14 DAY TRIAL // Using an iPhone has been a crazy roller coaster ride lately, and without a doubt, 2017 was one of Apple’s most difficult years since the debut of its smartphone.
Leaving the battery saga aside, which is slowly becoming a thing of the past, the software struggle that Apple itself created made way too many people think about migrating to Android.
It all started with the first builds of iOS 11, which came with bugs far worse than what you can expect from developer of beta releases, and continued with the launch of stable versions, which themselves included issues that never existed in Apple software.
Despite the Cupertino-based tech giant giving several attempts at fixing all these problems and delivering a more refined iOS experience, version 11 turned out to be more or less the Windows Vista of iOS. This made iOS 12 a highly-anticipated release that many Apple customers were eagerly looking forward to.
There’s been a lot of talk regarding iOS 12, and reliable sources claimed that Apple would put the focus less on new features and more on performance refinements and security improvements in an attempt to fix everything that went wrong with iOS 11. This certainly made sense, but at the same time, it was also disappointing for those people who wanted to see new features finally landing on their iPhones.
One of the main concerns, however, was that Apple would once again leave behind older iPhone models, a move which aligns with the company’s strategy and which is absolutely normal given the increasing focus on new hardware. New features require latest-generation hardware, and tech companies, including Apple, constantly give up on older products.
Surprisingly, Apple decided to make iOS 12 compatible with all devices that were supported by iOS 11, which means that it can be installed on everything from iPhone 5s to iPhone X. This is by all means good news for everyone, but as with every release, this doesn’t mean that iOS 12 would run flawlessly on older hardware.
“iOS 12. Give it to me.”
And yet, here I am running the first build of iOS 12 on an iPhone 6s Plus without any major bug and, what’s even more impressing, with a substantial performance boost.
Just when I thought that the old 6s Plus is getting obsolete, iOS 12 makes it feel substantially faster, more responsive, and for some reason, run longer per charge despite still using the original battery. The first thing I noticed after installing iOS 12 on the 6s Plus is that apps loading times have been significantly reduced and it takes way less time to close them.
Apple’s update that makes it possible to interact with the OS even when the apps launch and close certainly contributes to this, and this does make the iPhone feel more responsible. I’ve seen Apple users saying that their old iPhones feel like brand new, and while I wouldn’t go that far, I still think that iOS 12 brings a nearly 50 percent performance boost on old hardware.
I won’t talk about the new features coming to users with iOS 12, but the fluidity that this release seems to bring is absolutely impressive. As I see it, it’s Apple’s way to say I’m sorry to all those customers whose devices have been deliberately slowed down because of old batteries, without them even knowing about it. What better way to fix a slowdown than making devices feel faster?
Without a doubt, things can only improve from this point on. This is just the first beta and Apple will use the feedback to refine the performance even more, so future builds and even the stable release should bring a noticeable improvement in this regard.
I’ve used an iPhone X running iOS 12 and the difference from iOS 11 isn’t so noticeable when it comes to speed and performance, mostly because the latest-generation hardware was already up to the task to run everything smoothly. But after the iOS 11 fiasco, iOS 12 clearly brings new life to my iPhone 6s Plus, so I really can’t wait to see how this OS update evolves in the coming months.