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iPhone 12 Pro Are you still on an older daily driver?

C

Ctrlos

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Original poster
After having to sell my iPhone Air and picking up a refurbished 12 Pro in its stead a few months back I was curious if anyone else was still using a 5+ year old iPhone as their main, daily device? And how its going?

I must admit 26.4.1 seems to have fixed all the choppy animations in Liquid Glass now making the device a joy to use. LiDAR and the 2x lens take much better portraits than a 2x crop ever did. Mine had a replacement screen and battery before I bought it. Both are unverified sadly but are working fine so far. Battery is no worse than the Air was and the shop I bought it from slap a 5 year warranty on them so I'm not worried if it conks out.
 
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Uh yeah. iPhone 11 Pro Max is my current primary (daily driver) phone. iPhone 6s+ is my secondary phone (with its own line) and I have both a 6th gen iPad (with its own line) and a iPad Mini 1st gen I recently got for Google Maps in the car (on its own line).

My wife also has the 11PM as her primary phone and both my kids use the iPhone SE 2 (they are 22 and 17 years old). My son also kept his SE1 which I got him when he was 16. Periodically, I will see it on the network at home (using our WiFi), but I do not know what he does with it.
 
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Great thread - I have a relatively new and simple 16e, but at my age I'm looking at it as a very long term device. To read all of your accounts of how well your "older" iPhones are working, I feel confident that my lil' 16e is gonna last a long time.
 
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Ctrlos said:
I was curious if anyone else was still using a 5+ year old iPhone as their main, daily device? And how its going?
Click to expand...
Using a 6S Plus here. iOS 15 max. This Phone used to be fast and worked everywhere. But Safari has a built in poison pill for old phones so lots of websites are broken now. Never used to be that way.
Many apps wont even install on iOS 15 now but I don’t download new apps so I don’t care.
I’ve owned much more modern iPhones and got rid of them all.
The 6S Plus was the best iPhone a-Inc ever made.
 
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now i see it said:
Using a 6S Plus here. iOS 15 max. This Phone used to be fast and worked everywhere. But Safari has a built in poison pill for old phones so lots of websites are broken now. Never used to be that way.
Many apps wont even install on iOS 15 now but I don’t download new apps so I don’t care.
I’ve owned much more modern iPhones and got rid of them all.
The 6S Plus was the best iPhone a-Inc ever made.
Click to expand...
Are there not security implications of using a phone so old?
 
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Until two days ago I used my 12 mini for almost 5 years.
Battery health at 55%. Even at full charge the phone was choppy, but not unusable by any means!

Thought about replacing the battery after reading rumors it will get iOS 27 this year.

But I got an renew offer from my provider and get a 17 with discount.

Opted for that, and to be honest after defending and only wanting a mini phone, I don’t miss the mini at all.
 
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Ctrlos said:
Are there not security implications of using a phone so old?
Click to expand...
The main issue is compatibility. Sooner or later popular apps will stop working altogether (WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, FaceTime and iMessage).

Technically it is unsafe to use this OS, however there is a very small chance of getting any virus while browsing the web, especially with such an old JavaScript version where most websites would break. Currently JS is the main method how hackers inject malware in iOS. If AdBlock is used it might be a much safer browsing experience since AdBlock works like a mini antivirus by banning most useless trackers and links. However it is a good habit not to visit unknown websites
 
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And as for the thread, I had been using my 11 Pro until the end of January 2026. I accidentally cracked the display and honestly kind of tired of fixing it. I will probably fix it somewhere in the future but I already use my 17 Pro as a daily driver. However I don’t really notice a lot of difference, even in terms of speed it isn’t that fast, doesn’t even feel like a brand new phone, or maybe Apple had already made 11 Pro that good that they cannot make new iPhones any better? Who knows, maybe I am just too picky
 
Yep, still using my 12 pro max, still have great battery life too. I have no plans to upgrade until the phone dies. I've never felt the need to upgrade just to have the latest.
 
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Still using a 13 mini for the usual reasons, and expecting to do so for a couple more years. I managed to pick up a brand new unit last year.
 
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My 13 Pro (Sierra Blue) is going on 5 years this September. I had an Apple Store battery replacement last month. Planning to upgrade to either the 18 Pro, 18 or see what’s coming with the XX / Pro.
 
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Harddrive said:
Still using my iPhone Pro 15 and happy with it.
Click to expand...
Same here
500gb 15 pro, still a beast, does it all!

My wife has a 13pro, same thing. Flawless. We recently did an Apple replacement and they gave her a 1TB version! So she's very happy still haha

Not to mention the 13/14 pros were the last of the truly premium looking iPhones. My 15 pro looks great but without the gleaming steel it's just missing something.
 
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Still using 12 mini on IOS17. Missed the window to go to IOS18 and starting to loose app compatibility but really don't want to go to IOS26 or 'upgrade' to a larger phone, not sure what I'll do.
 
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AlumaMac said:
Still using 12 mini on IOS17. Missed the window to go to IOS18 and starting to loose app compatibility but really don't want to go to IOS26 or 'upgrade' to a larger phone, not sure what I'll do.
Click to expand...
You should still be offered iOS 18.x at this time ever since iOS 18.7.7 was re-released. My iPad 9 running iOS 16.x is still getting an offer to upgrade to iOS 18.x along with iOS 26.x

I have my iPhone 11 Pro Max for more than a year now and keeping it on iOS 18.x since I don't believe that iOS 26.x and later will be better. Once I purchase a newer model, there's a high chance it's on iOS 26.x

I'm just hoping that now the iOS 26 compatible devices are getting an upgrade path to iOS 18.x that they continue doing so until they decide to no longer update iOS 18.x on iPhone XR, XS, XS Max
 
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winxmac said:
You should still be offered iOS 18.x at this time ever since iOS 18.7.7 was re-released. My iPad 9 running iOS 16.x is still getting an offer to upgrade to iOS 18.x along with iOS 26.x
Click to expand...
Ah, thanks, completely missed they reinstated the IOS18 upgrade path!
 
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now i see it said:
Using a 6S Plus here. iOS 15 max. This Phone used to be fast and worked everywhere. But Safari has a built in poison pill for old phones so lots of websites are broken now. Never used to be that way.
Click to expand...

That has more to do with websites changing and Safari not being updated to accommodate newer standards.

That can happen, too, when you use really old browsers (e.g. Firefox ESR 52 on Windows XP).

The nice thing with decoupling the web browser from OS and access to full 3rd party browsers is you can still get browser updates long after support has dropped for the OS.

Windows XP was EOL was back in 2014 and the last compatible update for Firefox ESR 52 was 2018.

Windows 7 was EOL was back in 2020 and Firefox ESR 115 is still getting updates until August 2026.
 
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