Anecdotally, iOS 11 made my iPhone 6 run slower than iOS 10, but iOS 12 made it run faster than iOS 10. (This is in line with other reports and benchmarks you'll find if you go looking.) There's an awful lot of snark about iOS slowing down with each successive version, but I'm not at all convinced it's universally true. (Again, anecdotally, I'd say iOS 7 and 9–11 were guilty of that.)

At any rate, the big issue I tend to hear about Android phones getting updates is "my Android phone isn't getting updates." My iPhone 6 shipped in 2014, and iOS 12 actually ran on 2013's iPhone 5s. How many Android phones that shipped before 2016 are getting Android P? Are there Android phones that shipped in 2016 that aren't?

> Here's an awful lot of snark about iOS slowing down with each successive version, but I'm not at all convinced it's universally true. (Again, anecdotally, I'd say iOS 7 and 9–11 were guilty of that.)

It's not universally true. It's mostly true, with a couple of outliers (namely iOS 9 and iOS 11). Most of time, major iOS upgrades slow down older hardware.

I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, if not for the fact that iOS downgrades are literally impossible (outside a small window of time). Install an update and discover your phone is too slow? Either learn to live with it or buy a new phone.

> I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, if not for the fact that iOS downgrades are literally impossible (outside a small window of time). Install an update and discover your phone is too slow? Either learn to live with it or buy a new phone.

Or you could just restore from a backup, possible at any time.

Nope, you can't restore to an iOS version that isn't being actively signed by Apple's servers. Restoring a backup just puts back user data, it doesn't change your iOS version.

That's a complete lie, but okay.

https://medium.com/metodixtech/ios-how-to-downgrade-and-save...

In the first sentence of the article you linked:

> You can downgrade (If you don’t have Shsh blobs saved) only until Apple is still signing the old software.

Saving SHSH blobs needs to be done in advance, while the iOS version you want to install is still being signed by Apple. With blobs, you used to be able to use a replay attack to force a restore. This doesn't work anymore due to the addition of NONCE, except in very limited and not particularly useful circumstances (you can move to an unsigned iOS version IF you're already Jailbroken AND if SEP is compatible).

If you know a way around this system, please do share. The Jailbreak community will love you for it. :)

Apple does everything in their power to make downgrading iOS impossible outside of a narrow window. I suspect this is also why we haven't seen any actual, definitive speed tests between different iOS versions. The discussion always devolves into "this feels slower" or "I remember my phone used to be like this," because no one can actually install an older version to test with.

I'm fairly sure I have seen speed tests between iOS 11 and 12 with actual numbers involved. Someone who has a single phone and upgrades it can't do it, no, but someone who runs, say, a testing lab, or iFixit, or any other place where it's possible to have two different iPhones of the same model running two different versions of iOS can do it pretty easily. Googling "ios 11 vs ios 12 speed" shows a plethora of links from people doing exactly that. I found the same for "ios 11 vs ios 10 speed"; I didn't keep repeating the experiment past that. :)

As to your original point, though -- yes. I'd certainly prefer it if Apple didn't make downgrading so difficult, even if it's just on general principle. I've rarely been tempted to downgrade, but iOS 11 could be pretty clunky on my iPhone 6 compared to its predecessor. (I think 11.4 finally smoothed all that out, but that came out literally a week before iOS 12 was announced!)

> There's an awful lot of snark about iOS slowing down with each successive version, but I'm not at all convinced it's universally true

Yes, it is, just not this time because of all the backlash Apple has received over the past few years over this issue. Let's see how iOS13 and 14 do, but my guess is they will be slower still.

People love to latch onto the outlier cases when an iPhone gets slower or half-broken after an update. For the last 5-6 years however, everyone I asked told me that their iPhone and iPad either gets a bit smoother or stays the same after a new iOS.

So please don't imply iOS updates brings iDevices "ever closer to unusably slow" because that's very non-factual.

> For the last 5-6 years however, everyone I asked told me that their iPhone and iPad either gets a bit smoother or stays the same after a new iOS.

Except those who Apple was "helping" "preserve battery life" by purposefully slowing the clock speeds on updates without telling them? I've often wondered how many people went out and actually purchased an entirely new phone due to this unannounced "help" vs slapping a (relatively cheap) new battery in it?

It's a basic electronics knowledge that there's a danger in physically damaging a chip if you continuously feed it less voltage than it needs.

What Apple did is to prefer to have people's devices run slower compared to breaking them.

What they did wrong was keeping quiet about it. I ain't ever disputing that, it was a really bad decision to hide it.

The reasoning to do it however has solid foundations in physical reality. Even I that I know nothing of electronics went out of my way to read about it and asked several electronical engineer acquaintances of mine and they all said Apple did the right thing by slowing down the devices.

I was just bringing it up to dispute your claim

> So please don't imply iOS updates brings iDevices "ever closer to unusably slow" because that's very non-factual.

Because THAT was non-factual. They have done it, and for some it was "unusably slow." Whether the reasons were electrically sound wasn't in dispute.

Seems we're on the same page but we argued different parts.

IMO the original statement implied some ill will from Apple -- a myth that has been debunked pretty quickly. That's what I was arguing against.

Oh get off it. Either Apple didn't know they were ruining last gen phones, which means they're incompetent at best or they knew and chose to do it anyways which makes them actively malicious.

As a long time Android user and app developer I would rather use slow secure device that doesn't break rather than fast insecure one. Every single Nexus device I have owned, and I have owned every model starting from Nexus S, went out with some sort of hardware failure in 2.5 years time. Either faulty chip, buttons or connectors.

Say what you want about Apple pricing and some bad decisions along the way, but their approach to security, hardware build quality and overall experience of using their device over longer periods of time is very good and certainly beats Android devices.

I wish there were good alternatives with open platform but there are none currently and I don't think there will be any in the next few years.

P.S. I switched to iPhone about a year ago and I don't really miss Android.

> It's all about tradeoffs, Android phones getting updates usually means the phone gets faster as opposed to ever closer to unusably slow.

You say this like it is unique to android, iOS 12 was basically the same. And I can say from friends experiences, its not always true for all android phones.

No, Android phones usually means not getting the updates in time, or at all. Speaking as someone who participated in 2008 Android Developer Challenge and had Android phones since, and until the last year.