iOS 18.2 could land a week earlier than expected, and it'll include big Apple Intelligence updates

The iPhone 16 Pro Max (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Usually it’s the big annual iOS updates that are most worth getting excited about, but this year, due to Apple’s decision to gradually roll out Apple Intelligence features, some of the supposedly smaller updates are arguably just as interesting, and the next of these could land sooner than expected.

According to Mark Gurman, writing in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, iOS 18.2 will land sometime during the week commencing December 2. Typically, Apple’s iOS x.2 releases land in the second week of December, so that would mean this is around a week earlier than usual.

Thanks to the betas we already have a good idea of what to expect in iOS 18.2, and that includes ChatGPT integration, Genmoji (which lets you generate custom emoji using AI), and the Image Playground app, which similarly lets you generate custom images.

Visual Intelligence and English options

Visual Intelligence on an iPhone 16 (Image credit: Apple)

The update is also expected to bring Visual Intelligence to iPhone 16 series users, allowing you to activate the feature with a long press of the Camera Control button, and then have the phone use AI to provide details about what the camera is pointed at.

On top of which, varieties of English other than US English should also start supporting AI with the iOS 18.2 update – so if you're in the UK for example, and you changed your device and Siri languages to US English in order to access Apple Intelligence features, you'll be able to revert to UK English.

So this is a hefty update – at least for anyone with an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence – and if Gurman is right, it’s only around a month away. Gurman quite possibly is right too, as he has a very good track record for Apple information.

Following the iOS 18.2 release, the next major Apple Intelligence update is expected as part of iOS 18.4, and Gurman says this will include improvements to Siri. However, this apparently won’t land until April, whereas iOS x.4 updates usually launch in March, so while iOS 18.2 will reportedly land a little earlier than expected, iOS 18.4 might be later.

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James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.