Image: Apple Apple has spent years slowly making green bubbles feel like a worse kind of message — no typing indicators, tiny photos, no end-to-end encryption — but those constraints

Screenshots of Apple’s new Contact Poster feature and improvements to stickers in iOS 17.
Image: Apple

Apple has spent years slowly making green bubbles feel like a worse kind of message — no typing indicators, tiny photos, no end-to-end encryption — but those constraints have always been limited to conversations in Messages; use any other app on your iPhone, and there’s generally parity with Android. But with iOS 17 later this year, Apple will expand those platform differences to phone calls, adding a big, splashy sign that your friend or family member bought the wrong phone.

The biggest change is thanks to Apple’s new Contact Poster feature for phone calls, one of Apple’s banner improvements for iOS 17. When you set a Contact Poster, you choose a photo of yourself that fills an iPhone’s entire screen along with the font that displays your name. The vibe is very similar to the customizable lock screens added with iOS 16. Then, when you call someone, your personalized contact card takes over the screen of their phone instead of the large blank page that appears today. (Notably, you can limit sharing to contacts only or require iOS to ask if you want to share it.)

A Contact Poster in iOS 17 featuring a Memoji.
Image: Apple
Your Contact Posters can feature your Memoji, too.

Sounds useful, right? It’s kind of like having a nice profile pic on a social network, which can actually be pretty important. I suspect you generally don’t trust the people without a profile picture on Twitter or Instagram. And since Contact Posters are compatible with Apple’s CallKit tools for developers, it probably won’t just be Apple’s phone app that uses them.

However, there’s no indication of this feature being offered cross-platform, so if you don’t see one when somebody calls you, that’s an immediate clue that the person might be a random person, a spammer, or — gasp! — not using an iPhone. (Though if someone doesn’t have a Contact Poster that you think must have one, you can make Contact Posters for other people in your contacts.)

Contact Posters will also show when you swap contact info between iPhones using the new NameDrop feature. Granted, it’s not clear if anyone will actually use NameDrop, but if it does gain some traction, you’re going to look pretty uncool at the bar if you aren’t on a phone that can use it.

An image showing Apple’s NameDrop feature between two iPhones.
Image: Apple
Bump is back!

That’s how Apple is expanding green bubble problems beyond the typical green bubbles. But iOS 17 will make iMessages even worse for Android users, too. We already know that iPhones will have better tools for group chats that (so far) aren’t available to Android users. But Apple is also working on a secret weapon that could turn into a tool for ultra iPhone FOMO: stickers.

Yes, I know. Who uses stickers? I don’t, but with iOS 17, I might. I really like that you’ll be able to drop any normal emoji as a sticker, which means you’ll be able to use way more emoji as reactions. (Finally!) And with the ability to make your own stickers from photos, I can imagine group chats filling up with their own meme-y and jokey stickers like what you might already see with custom emoji in Slack and Discord.

Maybe these changes won’t make a difference. Who makes phone calls anymore, anyway? And as excited as I am about stickers, I’m not convinced they’re going to catch on. But if iPhone users take a liking to these new features, it’ll be yet another way Apple creates even more space between iPhone users and Android users.

Apple has shown no interest in making iOS friendlier to green bubbles: it hasn’t caved to Google’s pleas to adopt RCS, and CEO Tim Cook would rather you just buy an iPhone. Based on these new features shown for iOS 17, the company seems happy to further that divide.


You may also be interested in this

Apple boosts iPhone, Mac …

The amount of money Apple will pay you to trade in a previous-generation iPhone just increased. The same holds true for Mac and iPad. (via Cult of Mac - Tech

Google Announces End Date…

Google has announced that first- and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats will lose support in October 2025, disabling their connected features (via ArsTechnica). After October 25, 2025, these devices will no

Apple shares hit new all-…

In Nasdaq trading today, shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) rose $1.19, or 0.63%, to $189.25, a new all-time closing high. Apple today also set a new all-time intraday high of

Take 20% off a CaliCase w…

Although many phones sport some form of water resistance, it's never a good idea to let your iPhone take a swim. Instead, slip your phone into a waterproof case from

AI Browser Dia Launches P…

The Browser Company's Dia app is now open to anyone on Mac. It's the first time the AI-powered browser has been widely available since its beta launch in June. Following

This test shows how bad A…

Macworld It’s no secret that Apple Intelligence lags behind the likes of Google Gemini and ChatGPT when it comes to things like image creation and conversational chatting. Apple’s suite of

Apollo for Reddit is shut…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Apollo, one of the most beloved iOS apps used to browse Reddit, will be shutting down due to the company’s new API pricing that

Apple leads smartphone sa…

iPhone 16 Pro comes in four stunning finishes: black titanium, natural titanium, white titanium, and desert titanium. Data from Stocklytics shows that Apple, for two successive years, is the biggest
X

A whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics to evoke some serious computer nostalgia. Supports a custom menu, custom header image, custom background, two footer widget areas, and a full-width page template. I updated Stuart Brown's 2011 masterpiece to meet the needs of the times, made it responsive , got dark mode, custom search widget and more.You can download it from tigaman.com, where you can also find more useful code snippets and plugins to get even more out of wordpress.