Apple's Liquid Glass makeover and expanded Apple Intelligence tools arrive this fall, but not every phone can make the leap.

Testing with developer and public beta versions went smoothly for even the oldest supported models. But there are safety measures if upgrading to the beta or release version goes awry.

Apple introduced Visual Intelligence last year with the launch of the iPhone 16. At the time, it allowed users to take photos of objects around them and then use the iPhone's AI capability to search for them and find more information. Last month, Apple upgraded the experience by adding Visual Intelligence to the iPhone screen.

With the iOS 26 public beta now out, you may have chosen to give the new software update a try ahead of its general release in the fall.

Updated on Thursday, July 24 at 3:40 p.m. ET — Well, it's now official: you can now sign up for the iOS 26 beta. Apple officially opened the beta program for the upcoming version of iOS, set to release this fall. You can read our original article about this topic below.

Apple released the first public beta of iOS 26 on July 24, more than a month after the company announced the next iOS version at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. That

We’ve been playing around with the developer betas of Apple’s latest software, and now that we’ve spent time with iOS 26, Liquid Glass and more on actual devices, we have thoughts. From representation in Genmoji and Live Translation adventures to Apple Intelligence musings,