Apple Intelligence After 2 Months: A Hands-On Review

Korean support finally arrived

Apple Intelligence started supporting Korean in May 2025. After more than a year of asking "when will Korean work," it was finally usable. The moment I went into settings on my iPhone 15 Pro and turned on Apple Intelligence, I was honestly a little excited. (Not because I'm an Apple fanboy. Okay, maybe a little.)

I've used it for about two months. Bottom line: it meets about 60% of expectations.

Mail summaries are genuinely useful

The feature I use most is email summarization in the Mail app. When your inbox loads, each email gets a one-line summary. It's surprisingly convenient. Before, I'd judge priority by subject line alone. Now I can quickly decide "do I need to open this now, or can it wait" based on the summary.

But Korean summary quality is a step below English. English emails get pretty accurate summaries. Korean emails sometimes miss the point. Especially with formal business emails, it occasionally confuses whether something is a "request" or just an "FYI."

Siri is still... Siri

I had the highest expectations for the Siri improvements, but honestly it's still lacking. Context understanding has improved somewhat. Saying "find that email from earlier" now actually locates the email mentioned in recent conversation. That used to fail completely.

But complex requests still stumble. "Schedule a meeting next Tuesday, but not in the morning, after 2 PM" requires trial and error. If you try talking to Siri as naturally as you'd talk to ChatGPT, it cuts you off mid-sentence. (It's 2025 and we're still doing this.)

The writing tools are hit-or-miss

There are writing tools available in Notes and Mail. Select text and you get options like "Friendly," "Professional," "Concise."

In English, they work pretty naturally. In Korean, things get awkward. The "Friendly" option doesn't switch to casual speech -- it just adjusts the politeness level slightly. It doesn't fully grasp the Korean honorific system. Hit "Professional" and it suddenly outputs an extremely stiff formal register that almost nobody actually uses in real business emails.

Image features are fun

Removing backgrounds in Photos, searching photos by description ("find photos taken at the beach") -- these work well. But Google Photos has been doing this for a while, so it doesn't feel groundbreaking.

Genmoji was novel for about three days. You create custom emoji and send them, but on the recipient's device they show up as images. In KakaoTalk (Korea's dominant messaging app), they just appear as photo attachments. Almost nobody around me uses iMessage, so the utility drops off fast. (I'm curious what percentage of Koreans actually use iMessage.)

Battery is a problem

With Apple Intelligence on, battery drains about 15-20% faster by feel. Not a precise measurement. I used to leave home at 100% and have about 65% by lunch. After turning on Apple Intelligence, it's more like 55%.

I turned it off for a week and back on -- there's definitely a difference. Older devices would probably suffer more. If the 15 Pro drains like this, the regular 15 might struggle.

Honest assessment after 2 months

It's not a "can't live without it" feature yet. But there are definitely "nice to have" features. Email summarization alone is worth keeping it on.

Compared to dedicated AI apps like ChatGPT or Gemini though, it falls short. Apple Intelligence operates so quietly that you barely feel like you're using AI, which is both its strength and its weakness. When you want powerful AI, you end up opening another app.

I'm looking forward to what iOS 19 brings. But Siri... seriously, please fix Siri.