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Nov 05, 2024

Apple’s Next Update Surprises iPhone Users—This Completely Changes Your Phone

Forget Apple Intelligence—this major change is confirmed. No one saw this coming from Apple—but it is, and it’s also coming earlier than expected. Forget iOS 18.1; the real change starts with iOS

Forget Apple Intelligence—this major change is confirmed.

No one saw this coming from Apple—but it is, and it’s also coming earlier than expected. Forget iOS 18.1; the real change starts with iOS 18.2, which now looks surprisingly likely to hit iPhones in early December, some time before it was thought due. The biggest surprise though, is the change it brings to your phone itself.

Putting Apple Intelligence’s next iteration to one side, the game-changing update will be the option to set default apps for calling and messaging. While we had expected movement on browsers, password managers and app stores, these additions came as a huge surprise when confirmed last month for users worldwide, not just in Europe, where the Digital Markets Act had promoted such changes in the first place.

While messaging, browsing and app stores have received significant attention, the one that has been overlooked is calling. That’s a surprise because it is perhaps the biggest update of all when it comes to user security and privacy. While changing Apple’s Safari or App Store or new Passwords app or iMessage is useful, in reality those won’t make you safer. Apple’s own apps are market-leading, if you put aside the issue with fully secure messaging being only within Apple’s walled garden for now.

But calling is different. You will now have the option to select an end-to-end encrypted calling app for the first time as your default. This is exceptionally good news. “In iOS and iPadOS 18.2 and later, a user may select an app other than the Phone or FaceTime apps to place calls,” Apple says, providing advice to developers whose apps “place phone calls, for instance using services such as Voice over IP (VoIP),” as to how they become the default calling app.

With that setting changed, “tapping on a telephone number in a contact card initiates an attempt to place the call using [the new default] app.” Developers are also advised that they can use a “call fall back to the operating system to handle as a cellular phone call,” when their app can’t handle a particular phone number.

Apple iOS 18.2—new default calling app setting

I already default to WhatsApp or Signal calling where my contacts are on those platforms. I do this through the favorite option in Apple’s phone dialer. You can also set a default calling option for each contact. But this is all an irritating faff. A set once and forget is a game-changer here.

WhatsApp, for example, enables you “to use the keypad to make a voice call to people or businesses not saved to your contacts,” which means it should provide a fantastic, fully encrypted default calling option come iOS 18.2. FaceTime Audio also works for encrypted calling—but the problem in setting it as the default is that it will only work for contacts within Apple’s ecosystem—just like iMessage.

So, why is this so important? CISA, the U.S. government’s cybersecurity agency, says that “when you use your mobile device to call a friend,” you should “use a properly vetted secure messaging app with end-to-end encryption and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) functionality for text messages and voice calls.” This, the agency says, addresses the risk of interception by threat actors.” Without this, it says, “you can’t be entirely sure that your voice calls are secure.”

It’s no different to end-to-end encrypted messaging in this way, and it’s why there is so much noise around other comms platforms such as Zoom and Teams offering fully encrypted video (and audio) communications. As Apple says of FaceTime, “the audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple can’t decrypt the data.”

Just as with messaging, my strong advice is to change the default calling app to a secure VoIP option when it’s available. As I’ve commented before, “while that might seem unimportant in the US or Europe—depending on what you’re up to, of course, in other parts of the world—South East Asia, China, Africa—it’s critical,” with billions of minutes of calls already carried over the platform.

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