot and the AI can process its contents.
Warning about the need to clean lenses
It’s always a shame when you spend the whole day taking photos on your phone, only to find out when you get home that your photos are blurry – all because your camera was dirty.
There’s a feature in iOS 26 (presumably powered by AI) that fixes this. Apple hasn’t announced it, but beta testers have discovered that if the camera is dirty, the new Camera app now warns you to clean the lens before taking a photo.
Genmoji and the Image Playground
Genmoji and Image Playground are getting updates in iOS 26 — the AI features introduced last year let you create emoji and images with text suggestions.
This year, Apple is adding the ability to mix different Genmoji and emoji to create entirely new icons, a feature similar to Emoji Kitchen for iPhone. Additionally, Image Playground now lets you add ChatGPT styles like anime, oil painting, and watercolor to your generations.
AI-integrated shortcuts
Shortcuts are available on all iPhones with iOS 12, but with iOS 26, Apple is integrating AI features into the automation tool. These shortcuts will let you summarize text, generate images, or use Apple Intelligence models to power your shortcuts.
If your iPhone can’t access the AI tools at all, you probably won’t miss these updates much anyway.
Message functions
Messages is getting some useful new features this year. Two key ones are polls and backgrounds: you’ll be able to create polls for your friends and family to answer, and choose from a selection of backgrounds for your chats. Sure, other chat apps have had these features for years, but it’s great to finally have them in the Messages app, and both are compatible with all iPhones running iOS 26.
However, each feature has AI integration that will only work on the iPhone 15 Pro and newer. First up, polls: In addition to choosing your own poll questions, new iPhone owners will also see AI-generated poll suggestions. (I’m not entirely sure why you’d want to do this, but it’s there.) In my opinion, the AI feature in Backgrounds is more useful, as you can use Apple Intelligence to generate a background for your chats. I’d rather choose my own image to set as a background, but this at least opens up the background options.
Reminders
If you have one of these iPhones that are compatible with Apple Intelligence, you’ll notice that iOS 26 suggests new reminders based on the content of your messages and emails. If you’re chatting with your roommate about needing to buy more coffee, for example, you might see a suggested reminder to add it to your shopping list.
Plus, iOS 26 will categorize task lists for you using Apple Intelligence. There’s a new “Auto-Categorize” setting, complete with an Apple Intelligence logo, if you’d like to outsource that task to Apple’s AI.
Apple Wallet
On iPhone 15 Pro and newer, iOS 26 will use AI to automatically pull data from your emails to show you up-to-date order tracking in Wallet. The app already has non-AI support for order tracking, but it’s not widely used by stores and merchants.
Lock screen
There’s only one non-AI feature in iOS 26 that isn’t supported on all compatible devices: There’s a new 3D effect on the Lock screen that automatically adjusts the size and position of the time based on the photo you’ve selected, giving priority to the subject of the photo. It’s neat, and it only works on iPhone 12 or later. If you have an iPhone 11, you’re out of luck.