Apple has confirmed that Apple Intelligence is coming to iPhones in mainland China. Testing begins on 4 November in a developer beta of iOS 27.3, and the public release is planned for December.
The China version leans on a local partner. Apple says it has teamed up with Alibaba so that Qwen, the company’s AI assistant, can answer certain requests inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence.
What is in the first batch
Apple’s Chinese newsroom post lists a long set of features: Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone, Writing Tools for rewriting, proofreading and summaries, Visual Intelligence, Clean Up in Photos, Genmoji, natural-language search and memory movies in Photos, and Priority emails and summaries in Mail. Notification summaries, Reduce Interruptions in Focus, call and audio-note transcript summaries, and Type to Siri are on the list as well.
Live Translation also works face to face through AirPods 4 with noise cancellation and AirPods Pro 2 and newer, as long as the earbuds have current firmware and are paired with an iPhone running the feature.
Where Qwen comes in
When Siri decides a question needs wider knowledge, it can pass the request to Qwen. Users can also ask questions about photos, PDFs and slide decks. Apple says people reach Qwen either by signing in to a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple, and that the Compose tool in Writing Tools lets Qwen draft text from scratch.
Qwen is an add-on for particular tasks. The rest of the feature set is described as running on generative models Apple built itself.
Supported phones and what is missing
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| iPhones | iPhone 16 and newer, iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max |
| Language | Both Siri and the device set to English and Chinese (Simplified) |
| Beta | From 4 November |
| Public release | December, with iOS 27.3 |
The update leaves out Siri AI and the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features Apple announced at WWDC 2026. Apple says support on other platforms will follow once the necessary approvals are in place.
Apple has not given an exact date for the December release.
