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iOS 11 and Old Phones
So, iOS 11 is almost upon us. I wasn’t one of those mad people who stuck the betas on their primary devices but this weekend I found a way to get the Gold Master onto my phone. Now this is not an indication of impatience but a line in sand as to whether Apple’s new operating system would be something that would kill or cure my phone or if I have to make a bigger financial decision.
As I have mentioned many times before I have been rocking an iPhone 6 since its release. The main reason for not upgrading was the fact that the models that came after it really didn’t entice me but my now very old phone still did everything I needed it to do. But over time I have found it a little bit laggy. I know that this could be a result of cruft as with any OS so I thought I would see if the 11th release of the mobile operating system could save my device and thus save me money, well, at least in the near future.
So with access to the final release of iOS 11 I upgraded my phone and then went straight onto reset it as a new device. The results have been surprising.
The first impressions were that my phone was much snappier but I know that the Apple dev team have done a lot to minimise and speed up animations and transitions between apps so this may be a placebo effect but it does feel faster. I did have an issue that when I clicked on a text box it took a couple of seconds to bring up the keyboard which was a pain. With iOS 11 this has most certainly improved. Now this could be to do with the update or the fact that I erased all content and settings. The jury is out on this one but I am happy with the result and think it could be a combination of the two.
Generally as a rule of thumb I would argue against installing such a new operating system on such and old device but so far things seem rosey. The new features seem to work well and to be honest there have been a couple of ‘glitches’ but I think I may be able to put these down to a new OS and the iPhone generally reindexing and doing its stuff.
I can’t talk yet about battery life as I am in the first 48 hours but for now, for me it seems no worse than before I upgraded.
The big question for me is now long this will keep up. The 6 is now down in the bowels of the devices that Apple would like to support but if like me, you are clinging on to older technology it may well be worth giving iOS 11 a go.
Obviously proceed with caution on upgrade day and don’t take my word that a full reset could make things better (backup people) but for now it seems to be working for me and iOS 11 is a gorgeous operating system for which my full thoughts will come in a following post.
Author
Paul Wright