AT&T Isn’t supporting New iPhone Handoff Feature

My friend Jeff Carlson reports today for CNET not every cellular carrier supports Apple’s iPhone Handoff feature, new to iOS 27. The functionality “lets you use one phone number between two devices so you can switch between them whenever you want [and] makes it easy to move back and forth between devices optimized for the moment,” Apple says. Carlson notes “your texts, calls, voicemails and Find My location automatically follow you to the phone in use.”

“At launch, however, the feature is supported only by T-Mobile in the US, and the carrier is charging $5 a month to use it,” Carlson wrote on Wednesday. “And while Verizon support is expected by the end of the year, AT&T appears to be sitting this feature out for now.”

As a longtime AT&T customer, dating back to the Cingular days, Carlson’s story is a buzzkill. I’m privileged to be a regular iPhone reviewer—in fact, I’m in early testing of an iPhone 18 Pro Max (in burgundy) sent to me by Apple—and, as such, it’s historically been a bit of a pain in the ass to juggle two active phones. To really use my new 18 Pro Max, I had to dissociate my phone number from my year-old iPhone Air. If I want to switch back, then I have to manually re-pair my number—which makes my review unit worthless for calls. From an accessibility standpoint, then, iPhone Handoff serves as a de-facto assistive technology to the extent it prevents the rigamarole, which imposes cognitive load. To Carlson’s point, I theoretically could switch between my two phones with nary a care in the world. The problem is, as an AT&T customer, the company isn’t supporting iPhone Handoff, so dance I must. It’s definitely a first-world problem to have, but that doesn’t discount the meaningful accessibility gains iPhone Handoff can provide someone in my shoes.

T-Mobile is charging $5 per month for iPhone Handoff, while Verizon is promising support by year’s end.