Apple has said that testing of Apple Intelligence in mainland China will begin on November 4 with the next iOS developer beta, according to a press release on its Chinese newsroom. The company says the features will reach the general public in December with the official release of iOS 27.3.
The announcement was first spotted by MacRumors and later reported by 9to5Mac. It adds a concrete start date to what Apple's Chinese website had already outlined about the rollout. Apple named November 4 as the start of testing, not as a confirmed release date for the first iOS 27.3 beta itself.
What is included
According to Apple, the initial release brings an improved Siri experience, including Type to Siri, along with access to Alibaba's Qwen model for certain requests. Qwen also extends to Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, letting users ask questions about photos and documents such as PDFs and presentations, or generate original content. Apple says using these features requires signing in to an account or using Sign in with Apple.
The list of features also includes Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and Phone, Genmoji, Clean Up in Photos, natural-language photo search, priority notifications, notification summaries and Smart Reply.
The new Siri powered by Apple Intelligence is not part of the China launch for now, and it remains unavailable there.
Devices and limits
The rollout is limited to iPhone at launch, with other platforms depending on further regulatory approvals. Supported models are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 lineup and later, the iPhone Air and the iPhone Duo. Both Siri and the device language must be set to either English or Simplified Chinese.
How we got here
Reuters reported in mid-July that Apple had cleared a major regulatory hurdle after lengthy discussions with Chinese authorities. On October 14, Bloomberg reported that a December launch was planned as part of iOS 27.3, without the new Siri. China's state-backed outlet The Paper later reported that Tim Cook had confirmed regulatory approval and that a test version was expected before the end of October, though that report did not include a direct quote from Cook.
Elsewhere, iOS 27.2, released on October 26, expanded the new Siri to French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Apple has said four more languages, including Traditional Chinese, are due by the end of the year.
If the schedule holds, developers in China should be able to try the features within days, with the public release following in December.
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