The newest iPhone 17 series is here. With it, comes a major rebranding of Apple’s OS, not just for iPhones, but for all of their devices by creating a unified ecosystem. They call it OS 26. And one of the rebranding’s biggest features is Liquid Glass.

Liquid Glass gives what’s on screen a glass-like appearance. From how the text looks, from app icons, from the general feel, it’s like peering through a glass. For instance, if you open a Safari tab, you’ll notice it has translucent borders where you can see the background.

It’s not so different from Windows’ own Aero Glass, which they introduced in 2007 with Windows Vista, which has had that effect where you’re looking at the screen through a glass pane window. Apple’s, of course, being released in 2025, looks more modern and well polished.

Other changes with OS 26 are spatial shots for your lockscreen. For instance, you have a picture of yourself as your lockscreen, the big numbers that tell you the time, can be situated behind you, and not behind the image, but behind you, between you and the background of your lockscreen image.

Other features include Hold Assist. This is a good one. This feature will hold calls for you. So, if you make a call and instead of listening to the elevator music for hours to no end, the newest update will hold this for you, so you can continue doing whatever else you need to do, and once a real person picks up on the other end of the line, your device will notify you that someone has finally picked up.

Another neat introduction is Visual Intelligence. This is where you take a screenshot and the device will be able to pick out information from that image and make searches for you. For instance, take a screenshot of a pair of shoes, and Visual Intelligence will analyse this and let you know what brand it is.

Apple Music gets an update as well as translations are now provided, so you can jam harder with your favorite K-Pop songs.

For iPhones, you now have Live Translations. So you can make phone calls, FaceTime, and Messages can provide live translations. You can talk to people who speak another language in real-time, which makes this, personally, one of the most interesting products yet. We are eager to try this out ourselves.

Messages will now also be able to filter your messages. If it detects spam, it will send them out to a different folder. Where I’m intrigued is how effective would this be, given the prevalence of scam messages we have right now. We’ll find out soon.

One of the very best features for OS 26 is Apple rolling back on what they did to the Photos app. Me, I hated the changes they did, removing the tabs that make it easier to sort through your photos. Now, it’s back!

Apple has also ramped up on security. For FaceTime, when nudity is detected, it will pause the video call.

This is also the debut of CarPlay Ultra, which essentially, turns your entire car into an Apple device, where you can control temperature and other customizations in the dashboard. I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again. This seems to be Apple’s Plan B since the mythical Apple Car never happened. Also, CarPlay Ultra is only limited to a couple of cars. For now, Aston Martin is the only one that supports it. Hyundai and Kia made promises to support it, as would Porsche.

Now you might be asking what iPhones are eligible for this update. Well, it starts with the iPhone SE, second generation. iPhone 11 and later are supported. The iPhones X, XS, and XS Max are not supported with this new update.