"iOS 12 on the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad Mini 2: It’s actually faster!"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/ios-12-on-the-iphone...

This is persuasive, but I wonder why they didn't test the SE. Maybe because the 5S is older but quite similar/appeals to the same market?

The SE is basically a 6 in the 5S form factor.

It has the 6S's internal hardware, not the 6's. So it's way more powerful than the 6, let alone the 5S.

There are actually two phones called iphone se. It was updated from iphone6 hardware to iphone6s hardware partway through it’s life cycle withou a change to the name. The updated SE is also availible in rose gold while the original was not.

That is not true at all. There’s only ever been one SE and it was always based on the 6S hardware. The closest thing to a refresh was a mid-cycle bump to the base storage.

The iPhone SE launched with 6S internals and has never been changed except for a storage bump and a price drop.

6s

Faster than ios 11. Unclear if it's faster than ios 10.

The number 1 reason is that you're operating an older, insecure version of iOS and you could get your entire device compromised just by getting a malicious text message or visiting the wrong web page.

One of the main focuses of iOS 12 was improving performance across the board, especially for older phones.

And I'm on iOS 11 on the SE, and it works just fine. So 12 should be ok.

I'm using iOS 11 on an almost 4 years old iPhone 6, and it works fine for me too.

Security updates and significant speed improvements are sufficient reason to upgrade, I'd think. Siri Shortcuts is also a pretty incredible feature if you're a power-user.

Security updates are probably the most compelling reason.

I'm extremely skeptical of claimed speed improvements. Are there third party benchmarks? Are these improvements over iOS 11, or iOS 10? iOS 11 was an absolute horror show from that and many other aspects.

Over iOS 11. And I encourage you try try iOS 12; I've been using it for three months and it's been really fast in my experience.

There were issues with the scheduler in the kernel code in iOS 11 that IIRC had lingered since iOS 7. The difference can be pretty remarkable. Basically iOS can ramp up resources where they are needed much more quickly, so one might say it’s using the CPU more efficiently. It eliminates a lot of stuttering for me. I was worried it might come at the cost of battery life but I haven’t seen many differences there besides some iteration during the beta.

Been using the beta on my 6S for the last month or so and the speed increase is noticable.

The keyboard especially feels faster and more fluid.

They’re definitely wanting to shut down the ‘apple slowed down my device!!1’ narrative with this one.

Maybe in theory security updates are worth it, but in practice if an update slows down my day-to-day usage that’s a bigger deal than some theoretical security vulnerabilities which I’ve never actually experienced on any iPhone. Especially if we’re talking about non-tech savvy users. So an update better have some compelling reasons to upgrade besides security.

Why the downvote? Is it such heresy to say that many users care more about performance than security? I’m not suggesting that security is unimportant, just that it’s not very compelling if it’s at the expense of performance. For example see all the recent Intel processor exploit patches. Personally I would take an obscure attack vector on my private desktop computer over a ~5% performance loss.

It did wonders for my 5S and 6 Plus in terms of performance.

Edit: should clarify I have been running the beta and upgraded to the GM last night. Performance during the beta cycle and release version has been fantastic.

As someone else pointed out, security is a good reason to upgrade, since iOS 10 hasn't seen updates for longer than a year and since iOS 12 is a performance focused release.

At the same time, I hate the change that came with iOS 11 for WiFi and Bluetooth in Control Center. Toggling them only disconnects them temporarily, and doesn't turn the radios off. WiFi and Bluetooth will automatically reconnect if you go to a different location or at 5 in the morning local time. So Control Center is useless if you want to turn off the radios (to save on battery, depending on your location and other factors) and/or want control on when and where they connect and/or want to stay off the grid on your own terms and also enhance security. You have to go to the Settings app to turn them off completely or use Siri, and neither of these actions are as easy to do as using Control Center. This behavior remains the same in iOS 12 too. When this change was added in iOS 11, EFF wrote an article about how harmful this new behavior is. [1]

That said, some (or many) people do like the new behavior in iOS 11, where they don't have to remember that they turned off the radios and want to connect automatically.

For security's sake, especially when you have a device that's capable of getting updates for several years, it's better to keep it up-to-date.

[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/ios-11s-misleading-ish...

Well just the other day there was a bug that causes iOS to restart if a webpage is structured in a particular way

Edit for more information: I've been using iOS 12 on my SE for a while (beta) and while in all honesty I've not really found anything particularly great, more importantly I've not had any non-beta-related issues - slowdowns or otherwise

I am looking forward to playing with shortcuts, but have yet to

This hasn't been fixed; the build that went out was the same as the golden master seeded to developers last week that was still susceptible.

Is this triggered by many "real" websites, or just by a site that's designed to trigger it, e. g. a proof of concept? Is it a security risk or just annoying?

Common theme in application security: crashes are either exploitable, or not yet exploitable. Unless the app crashes in a completely static and 100% repeatable way, there's a good chance someone is working on creating a specific, exploitable setup using it...

It was a proof of concept; something like a thousand divs overflowing a buffer or something like that. I haven't seen anyone write an exploit for it.

From the arstechnica benchmarks (linked in another comment on this page), it looks on par with iOS 10.

I think you should, it is the best iOS release since the original iOS.

The SE has the internal of 6s, and I was originally planning to upgrade my 6s Plus to Xr, but after iOS 12 update I am convinced this phone will last me another year if not more, assuming subsequent iOS update don't slow my phone again. It just felt as if it was new when it came with iOS 9.

I’ve been running the beta on my SE and my main complaint is much of the UI seems optimized for the newer, larger screens. So expect additional scrolling, etc (even with the os text size set to minimum). Feels kinda like how Gmail/Google keeps adding extra padding and reducing useful screen estate.

I've been on the beta with my SE for a few months, you should be fine.

Many of the major app developers only support two OS versions back, eg iOS 11 and iOS 12 now. If you don't upgrade then you might stop getting updates for some apps.

I was also on iOS 10 on my iPhone SE until a couple weeks ago. The blocker for me was that I wasn't able to open my credit card app anymore to see my balance, because they stopped supporting iOS 10 (there were other app updates that were pending my iOS upgrade). I upgraded to 11.4.1. I'm hoping to stay on that until iOS 13 is announced. I prefer stability, so I prefer staying on the latest minor version of each iOS release.

In my personal experience, and from reading what pretty much all other beta testers have said, iOS 12 is faster and more stable than any iOS 11 release.

iOS 12 has been significantly more stable for me than iOS 11, even back when it was in its early betas. So I wouldn't hesitate to not update.

Waiting until I'm forced, then going for the most stable minor version is my current plan.

Yeah I'm hoping 12 delivers on the performance improvements it is promising. iOS 11 all but bricked my 6 plus.

Also had a bad experience on my 6 Plus, but then I did a factory reset of the phone and it has been performing pretty well as a result

Been using it for months on my 6 and it’s great

If all the things work for you and you are ok with unpatched vulnerabilities, stay that way.

What about security updates?

You are still on iOS 10?

iOS 12 will likely not be iPhone SE's last update, since iPhone 5S got the update this year. And iOS 12 specifically focuses on performance for older devices.

Until a couple of days ago, the SE was still on sale directly from Apple. I expect many more major updates to come.

Right - it should be at least 3 years more.

Plus it’s the same as an iPhone 6s. So no reason to drop support unless you’re also going to drop that.

When it goes unless they’re making a very specific decision to remove the smallest screen size there’s going to be a LOT of phones getting cut.