Your iPhone or Android phone is about to become even more tightly woven into the nondigital aspects of your life. That's one of the main takeaways from iOS 16 and Android 13, the latest mobile software updates from Apple and Google, coming later this year. Both tech giants want to turn your phone into an electronic wallet for storing your legal ID, pushing your phone closer to your identity than ever before. The companies also continue to improve the way phones communicate with cars, smart home gadgets and other everyday devices.
Both iOS 16 and Android 13 are filled with tweaks and new features, some of which are more important than digital wallets and speedier connections (like Apple's Safety Check tool for protecting domestic abuse victims, and Google's new privacy updates). But the overlap between the two operating systems underscores the phone's changing role in our lives. Based on Apple's and Google's latest announcements, what's happening around your phone will be just as important as what's happening on your phone.
The more intimately our phones are tied to daily essentials like wallets, credit cards, cars and home appliances, the harder it's going to be to move away from them (or switch between iPhone and Android). The concept isn't new; the industry has moved in this direction for years. But the changes in iOS 16 and Android 13 bring important refinements to Apple's and Google's respective approaches that will likely accelerate such efforts.
The digital wallet was a big focus during both Apple's iOS 16 announcement and Google's Android 13 preview. The most significant change coming to Apple Pay is a new option called Apple Pay Later, which splits the cost of a purchase into four equal installments over six weeks. With iOS 16, identification cards stored in Apple Wallet can also be used to verify your age within apps. The addition comes after Apple first added support for digital IDs last year.
Google, meanwhile, detailed a major revamp to its Wallet app during its I/O conference last month that brings it up to speed with Apple. The new Google Wallet will store personal documents like payment and transit cards, vaccination records, boarding passes and student IDs, much like Apple Wallet. Google is also working with government agencies to support digital IDs.
Taken together, Apple's and Google's updates represent another step toward their common objective of making physical wallets obsolete -- a shift that'll inevitably make us even more reliant on mobile devices.
Google reiterated this ambition just before detailing the new updates at Google I/O in May.
"In fact, these days there are only two things I don't leave home without: my phone and my wallet," Sameer Samat, Android and Google Play's vice president of product management, said on stage. "So the question is, can my phone replace my wallet?"