With iOS 12, Apple is promising some major performance improvements for its older devices. But do these claims have some weight behind them or was Apple simply hyping up some relatively minor performance improvements?
As tests conducted by Ars Technica shows, iOS 12 does bring about some major performance improvements across the board. The publication ran a series of tests on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 Plus, and the iPad Mini 2 running both iOS 11.4.1 and iOS 12 to get a clear picture of by how much iOS 12 is able to improve the performance of older devices.
For the iPhone 5s, the publication also had data for iOS 10.3.3 which provides a great insight into just how much performance improvement iOS 12 brings. In launching apps like Safari, Camera, Settings, Mail, Messages, Maps, and Notes, the iPhone 5s running iOS 12 was at the very minimum faster by 10 percent. We are still talking about a few milliseconds here but an improvement in app loading time across the board will easily be noticeable. Even better, as the data from Ars shows, iOS 12 actually performs better or similar to iOS 10.3.3 in most app loading times test.
The same story continues with the iPhone 6 Plus which is able to open most of the system apps anywhere between 10 to 15 percent faster. It even sees a reduction in its cold boot time by a few seconds. As for the iPad mini 2, while it does show performance improvements of around 7-14 percent while running iOS 12, its evident that its hardware is past its time. Of all the three devices, the iPad mini 2 showed the minimum performance improvement while running iOS 12.
With iOS 12, Apple is able to restore the performance of its older devices to iOS 10-era which released back in 2016. That’s no easy feat since the hardware of certain devices like the iPhone 5s and iPad mini 2 is clearly inadequate in this day and age. Nonetheless, these minor performance improvements will help extend the lifespan of these older iOS devices by another few months to a year easily.
Do remember that these performance improvements are only limited to app loading times and faster system navigation. Games that used to stutter on your old iPhone or iPad will continue to do so in iOS 12. That’s more to do with the hardware lacking the necessary horsepower and that’s not something Apple can fix with a software update.
How are you liking iOS 12 so far? Have you noticed any performance improvement?
[Via Ars Technica]
