The good news about iOS 27 is short: your reach does not shrink. Every iPhone that ran iOS 26 runs iOS 27, all the way back to the iPhone 11 and the iPhone SE (2nd generation). Apple dropped nothing from the list. If you were worried about losing addressable users to the upgrade, you can stop.
The catch is more interesting, and it is where most reach planning goes wrong. iOS 27 runs on a 5-year span of hardware, but its headline features, the Apple Intelligence and Siri AI capabilities Apple built the release around, do not run on most of that hardware. So “iOS 27 users” is not one audience. It is at least 3, and if you target by OS version alone you will send AI-dependent campaigns to phones that cannot run them. This guide covers who actually gets what, and how to segment by device capability instead of version number. Pushwoosh is a customer engagement platform, and the segmentation this requires is something you set up once and reuse.
Every iPhone 11 and later is on the list
iOS 27 supports the full iOS 26 lineup, with no models cut:
- iPhone 17 family (17e, 17, Air, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max)
- iPhone 16 family (16e, 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, 16 Pro Max)
- iPhone 15 family (15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max)
- iPhone 14 family (14, 14 Plus, 14 Pro, 14 Pro Max)
- iPhone 13 family (13 mini, 13, 13 Pro, 13 Pro Max)
- iPhone 12 family (12 mini, 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max)
- iPhone 11 family (11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max)
- iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd generation)
Only the iPhone XS, XR, X, and older sit this one out, and they were already off at iOS 26. For push, the takeaway is clean: your delivery reach on iOS is unchanged by the upgrade. Nobody drops out of your addressable base because they moved to 27.
The reach that matters is capability, not version
This is the split that actually affects your campaigns. Running iOS 27 and running iOS 27’s AI features are two different things, and the gap between them is wide.
| Tier | Devices | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| iOS 27, no Apple Intelligence | iPhone 11, 12, 13, and 14 families, plus the standard iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, and iPhone SE 2nd and 3rd gen | Full iOS 27: performance, interface, parental controls, security. None of the Apple Intelligence or Siri AI features. |
| iOS 27 with Apple Intelligence | iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 and 17 models | Everything above, plus Siri AI, notification summaries, and the Apple Intelligence feature set. |
| iOS 27 with the heaviest on-device AI | iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max | The most demanding on-device models, the ones that need the newest chips and the most memory. |
The line for Apple Intelligence runs right through the iPhone 15 family: the standard 15 and 15 Plus do not get it, while the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max do. It is a hardware wall, not a settings toggle. The on-device models need the chip class and memory that the older phones, and the non-Pro 15, do not have, which is why a phone only a couple of years old can still sit in the no-AI tier. There is no update that changes this for an older device.
For you, this means a base that looks uniform by OS version is split hard by capability underneath. A campaign that depends on an AI feature, or that assumes the notification summary will rewrite your copy, applies to one slice of your audience and lands as normal, unsummarized push on the rest. We’ve seen teams discover this only in the post-campaign numbers, when the AI-tuned variant underperformed for no obvious reason and the reason turned out to be hardware.
Why segmenting by OS version quietly fails
Say you build a campaign around a Siri AI capability, or you rework your push copy specifically to survive the iOS 27 notification summary. Sensible work. But if the segment you send it to is “users on iOS 27,” a large share of that segment is on an iPhone 11, 12, 13, or a non-Pro 14 or 15, where none of that applies. The copy assumptions do not hold. The feature is not there. You optimized for a device tier and then sent to everyone.
It fails the other direction too. If you assume older devices are a lost cause and quietly deprioritize your iOS 27 base to avoid the AI complexity, you are underserving millions of perfectly reachable users whose only difference is that their notifications arrive unsummarized, exactly as you wrote them. That is not a worse audience. In some ways it is a simpler one to write for.
OS version tells you what software is installed. It does not tell you what the device can do. Those used to be close enough to treat as the same thing. Apple Intelligence split them apart, and iOS 27 widens the gap.
How to segment by device capability
The fix is to carry device capability as an attribute you can target on, not to infer it from the OS. Practically:
- Capture the device model on registration, so every subscriber record knows what hardware it is, not just what OS version it reports.
- Group by capability tier, not model number. Managing 31 device models is nobody’s idea of a good time; 2 or 3 buckets is enough: AI-capable, iOS 27 without AI, and older. Build these as segments off the model attribute once and reuse them.
- Gate feature-dependent campaigns on the capable tier. Anything that leans on Siri AI, notification summaries, or an Apple Intelligence surface goes to the AI-capable segment only. Everyone else gets the version of the message that does not assume those features exist.
- Write the fallback as a first-class message, not a leftover. The no-AI tier is a large, reachable audience. Its copy deserves the same care as the AI-tier version, not a stripped-down afterthought.
You already segment on tags and events for behavior and lifecycle. Device capability is the same kind of attribute. Add it to the model you already have, and the AI-versus-not split stops being something you think about per campaign and becomes something your segments handle for you.
Match your reach to what each device can do with Pushwoosh
Pushwoosh captures device and OS data on every subscriber, so you can build capability tiers once and target them for every campaign after. AI-dependent messages reach the phones that can run them, and your large no-AI audience gets copy written for how their notifications actually behave. Full reach, matched to what each device can do.
