iOS 18 hidden feature, supports T9 dialing!

In the first beta version of iOS 18, Apple finally added support for T9 dialing in the Phone app. After upgrading, enter the Phone-Dialer keyboard and enter the name of the contact you need to find. The matching contacts will be displayed above the keyboard.

For example, when you press a key, the T9 function not only considers the individual letters represented by the key, but also predicts the most likely word you are trying to type. iOS 18 combines all possible letter combinations to filter the results of contacts. However, Chinese search is not currently supported, and subsequent versions may be optimized.

Additionally, when you enter a new number in the phone dialer screen, it now gives you two options to add it to your contacts or add a new contact. Previously, only the Add Number option appeared.

In addition, what is unexpected is that the performance of the iPhone can be improved after upgrading to iOS 18 testing.

According to data from the Geekbench platform shared by X blogger INIYSA, on iOS 17.5.1, the Core ML neural engine inference score of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is usually around 6000. But after upgrading to the iOS 18 beta, thanks to iOS 18's optimization of Apple's self-developed chips, this score soared to 7816, an increase of 25% over before.

Part of the performance boost this time around may be thanks to a new Core ML type that Apple calls MLtensor.

In addition to the overall performance improvement, Apple also shared the performance improvements of iPhone 15 Pro on specific machine learning models under iOS 18 in the WWDC video for developers. For example, MobileNet v3 increased by 2%, ALBERT increased by 66%, and SSD MobileVit v2 performance increased by 700%.

iPhone 15 Pro users may be tempted to upgrade to iOS 18, but iOS 18 is currently in the testing phase and there are too many unstable factors. It is not recommended to upgrade the main phone. Apple is expected to release iOS 18 Beta 2 next week. The first public beta is expected to be released in July, and the official version will have to wait until the new iPhone 16 is released in September.