The 8 best new iPhone features in iOS 17 are a big ducking deal

By Robert Leedham and Matt Tate

The beginning of June means three things: a devastating lack of Premier League football, surging aftersun sales, and Apple's annual WWDC conference. While it's Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset that's stolen most of the headlines from the event so far, the Tim Cook-helmed presentation also laid out the major software updates that iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch owners can expect to be downloading over the next few months. Granted, iOS 17 might be a more modest update than last year's lock screen-reinventing edition, but there was plenty of worthwhile stuff to come out of the event.

So what's worth looking forward to and how will it change the way you use your iPhone? From live transcription of voicemail messages to a big ducking deal for autocorrect, here are the most interesting additions.

With iOS 17, your contacts are getting some special attention. Now, when someone calls you, they’re presented in screen-filling poster form, either with a photo of your choosing or their Memoji avatar. You can also choose a font for their name. These new Contact Posters will also replace your current contact cards, making everything just look a bit more fun. Just remember to keep things clean with your photo selections if you’re prone to leaving your iPhone on the big table during meetings – you don't want to suffer a Roman Roy situation.

Most voicemail messages aren't worth the 45 or seconds or so you dedicate to them. Still, a choice few are more pressing – think grand declarations of rom-com love, usually after an ill-fated dash through an airport. In iOS 17, you’ll quickly be able to distinguish between the two, thanks to live transcription. When someone leaves you a voicemail, you’ll see whatever they’ve said dictated to you on screen, hopefully with only minimal hilarious typos.

If you’ve gone to the effort of FaceTime calling someone, it's rather annoying when they don't pick up. Now, you can punish them for their rudeness by forcing them to either watch or listen to a video or audio message you’ve left for them. Nagging parents: this is your time to shine. You’ll also soon be able to host FaceTime calls on your Apple TV, or by chucking them to the TV from your iPhone via Handoff.

Technology moves at a frightening rate, but when someone standing opposite you asks for your phone number chances are that you still resort to tediously reciting it. Possibly twice after your new bezzie mate mistyped their first attempt. No more. With iOS 17 you can share your contact details with another iPhone user using a new AirDrop feature called NameDrop. Bring your phone close to theirs and you can choose how much contact information you want to share. It works both iPhone to iPhone, and iPhone to Watch, and with other media content, too.

Setting alarms on your iPhone is nothing new, but with iOS 17 Apple seemingly wants to make dedicated alarm clocks obsolete. When you turn your phone on its side and put it on charge, a new feature called StandBy changes your Lock Screen into something that resembles a traditional alarm clock. You can select from a number of funky clock faces, or use a photo background, while widgets remain accessible. StandBy is designed to take advantage of the iPhone 14 Pro's Always-On display, which ensures you can always see the time, and it’ll automatically dim your chosen screen setup when the light dims.

It'll be particularly useful for those who already own one of those neat bedside charging stands that Belkin makes. When iOS 17 arrives, your iPhone will suddenly transform into a handy Amazon Echo Show or Google Nest Hub stand-in.

Keeping a diary is generally considered to be good for your well-being, but it's also another thing you have to remember to sling into your bag. With iOS 17, you can just use your iPhone's new Journal app instead. When you start typing out a new entry, machine learning tech kicks in to suggest information from recently used apps to integrate, such as photos taken, places visited or workouts logged. You can lock the app too, while end-to-end encryption ensures nobody (including Apple) can read what you’re putting in there.

We’ve all been baffled by some of the words our state-of-the-art smartphones suggest we swap into sentences mid-type, but iOS 17 aims to massively improve its autocorrect feature, thanks to an all-new machine learning language model for word prediction. You’ll be able to complete sentences or add in new words being suggested in predictive text by simply tapping the space bar, while iOS will be a fiercer grammar hound than ever before. Better still, it'll discern between when you actually want to type "duck" or let rip with a foul-mouthed flurry of curse words.

Two words were clearly too many when it comes to waking up Siri. Now, you can simply bark the voice assistant's name to start bossing it around. That's a whole syllable less than Alexa. Amazon should be concerned.