iPhone’s operating system takes cues from Android

Apple unveiled its new operating system that will run the iPhone and iPad, called iOS 9, at its annual WWDC event. And some of its features are extremely similar to those found on some Android phones.

Some of the new Siri and Spotlight features, which will have a huge impact on how people use their iOS devices, can be said to be a direct copy of Google Now.

There’s also the battery-saving feature, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of Apple, but has been featured in Android phones for years.

The new Siri Siri is combining with your iPhone’s Spotlight search feature to become more ‘proactive’. That means your iPhone will essentially learn your behaviour and figure out your routine and agenda based on your apps, time and location to make useful proactive suggestions for you in a new Siri/Spotlight screen when you swipe right.

Siri will also pick out from your emails and calendar any upcoming meetings you have, and it’ll suggest the relevant contacts around the appropriate time. It’ll also make location-based suggestions for restaurants, coffee places or what kind of shopping there is in the area you’re in. If this sounds familiar, that ’s because you’ve probably heard about Google’s Now service, which is also available in Apple’s App Store for your iOS devices.

The main difference between Siri and Google Now is that the information Siri gathers for you isn’t being sent to the cloud for processing when Google Now sends all your information to Google. This addresses privacy concerns some may have when using these services.


Low-power mode Another Android-style feature we were surprised to find in iOS 9 was the ‘low-power mode’, which would give you three hours more battery life than normal usage when you need it, but there wasn’t much information given on what impact it would have on your device’s performance.

For now, we can say what the ‘power saver mode’ does on Android phones like the Galaxy S6, which could give you an idea of how battery-saving measures would affect an iPhone running iOS 9. Some settings could change, like reducing the display’s brightness and shortening the time for the screen to ‘timeout’ or go to sleep. It could also turn off vibrations when you get a notification or call, and slow down some of the internal hardware, which in turn slows down the device’s performance