IOS 27 Beta Reveals Visual Intelligence Coming to Wearable Device
What You Need to Know
- Apple’s iOS 27 beta contains code for device B790 with dual cameras positioned on either side of user’s head.
- B790’s Visual Intelligence system would identify landmarks, text, and objects, with Siri responding based on camera detection.
- Device codename doesn’t clearly match existing rumors for AirPods Pro 3 or Apple smart glasses expected in late 2027.
- System prompt aligns with reports that camera-equipped AirPods stems are designed for environmental reading, not photography.
App designer Sam Henri Gold dug through the second iOS 27 developer beta and found code referencing a product codenamed B790, complete with a system prompt describing how Visual Intelligence should behave on it. The prompt specifically mentions “two images from cameras on either side of the user’s head,” which is a fairly direct description of a wearable that sees what its owner sees.
The codename doesn’t map cleanly onto existing rumors. AirPods Pro 3 has reportedly carried the codename B788, while Apple’s smart glasses have been linked to N50, putting B790 somewhere between the two without a clean answer. That ambiguity has pushed speculation toward both camera-equipped AirPods and a glasses product, since both are expected to lean on Visual Intelligence as a core feature.
What the system prompt actually describes
The prompt lists landmarks, text, and known objects as examples of what the cameras would identify, with Siri responding based on what the lenses detect. That’s the same basic loop Visual Intelligence already runs on iPhone 15 Pro and newer, where pointing a camera at something surfaces contextual information through Siri. The wearable version would just remove the step of pulling out a phone.
Bloomberg had previously reported that cameras built into AirPod stems were never intended for photos or video, only for reading the user’s environment. That framing fits exactly what this system prompt describes, which gives the AirPods interpretation slightly more grounding than the glasses angle.
Both products are currently slated for late 2027, a timeline that already slipped once. Finding this kind of infrastructure code baked into an early iOS 27 beta suggests the software scaffolding is being built well ahead of any hardware announcement, which is consistent with how Apple typically stages these things across its platforms, including recent work tied to Apple Intelligence feature rollouts.
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