A number of iPhone owners are reporting performance issues after updating their device to iOS 14.5.1. Post the update, their iPhones seem to be throttling for unknown reasons, leading to lower than usual benchmark scores and slower performance in CPU intensive apps. The issue only seems to affect a limited number of iPhones running iOS 14.5.1.

A video by YouTuber Nick Ackerman clearly highlights the issue. In a speed test between the iPhone XR, iPhone 11, and iPhone 12, the iPhone 11’s A13 Bionic chip was slower than the iPhone XR in video rendering, app loading, and benchmarks. While the iPhone 12’s single-core performance was okay, its multi-core score was lower than that of the iPhone XR. The lower benchmark scores were not a one-off issue as repeated benchmarks resulted in similar scores.

In the 3DMark benchmark, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 11 both performed worse than the iPhone XR. It is important to note that none of the affected iPhones were warm indicating that their performance was not being throttled due to overheating issues.

While the video highlights the issue with the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, the problem also seems to persist with older and newer iPhones like the iPhone 7 and iPhone 12 Pro, etc. Some users reported that restarting their iPhone solved the issue temporarily.

It is unclear what exactly the issue with iOS 14.5.1 is leading to performance issues on certain iPhones. The issue was not there with iOS 14.5, which was a major update packing 20+ new features. On the other hand, iOS 14.5.1 is a relatively minor update that patches security exploit with WebKit.

Have you noticed any performance issues with your iPhone after updating it to iOS 14.5.1? Drop a comment and let us know!