Congratulations, Apple, you just caught up Pixel 3

We all have the one friend who is always late. No matter what time you tell them or how many reminders you give them, they can’t show up in time. And yet you are always happy to see them walk through the door. You knew they would get there eventually, or at least you hoped it. Well, that friend is Apple today, and the party it has finally arrived is basic conversation features. The year may be 2025, but I am happy to party as if it is 2018 – if only for a day.

I get it, Apple, it’s easy to look up to Google. Pixel designs are more fun than the iPhone, the Material 3 expressions Update looks cleaner than liquid glass, and the general AI experience is, well, better. I am also faster to recommend a pixel to someone looking for the next phone than I have ever been with an iPhone. So, of course, it makes sense for Apple to finally pinch a call feature or two from the king. Only this time do I think I’m shocked that it took so long.

After all, some of Google’s best call features have been around since I went to college. The introduced call screen on the Pixel 3 series and followed up with hold for me two years later at Pixel 5. I was envious of the first when my roommate came home from the Christmas holiday with a brand new pixel, and I experienced the other one for myself when I upgraded from my crushed Galaxy S10 before the time had been. Oddly enough, they quickly became so good and so helpful that I almost forgot that they were there – I just trusted them as if they had always existed.

But now, with Apple set to introduce its intake of both features as part of iOS 26I wonder what took so long. Didn’t we praise Google’s smart call features enough when they were new? To hear Apple tell it, the Call screening is based on the base created by Live Voicemail, which has only been around since iOS 17 at the end of 2023. Google, in comparison, has offered machine goods transcript since it launched Google Voice in 2009 – it’s pretty gap if you ask me. After all, Google did not declare that the screening process was based on leaving an answering machine, so I’m not sure why Apple feels it must be.

I suppose Google’s delay adds that Apple picks up the call assistant is not as significant – six years instead of more than eight – but I’m not sure it’s much better. I mean, Google had this found out before Gemini Was something more than a constellation, and it still sent flagship phones with just one rear camera, but Apple was too busy slowly to add the 5G support to the iPhone 12 series.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so down about iOS 26. Do I like the look of liquid glass? No, do anyone? By pinching a few long -standing Android features, at least I feel that Apple shows a sign of life. It finally looks outside the enclosed garden and finds the least green patches on the other side. Sure, these patches have been there for almost a decade, but as they say, better late than never.

Sometimes it feels like a pressure from Apple just what Google and Samsung need to raise their own game. They got a little too comfortable with the way that A user interface and Pixel ui Had been for a long time and let significant improvements fall behind smart new AI -rinks, so I hope Apple’s raid of classic conversation features makes them think a little further about what people actually need from their phones. And now that Apple introduces a customized background for iMessage calls, it feels like a matter of time before we see it coming to Android as well.

However, if there is one thing I hope to see as soon as possible, it is the trend of simplifying the camera’s interface, as shown above. Google was the king of the streamlined camera app for a long, long time, and ignores completely manual controls with the excuse for “just trust us”, and now Apple is doing the same. It is cooked everything down in the two tabs you see above, and pushes everything else into the kingdom of Camera control Or the menu on the far right, and I don’t think I like it. I was good at trusting Google’s image processing, but Apple has not built the same reputation yet.

So please, Apple, think twice before copying too much from Pixel 3. It was a great phone back in the day, but the times have changed just a little.