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Every iOS release has its thing at the beginning. You can’t compare iOS start to iOS 18 end. Either compare the release or what it looks like in June.

Hindsight is great.
As I said, it practically never matches the original battery life even if it improves relative to .0 releases.

Funnily enough, I have a 6s on iOS 10.0 and another one on the final iOS 13 version. The latter is appalling. The former is like-new.

As I also said, this redesign is inherently more resource-intensive. It is likely not matching iOS 18 even on its final iteration. Let’s just hope that it catches up at least for the 17 series. Apple had never failed with an original version device. They did this time.
 
As I said, it practically never matches the original battery life even if it improves relative to .0 releases.
I disagree. Although the statement has to be made in a case by case basis.
Funnily enough, I have a 6s on iOS 10.0 and another one on the final iOS 13 version. The latter is appalling. The former is like-new.
The 6s is virtually unusable except as a paperweight.
As I also said, this redesign is inherently more resource-intensive. It is likely not matching iOS 18 even on its final iteration. Let’s just hope that it catches up at least for the 17 series. Apple had never failed with an original version device. They did this time.
No they didn’t fail. YMMV.
 
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I disagree. Although the statement has to be made in a case by case basis.
If it applies every time, no.
The 6s is virtually unusable except as a paperweight.
It is unusable whether it is on iOS 9 or 15 today, yes. The point still applies.
No they didn’t fail. YMMV.
Tests have shown that they failed. No varied mileage. Just the same-old road with the same damn length. As always.
 
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If it applies every time, no.
No it doesn’t. Generalized, statements don’t.
It is unusable whether it is on iOS 9 or 15 today, yes. The point still applies.
It’s unusable. Yes you can keep safari open for 10 hours but try to browse any modern site.
Tests have shown that they failed.
No they didn’t.
No varied mileage. Just the same-old road with the same damn length. As always.
YMMV as always.
 
The iPhone 6s runs very nicely on iOS 15. That combo is my main iPhone today.
Not my experience. I genuinely don’t understand how.

Mine is appalling, with pathetic battery life, keyboard lag, and general slowness.

Is performance tolerable? Yes, perhaps, but I wouldn’t say it runs very nicely. And battery life renders it unusable.
 
I think some iPhones get botched with updates while others do not. Example: a few years ago I updated my iPhone 6+ from iOS 9 directly up to iOS 12, skipping iOS 10 and 11, and iOS 12 ruined the 6+. It instantly became so slow it was unbearable. Doing anything.
But others posted that iOS 12 ran pretty good on their 6+, so obviously my update got screwed up.

I think this is typical of iOS updates (including iOS 26). Some phones get hosed by the update while the same model of phone for someone else runs fine with it.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it and I doubt Apl knows why this is happening, but it definitely is a warning to heed: update at your own risk. It may ruin the phone (or not).
 
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Just “up”graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced. The icons all have a distracting (and non-sensical) edge to them. The blurred wallpapers look nothing like they used to.

It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.
100%! I got myself iPhone 17 pro and with it iOS26 and I hate the experience to the point it is such a downgrade! Agree with all your points! Visually a disaster
 
Everyone has got to learn to accept the new iOS 26 look - cuz its going to be with us for at least another 10 years.
 
I'm thinking of doing the same thing. It just means I have to sell my phone, watch, airpods, etc and replace them all with Pixel equivalents which is of course a bit of an expensive journey.
Maybe, but after that, you're in the Android universe and can freely mix and match accessories as you like. You're no longer imprisoned and pressed to only buy things from your "prison guard".
Thank god, my only Apple devices are the 12 Pro and an SE 2020, so I'm free to go anywhere, when I'm finally fed up with my prison guard. BTW: Both devices are still on 17.7.2, because 18 already pissed me off big time...
 
I think some iPhones get botched with updates while others do not. Example: a few years ago I updated my iPhone 6+ from iOS 9 directly up to iOS 12, skipping iOS 10 and 11, and iOS 12 ruined the 6+. It instantly became so slow it was unbearable. Doing anything.
But others posted that iOS 12 ran pretty good on their 6+, so obviously my update got screwed up.

I think this is typical of iOS updates (including iOS 26). Some phones get hosed by the update while the same model of phone for someone else runs fine with it.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it and I doubt Apl knows why this is happening, but it definitely is a warning to heed: update at your own risk. It may ruin the phone (or not).
I wish more people did that. If, instead of updating from a garbage release to an even more garbage release, they went from the original version to a garbage release, maybe they would see the difference instead of forgetting how it ran.

If you don’t track battery life, for instance, progressive dips in battery life will not be as noticeable, especially if you have a larger battery iPhone with enough headroom.

Apple Pencil usage on my Air 5 (running iPadOS 15) incurs an immediate 20% penalty. It is immediately noticeable.

Likewise with performance.

I think that obviously some updates are worse than others. People have been strongly complaining about iOS 26 on the 16 series. The consensus was pretty much that iOS 13 on the Xʀ and Xs was fine. iOS 10 on the 6s is pretty much flawless. iOS 11 was widely considered garbage even on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and on similar iPads. iOS 12 was pretty much flawless on the iPhone 8.

Some first updates are good, others not so much.

The difference with iOS 26 is that this was very predictable, imo. If you knew a little about what iOS 26 entailed and the redesign, as well as some later beta results, the battery life complaints were ubiquitous. Even on the GM people were warning that battery life just wasn’t getting better, that scrolling to the app library resulted in repeatable lag, etc.

Like I said, especially for those who are on MR and pay attention to this, the warnings were there.

“Apple was too quick in preventing downgrades!” No they were not. I mean, they were, but they did the exact same thing last year. It was to be expected if you were paying attention.

Fool me once and fool me twice…

This was predictable. Those who updated either knew and did it anyway or should have known.
 
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depends, if you are a developer you will want Xcode 26 (requires Tahoe aka macos26) , if not it gives you another year of security support , otherwise if you like the os 15 ui and willing to have an obsolete system a year earlier than absolutely necessary upgrade to 15.7 now, you should be able to upgrade to Tahoe in the future (hopefully the bugs will be tamer then)
Already upgraded to 15.7........What I want to know is it safe for me too upgrade to Tahoe
 
As I said, it practically never matches the original battery life even if it improves relative to .0 releases.

Funnily enough, I have a 6s on iOS 10.0 and another one on the final iOS 13 version. The latter is appalling. The former is like-new.

As I also said, this redesign is inherently more resource-intensive. It is likely not matching iOS 18 even on its final iteration. Let’s just hope that it catches up at least for the 17 series. Apple had never failed with an original version device. They did this time.
Any new iOS is gonna add more features not less and that means more power. Consequently processor efficiency improves and it's really up to the user to decide what they need to use of the new features and what they can live without. Most of the crap they add for daily driving is completely unnecessary and hogs battery. I am on the iPhone air and My phone has gone all day with 5 hours of screen time and 1.5 hours of idle time. Is that the greatest no. Did I have to charge the phone no. iOS 26 is pretty versatile if you wanna be hyper-saving with battery. Glass is goofy. ;)
 
I updated everything to OS 26 mainly for the phone app. At least for me, it is a big usability jump to be able to call someone directly from my desktop, laptop or tablet without awkward workarounds.
To be honest, I am not a very design orientated guy so the visual changes are not my primary interest as far as usability does not take a hit.
Doing straight upgrades and not installing from scratch the visual differences between OS 26 and the prior systems seem minimal to me. Some transparent menus can be irritating but thats all I can object.
Battery life sadly is another story. There is a noticeable drop on each and every device I use.
 
Just “up”graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced. The icons all have a distracting (and non-sensical) edge to them. The blurred wallpapers look nothing like they used to.

It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.
Yeah, it’s a very poor design. I completely agree. Sad to see Apple losing its taste. Oh well.
 
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I'm just sick of the lag, glitching and poor battery life... using the camera shortcut from the lock screen nearly never works - the screen goes black and sometimes eventually the camera loads, sometimes it just stays black.

We're now weeks in, so any indexing should have been completed by now and I can still safely say, this is the worst experience I've had with a new iOS release and I've run hardware/software combinations which are generally considered terrible - ie iOS 7 on the iPhone 4 from day 1.
 
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