iPhone 5 iOS 9-10 Software Upgrade Help

[HJLC]

Using an old iPhone 5 until the next iPhone launches later this year.. At the moment it's running smoothly on iOS 8.1.2 - but it requires iOS 9 to download some apps I need!

However the only option iTunes is giving me is to update to iOS 10, which I fear will essentially brick the phone and make it unbearably slow.. Is there any way I can upgrade my iPhone 5 to any iOS 9 version instead?

Also if there are any iPhone 5 users currently running iOS 10 - Please can you reply with how smoothly it is running, or if you regretted updating?

Thank you =)

 

[eyoungren]

Using an old iPhone 5 until the next iPhone launches later this year.. At the moment it's running smoothly on iOS 8.1.2 - but it requires iOS 9 to download some apps I need!

However the only option iTunes is giving me is to update to iOS 10, which I fear will essentially brick the phone and make it unbearably slow.. Is there any way I can upgrade my iPhone 5 to any iOS 9 version instead?

Also if there are any iPhone 5 users currently running iOS 10 - Please can you reply with how smoothly it is running, or if you regretted updating?

Thank you =)

The way this works is that Apple digitally signs a firmware when it's released. Without that digital signing you cannot upgrade or downgrade to that version of iOS.

Once a new firmware is released there is only a short window of time before Apple removes the digital signing for the previous release for specific models.

In this case, the iPhone 5 had signing for ALL versions of iOS 9 removed a long time ago. Which is why iTunes is telling you iOS 10.

So, in short. No. You cannot upgrade to iOS 9. You missed the time frame to upgrade for this device. It's either stay where you are or go to iOS 10.

I have two iPhone 5's on iOS 10. They both work just fine. My own 5 is on 10.3.1. Not sure which exact version of iOS 10 my son's 5 is on but he recently updated.