It’s that time of year again. Apple The executives took the stage to announce some new features and additions coming to the iPhone with the next iOS 27 update. While Apple primarily focused on refining the fundamentals (read: fix what’s broken), the company also introduced some useful additions that make iOS 27 feel like more than just a maintenance update.
Sure, Google solved some of our annoyances with the Android 17 update adding features like updated emojis and the ability to create widgets just by describing them. But Apple still came up with some great ideas this year, including some AI features (an area Google usually loves to remind everyone it’s ahead of).
And after seeing the iOS 27 announcements, there are some features I really wish Google would steal and bring to Android.
Android needs to take parental controls more seriously
Apple spent much of its WWDC keynote focusing on the new and improved parental controls It comes with iOS 27. And as someone who will soon enter the parenthood phase, I can absolutely see why Android users would want some of these features on their phones too.
Apple has added a number of thoughtful improvements to parental controls in iOS 27. It’s no longer just about restricting app downloads based on age ratings, but this time the company is going much further.
One of the biggest additions is Time Allowances, which allows parents to set limits for specific app categories rather than individual apps. For example, you can decide how much time your child can spend on entertainment apps versus educational apps.
There are also more granular controls throughout the system. If a child visits a website they have never accessed before, parents can approve it right from their own device before access is granted. Apple has also expanded its communications security tools.
In addition to automatically blurring nudity, iOS 27 can now also detect and blur graphic or violent content in shared images and videos.
Google Family Link lacks most of these capabilities and it seems like it’s time for Google to give its parental controls a much-needed update.
It’s time to bring shortcut-like automation to Android
As advanced as Android has become when it comes to artificial intelligence and automation, it still doesn’t have a true equivalent to Apple’s Shortcuts app. Google offers pixel rulesbut what it can do is quite limited.
Samsung is really the only Android brand that offers something similar with its Modes and routines feature, but it’s exclusive to Samsung and not available on Android as a whole.
Google really needs to bring a native automation app like this to Android. With iOS 27, Apple has made it even easier to create shortcuts and automations. To create shortcuts, users no longer need to search through complex menus. Instead, they can simply describe what they want using natural language and the system builds the automation using AI.
With Google pressing Gemini so aggressively on Android that it seems like the perfect time for the company to create a similar app. Android already has AI capabilities; you just need a proper system-level automation application to tie it all together.
Siri mode in the Camera app
This is something I’ve been asking for on Android for years. We are in 2026 and there are still android phones which don’t even support basic things like native QR code recognition directly through the camera app. Meanwhile, Apple has gone even further by integrating Siri mode directly into the camera experience.
With Siri mode, you can simply point your iPhone at something and take action immediately. Point it to a plate of food and you can identify nutritional information. Write it down on a restaurant bill and you can help split it. You can even point to a flyer or poster and have it automatically create a calendar event with the relevant details.
What I really like is that all of this is built right into the camera app. It’s not that Android lacks these capabilities. In fact, most of them already exist and Google Lens is available in the camera app of many Android phones. The problem is that these functions remain fragmented between applications and services.
Google can already recognize objects and information through AI, but it often needs to be started Gemini livewhich is actually included in Google Lens. Similarly, Google Lens can identify all kinds of things, but that often requires opening the app. If Google forces Gemini mode directly into the camera app on all Android devices, the overall experience would be much more consistent and useful. Maybe that means evolving Google Lens.
Spatial reframing
Google already offers Automatic reframing on Pixel phoneswhich can help change the framing of the photo you’ve already taken. But Apple goes one step further with a new feature called Spatial Reframing in iOS 27.
What makes Spatial Reframing interesting is that it not only allows you to extend the framework using generative AI. In fact, you can change the perspective of a photo after you’ve captured it. In addition to changing the 2D frame, you can change the entire camera angle and then have the AI generate and fill in the missing parts of the image to match the new frame.
It’s a much more ambitious take on photo editing than simply expanding the edges of an image, and I think something that many Android users and especially Google Photos users would benefit.
Google killed Pixel Studio at the worst possible moment
The timing couldn’t be more ironic in this case. It’s only been a few days since Google officially removed the Pixel Studio app on Pixel devices, while Apple has gone in the opposite direction by introducing a significantly improved Image Playground app in iOS 27.
The previous version of Image Playground was mainly limited to generating emojis and cartoon-style images, but the new version goes much further. Apple now allows users to generate more realistic and genuinely useful images through its Private Cloud Compute infrastructure.
Like most modern AI image generators, you can choose any style you want, whether it’s realistic, cartoon-like, artistic, or something else entirely. But what I really like is that Apple thinks beyond just generating images.
You can tell the application exactly where the image will be used. For example, whether you want a horizontal image, vertical image, or even a wallpaper, it will optimize the output accordingly.
It may seem like a small thing, but it’s exactly the kind of detail that turns AI imaging from a gimmick to a truly useful tool.
