New feature: Complete phone contact history accessible in iOS 26
The iPhone already saves when you have spoken to whom and for how long. However, the interface will be greatly improved with iOS 26.
This phone was not yet able to save calls.
(Image: anto4ka/Shutterstock.com)
Apple's redesign of its telephony application on the iPhone under iOS 26 comes with a potentially privacy-relevant change – at least as far as the evaluation of sensitive data is concerned: the new operating system makes it much easier to track the user's conversations – by anyone who has access to the mobile phone. iOS has had an extensive call history for years. However, this was rather stupid: on the device itself, there was only a (sometimes very) long list that you had to scroll through. Analyses were only possible with applications that exported the history as an iPhone backup so that it could then be edited on a Mac, for example.
Data already there, but now easier to find
With iOS 26, the information is now organised: Each contact has their own call history. As before, the iPhone records when the call was made, how long it lasted and whether it was an incoming or outgoing call. It also records whether a call has been missed. Such metadata is of great interest to law enforcement agencies, for example, because it can be used to create relationship networks.
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What is new is that the history can now be found more easily. To achieve this, you go to the contact card of the person you are talking to and find the history there. This contains all the information mentioned, only now limited to the person.
Years of phone calls on the device
If you have not reset your device (or iCloud content) meanwhile, the data goes back a long time. A review of a test iPhone revealed phone calls dating back up to four years. Whether there is a "cut-off" here remained unclear at first. If the Phone / FaceTime section in the settings is active, the call history is also synchronized across all iCloud devices and can then be viewed there.
The new function shows what it means when data is made more easily accessible. It is not possible to prevent the recording of telephony connections by default. In addition to phone calls and FaceTime communication, the iPhone also records the metadata of WhatsApp, Teams and other video and audio communication. Instead, they must be deleted individually or as a complete list. This is not possible in the respective contact card, but only via the – as mentioned often long – overall call list.
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