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Is iOS 11 Safe For The iPhone 6?

boltjames

boltjames

macrumors 601
Original poster
May 2, 2010
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I've had no reason to upgrade to the 6S or the 7 and I know Apple's trick of releasing an iOS update that slows an iPhone or an iPad down to a c r a w l in order to push people toward getting a new device.

So...

Any iPhone 6 people running iOS 11 yet? Is it safe? Faster? Same speed? Or is it slow?
 
Last week I downloaded the GM beta to my iPhone 6 Plus. It was horrible and slow and battery took a massive hit. I decided to downgrade back to 10

Here’s the thing though.

I didn’t do a proper back up and to get rid of 11 had to wipe my iPhone clean.
I then reluctantly reinstalled (public release) 11 as wanted watchOS 4 and the difference has been night and day. Really fast and I’m really impressed with it. Not quite 10 fast but near enough.

So if your worried/can be bothered-wipe your iPhone first.
 
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A few hiccups here, though I don’t mind the upgrade. Same battery life, same app flow, etc.
 
My two main iPhones are an ATTWS 6S (personal) and VZW 6S+ (work). I updated my private line VZW iP6 to iOS 11. IMO the iP6 is perfectly usable and it could be my main driver. No issues, decent battery life - looking forward to updated apps that have been optimized with Xcode 9, that's when I'd offer a final edict. So far, I'm happy with my iP6 on iOS 11.
 
no difference at all after upgrading from ios 10 same speed .. good thing I got even more free space after installing OS 11
 
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Helmsley said:
Is that really a thing? I thought it was one of those Internet myths.
Click to expand...

I cannot prove it of course, but my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2 got so bogged down and so sluggish after upgrading to the iOS version of the moment when their replacements were due to launch that it pushed me over the edge to get to an Apple store and begrudgingly upgrade the hardware.

It's my own opinion, but I think it's just too easy for Apple to tweak a few lines of code and ensure millions of dollars of incremental revenue either through sloppiness or design.
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Vorkeyjones said:
Battery life is much worse since updating.
Click to expand...

This is one of my biggest fears, and having just read what Apple decided to do with the on/off switches for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi it is very concerning. I keep Wi-Fi off 90% of the time (I have unlimited data) and Bluetooth off 25% of the time (only need when I'm driving) and it gets me all day battery life with room to spare.
 
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You can still turn off Wifi and Bluetooth by going into Settings. The toggle in Control Center isn’t an on/off switch — yes, the behavior is not what most users expect, but it’s not as if you’ve been deprived of the ability to actually turn these things off.

But on your main point: yes, iOS 11 is noticeably slower than iOS 10 on a 6. I can’t say I’ve noticed a big hit to battery life since the phone is so old, but it’s certainly not improved.
 
Few things I noticed on the 6+ with IOS11. Extreme lag when multiple apps open. (I turned off animations / motion) it's slightly better, not perfect...just better. Opening camera and switching to video, time lapse, panorama..screen will freeze for 5, 6 seconds before you can see something and start recording, taking pics. OR it will freeze completely and you'll need to force quit the app by swiping it away and starting over. When you ask Siri something, her replies are not immediate, it may take her (it) a good 7-8 seconds to get a reply. I was trying all of these features comparing this to the iPad Pro Gen 1 12.9in..obviously a much more powerful device. new 11 works flawlessly on that, no lag at all. And yes battery life on the 6+ took a hit. I figured it would, but not this bad.

My 8+ will arrive today thank god..I do plan t keep the 6+ but I will most likely wipe this thing clean and downgrade to 10.3.3
 
boltjames said:
I cannot prove it of course, but my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2 got so bogged down and so sluggish after upgrading to the iOS version of the moment when their replacements were due to launch that it pushed me over the edge to get to an Apple store and begrudgingly upgrade the hardware.

It's my own opinion, but I think it's just too easy for Apple to tweak a few lines of code and ensure millions of dollars of incremental revenue either through sloppiness or design.
[doublepost=1506086517][/doublepost]

This is one of my biggest fears, and having just read what Apple decided to do with the on/off switches for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi it is very concerning. I keep Wi-Fi off 90% of the time (I have unlimited data) and Bluetooth off 25% of the time (only need when I'm driving) and it gets me all day battery life with room to spare.
Click to expand...


My 6 is running pretty well, no complaints. I had a weird battery issue prior to updating where the battery meter was not working properly that seems to have cleared up with the update. (Battery would deplete quickly, battery would go from 30% to 0 instantly).
 
I'm running iOS 11 on my "lowly" iPhone 6 16GB and I have been very impressed with performance and battery life. In my case a did a full ipsw update via iTunes to deal with the limited free space. Update went smoothly and surprisingly fast. Well worth the upgrade in my opinion. Anecdotally I seem to have better cellular reception as well better sound through the speaker. And the screen presentation just seems crisper. But like I said, those observations are anecdotal.
 
boltjames said:
I've had no reason to upgrade to the 6S or the 7 and I know Apple's trick of releasing an iOS update that slows an iPhone or an iPad down to a c r a w l in order to push people toward getting a new device.
Click to expand...

Trick? After 3 years, software became more demanding and more powerful. I’m surprised there are still people who believe Apple is intentionally making their phones slower. It’s no trick, it’s how things are. And it still works fine on 6.
 
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sosumi99 said:
You can still turn off Wifi and Bluetooth by going into Settings. The toggle in Control Center isn’t an on/off switch — yes, the behavior is not what most users expect, but it’s not as if you’ve been deprived of the ability to actually turn these things off.

But on your main point: yes, iOS 11 is noticeably slower than iOS 10 on a 6. I can’t say I’ve noticed a big hit to battery life since the phone is so old, but it’s certainly not improved.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback on speed.

I toggle Bluetooth on/off and Wi-Fi on/off frequently each week to save on battery life and drilling deep into settings to do that is a major inconvenience I'm not willing to live with. I'm not sure who at Apple thinks he knows what's best for us and why they don't give us the option, but it's just wrong.

I still want to strangle the guy who decided that the Control Center shortcut to the Clock should default to the Timer and not the Alarm. Who the hell uses a stopwatch more than they use the alarm clock? Again, why can't we have a choice as to what these controls do or do not do? Maddening.
 
I upgraded to iOS11. It runs like a phone that is 4 generations old, but it's still perfectly usable. I'm probably going to use it for another year considering the 8 and 8 plus are so underwhelming. It's not nearly as bad as my iPad Mini 1 on iOS 9 was. Hopefully the rumors are true that the 2018 iPhones will all be OLED and they support Band 61. That'll get me to upgrade.
 
boltjames said:
I still want to strangle the guy who decided that the Control Center shortcut to the Clock should default to the Timer and not the Alarm.
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You know they are separated out now in iOS 11, right? Separate shortcut for Alarm, Timer and Stopwatch.
 
It’s running super fluent on my 6, it even feels a lot snappier than 10. Dunno what everyone’s about here?
 
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