Apple promised a new Siri at WWDC 2024. It still hasn't shipped. iOS 27 is the make-or-break moment.
Two years ago, Apple stood on stage at WWDC 2024 and showed off what a truly intelligent Siri could look like. Personal context — Siri understanding your messages, emails, and notes to give relevant answers. Onscreen awareness — Siri seeing what's on your screen and helping with it. Cross-app actions — Siri completing tasks that span multiple apps. The crowd was excited. The features were promised for iOS 18.
None of them shipped in iOS 18. Or iOS 18.1. Or iOS 18.2. Or iOS 26. Apple kept delaying, kept apologizing, kept promising the features were coming. iOS 27, expected to be revealed at WWDC in June 2026 and released in September, is now the target. And this time, the scope of what's coming is significantly larger than what was originally promised.
While iPhone users wait, an Android app called AGI — currently in private beta on the Play Store — is demonstrating exactly what truly agentic AI on a smartphone feels like. Using it for a week tells you more about where Siri is headed than any press release can.
What is the AGI Android app — and why does it matter for the Siri conversation?
The AGI app describes itself as the world's first on-device agentic AI that can use your phone for you. That phrase — "use your phone for you" — is worth sitting with for a moment, because it's meaningfully different from what current AI assistants do.
Current AI assistants, including today's Siri, ChatGPT on iOS, and Google Gemini, are essentially very smart question-answering tools. You ask, they answer. You give them a task with clear parameters, they complete it. But they operate in a conversation window — they don't reach out to other apps, they can't autonomously book an Uber or post to Instagram without you doing the final confirmation steps through the app itself.
The AGI app uses a vision-language model — an AI that can see and interpret what's on your phone screen, understand UI elements, and take actions within apps. You tell it "book me an Uber to my office" and it opens the Uber app, enters the destination, selects the ride type, and confirms the booking. You tell it "post this photo to Instagram with a caption" and it does it. The AI is operating the phone rather than just talking to you about operating the phone.
This is what agentic AI means in practice. The agent doesn't wait for you to click through each step — it handles the complete task from start to finish, checking back with you only when it genuinely needs a decision that has significant consequences.
iOS 27 Siri — five things Apple is planning
Reports point to a comprehensive Siri overhaul in iOS 27 that goes well beyond the three delayed features from WWDC 2024. Here's what's expected.
First, a dedicated Siri app. Apple is building a standalone Siri application — similar to how you'd use ChatGPT or Claude as a central hub for AI interactions. The app will show your conversation history, let you upload photos and documents for context, and give you a toggle to switch between voice and text modes. This is the interface shift that makes Siri feel like a proper AI tool rather than a voice command shortcut.
Second, Siri in the Dynamic Island. For queries that take more time to process — complex web searches, multi-step tasks, file analysis — Siri's progress will appear in the Dynamic Island at the top of the screen. This means you can start a Siri task, go back to using your phone normally, and track completion without the interface being interrupted. On iPhone 17 and later models with the Dynamic Island, this will feel seamless.
Third, Siri replacing Spotlight. Apple is reportedly replacing the system-wide Spotlight search (accessed by swiping down on the home screen) with a Siri-powered version. Instead of just matching app names, contacts, and files, the new search will understand natural language queries and generate intelligent responses drawing from your personal data and the web simultaneously.
Fourth, agentic capabilities system-wide. The most significant planned change is Siri becoming a true system agent — able to take actions across multiple apps without you manually switching between them. Book a restaurant, then add it to Calendar, then message the friend you're meeting — all in one instruction. This is the AGI app's core capability, coming to iPhone.
Fifth, Google Gemini as the underlying engine. Apple and Google's multi-year deal puts a custom Gemini model — reportedly comparable to Gemini 3 — as the intelligence backbone for Siri's more complex tasks. Apple's own on-device models handle personal data and device context. Gemini handles the broader reasoning, web knowledge, and multi-step planning. Apple may also be running some Siri queries on Google's Tensor Processing Unit servers for heavy computational tasks.
Third-party chatbot extensions — ChatGPT's monopoly is ending
Since iOS 18, ChatGPT has been the only third-party AI that Siri can hand off to for complex queries. When Siri can't answer something itself, it offers to ask ChatGPT instead. iOS 27 is expected to break that exclusivity — allowing Claude (Anthropic) and potentially Gemini as direct Siri extensions alongside ChatGPT. For users who prefer one AI over another, this means you'll be able to route Siri's handoffs to your preferred service.
For Indian users who use Claude for work or Claude Code for development, the ability to trigger Claude directly through Siri voice commands is a practical quality-of-life improvement. You could say "Hey Siri, ask Claude to review this code" rather than manually opening the Claude app.
What this means for Indian iPhone users specifically
India is one of Apple's fastest-growing markets — iPhone sales in India have been growing at double-digit rates as the premium smartphone segment expands and Apple's Foxconn manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu scales up production. But Apple Intelligence, as of early 2026, is still not available in India. The features are restricted to English (US) and a handful of other language variants.
iOS 27's Siri overhaul, powered by Google's Gemini model, changes the India picture. Google's Gemini has strong Indian language support built in from years of Google Search, Google Assistant, and YouTube data across Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Bengali. A Gemini-backed agentic Siri that actually understands Tamil or Hindi voice commands for tasks like booking train tickets on IRCTC, making UPI payments through GPay, or ordering on Swiggy would be transformatively more useful for Indian users than the current Siri experience.
The IRCTC use case specifically is worth calling out. Booking Indian Railways tickets through IRCTC involves a notoriously complicated interface — login, passenger details, train selection, seat selection, payment, captcha. An agentic Siri that can navigate this the same way the AGI Android app navigates Uber would save Indian travelers real time and frustration on a service they use constantly.
Whether iOS 27's Siri features launch with Indian English and Indian language support from day one remains to be confirmed. Apple's track record on India rollouts suggests a delay — features often reach India 3-6 months after US launch. But the Gemini foundation makes eventual strong Indian language support more likely than it would have been with Apple's own models.
The AGI app on Android — should Indian Android users try it?
The AGI app is currently in private beta on the Google Play Store as of March 2026. It's not publicly available for all users yet — you need to apply for beta access. The core capability — a vision-language model that can see your screen and operate apps — is exactly the kind of feature that Google is also building into Gemini on Android through its Project Astra work.
For Indian Android users on Pixel phones or high-end Samsung Galaxy devices, the direction is clear: your phone's AI assistant will become capable of autonomously completing multi-step tasks across apps within the next one to two software generations. Gemini on Android is already partway there with its ability to draft emails, set reminders, and search the web within the assistant interface. The agentic leap — operating third-party apps — is the next step Google is actively working on.
TamilTech's take
The AGI Android app and iOS 27's Siri plans are pointing at the same destination: a phone assistant that actually does things rather than just telling you how to do things. The gap between "tell me how to book IRCTC tickets" and "book my IRCTC ticket for Chennai to Mumbai on Tuesday, window seat, 2AC" is enormous in practical value for Indian users. Apple is aiming for iOS 27. Google is working toward it on Android. Whoever gets there first — and whoever does it well in Indian languages — will have a genuine competitive advantage in India's premium smartphone market. Indian iPhone users in particular have been patient with Apple's AI delays. iOS 27 is where that patience either gets rewarded or definitively runs out.
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