[zozbot123]

> This is a really great analysis of the situation but I think Ben, and Tim Cook in his public statements, are missing one important point: iOS 12 made the older devices (iPhone 5s, 6) run _much_ better than they were running on iOS 11. They improved the software so much on this iteration of iOS that they probably relieved a lot of the hardware upgrade pressure users were beginning to feel in the first half of 2018.

Meh, I don't know about that. Sure, iOS 12 is great and all, but the iPhone 5S and 6 have just 1GB of RAM. With essentially all mobile devices not using swap at all (due to the highly dubious endurance of the low-grade, Chinese-installed eMMC storage), that's just barely enough for the modern Web these days - and newer iOS apps can't be that much lighter, either! So, I fear that the iPhone 5S and 6 are practically on borrowed time, no matter what Apple does. The Nexus 5 is in far better shape, seeing as it came out with 2GB and will be able to run pmOS (on a mainline kernel, no less)...

[wlesieutre]

Going a step newer, the Nexus 5X has common boot loop failure for which the solution is to flash a custom ROM that kills the pair of big A57 cores and use only the four smaller A53 cores. So it's not all sunshine and roses on the Android side either.

A friend of mine had a 5X replaced under warranty and immediately dumped it on eBay and bought something else because there was no sign of an official fix coming for this.

EDIT: I wasn't sure if this is still up to date, but after some research it looks like "custom ROM to disable the fast cores" is still the state-of-the-art solution https://www.reddit.com/r/nexus5x/comments/8pbg5n/my_guide_to...

[nicoburns]

> that's just barely enough for the modern Web these days - and newer iOS apps can't be that much lighter, either!

You might be surprised. Desktop safari is significantly more resource (including memory) efficient than Chrome and Firefox. And iOS apps are written in objective-c and swift, which are also a lot more memory efficient than say Java or JavaScript.

Of course, 1GB of RAM is still pretty small. But if the idevices can last 5 years instead of 2, that would be pretty significant. I don't think anyone expects them to last forever.

[wlesieutre]

I have two coworkers still running 4Ses, which are more than 7 years old now. Smallish company, maybe 25 people in my office. It still makes phone calls, sends texts, and takes photos, so they'll upgrade when it dies.

Stuck on iOS 9 with that so it might not be a good idea from a security perspective, but I'm impressed with the hardware. At least one of them I know had a screen replacement, but still.

[graeme]

Sure, but if you were content running an iphone 6 on ios 11, then it’s certainly faster this year on 12.

[josefresco]

Not really. Source: iPhone 6 user. Couldn't upgrade to iOS 12 because of lack of space. Finally made room and after being told 12 would speed my device I had high hopes. Turns out, I don't notice any difference. App launch times, keyboard launch times, and overall responsiveness is just barely tolerable. 6S devices feel like light speed in comparison.

[graeme]

You may be right actually. I looked for speed tests, and apple insider showed that some apps were faster, some slower.

I do have an old 6, but its not my main phone. I thought it was faster, but haven't used it enough to say.

I would check your battery health under battery settings. If it's under 80% that could be causing the issue.

The 6s has 2 gb of ram, which is a big part of the difference.

[josefresco]

Thanks for the reply. I actually did check my battery, purchasing one of those apps that was trending about 6 months back when news broke of Apple's throttling. Battery is fine - phone is just slow which as you mentioned is probably because of the RAM situation.