Apple’s new iOS 9.3 beta brings a number of nice new features to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, including Night Shift mode, Touch ID lock for Notes, CarPlay improvements, and more. But is it any faster? Not according to these speed tests.
On an iPhone 6, the first iOS 9.3 beta — which was rolled out to developers earlier this week before being made available to public beta testers — is slower to boot up than the iOS 9.2 release that proceeds it. It’s also ever so slightly slower at loading certain apps, such as the App Store.
iOS 9.3 is also slower to boot up on older iPhones, including iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, and iPhone 4s. You can see the speed tests for all of these devices on the iAppleBytes channel.
If you ignore the boot up times, then iOS 9.3 delivers almost exactly the same performance as iOS 9.2. It’s unclear why it takes longer to boot, then — but we must remember this is the first beta, so it’s likely we’ll see some performance improvements in upcoming releases.
Either way, the slightly slower boot up time shouldn’t be enough to put you off upgrading, because iOS 9.3’s new features — Night Shift alone — are definitely worth it.
