According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to release iOS 18.1 to the public on October 28th, which will include some of the first Apple Intelligence features.

This goes against previous expectations of a mid October launch, but Gurman says that this is because the company is taking its time to make sure they eliminate any bugs, and also to make sure their private cloud compute servers can handle all of the traffic from millions of public users installing the update.
iOS 18.1 features

With iOS 18.1 potentially releasing on October 28th, that means iPhone 16 users can finally use some of the Apple Intelligence features that were promised, just over a month after the phone launched. Although, some of the features shipping in iOS 18.1 might not be the most appealing.

Upon installing the update, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 users will be able to try out the following features:

Writing Tools
New Siri UI (though the truly new experience won’t be out until later)
Notification Summaries
Memory Creation in Photos
Clean Up in Photos
Intelligent Breakthrough with Notifications

Apple Intelligence rollout

However, some of the more appealing features are still ahead, and will slowly roll out between now and the spring:

October: iOS 18.1, with the features listed above
December: iOS 18.2, with ChatGPT support, Genmoji, and Image Playground
Early 2025: iOS 18.3 or iOS 18.4 with new Siri rollout