Farsight News, October 31: Apple China's official website has updated its Apple Intelligence feature page and announced the rollout schedule for the first batch of features in China. Testing will begin with the latest iOS developer beta on November 4, and the features are slated for release to Chinese users alongside the official iOS 27.3 update in December. Apple also confirmed its partnership with Alibaba to integrate Qwen into select Apple Intelligence experiences.

According to the official website, Apple Intelligence is powered by Apple's proprietary models, and users in mainland China can choose to extend certain capabilities of Siri, Visual Intelligence, and Writing Tools through Qwen. Siri can invoke Qwen when handling certain requests, and users can also ask questions about photos, PDFs, and presentations, or use Qwen to generate content in Writing Tools. Access methods include signing in with a Qwen account and using "Sign in with Apple."

The first batch of features primarily covers everyday communication and content processing. Live Translation will be integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps; Writing Tools support rewriting, proofreading, and summarizing. The Photos app offers features such as removing distractions, natural language search, and creating memory movies from descriptions, and users can also generate Genmoji from text descriptions. The official website also showcases features such as email summaries, priority notifications, and call transcript summaries.

Siri will now support typing to converse and improve its understanding of fragmented expressions and multi-turn conversation context. However, Apple explicitly stated that this update does not include Siri AI or other next-generation Apple Intelligence features announced at WWDC 2026.

In terms of device compatibility, the first batch of supported models includes iPhone 16 and later models, iPhone Duo, iPhone Air, as well as iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max; iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, and earlier models are not on the list. Apple has also listed requirements for Siri and device languages, supporting English and Simplified Chinese, with some features subject to additional language or regional restrictions.

The testing arrangements announced this time are initially aimed at compatible iPhones, and support for other platforms will be rolled out after obtaining necessary approvals. What opens on November 4 is developer beta testing; regular users will still need to wait for the system update in December to access these features through the official release.