I've been very excited for the first public beta of iOS 26 to be released, and seeing as that will most likely happen sometime today, I am planning on running the beta on my iPhone 12 Pro Max. But I will also be flying from Norway to Spain soon to stay there with family for a week's time and I wonder if travelling to Spain (or any other country than my own for that matter) will affect my phone running a beta OS, in terms of the phone switching to a new carrier when I land and such. I will of course do a full backup of my phone before I put the beta on it but I just thought I'd check with people here whether it's okay to have a beta on a phone you're travelling to another country with or whether I should hold off on the beta and wait with installing it until I come back home to Norway. What are everyone's thoughts on this? Have anyone here gone abroad with a beta on your phones and what was your experience?
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Travelling to another country potentially with the beta on my phone, is it feasable?
- Thread starter Didz81
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It should be fine. I have a secondary number/connection from the country I used to live in that I keep for a few legacy reasons, and that has had no issues connecting to roam on betas 2 through 4. I even did the physical to eSIM conversion process last week while on beta 3 with no issues. I have travelled countries in the past while on prior beta releases as well with no issues, including installing travel eSIMs. Your bigger concern will be if you need or want to roll back to iOS 18, and having your Mac and backups available.
No different than doing a beta at home. Read the beta 4 thread and the non-working apps thread to see the issues people are experiencing and see if those limitations are going to bother you. Expect a few things to not work, some things that might frustrate you but you can find a workaround, and less battery life and slower performance. Will you have time to put work on restoring the device if you have a bad experience?
I - personally - wouldn't do that. I even don't update the phone away from home anymore!
I once updated my 6s to iOS 11.0 (public release) on holidays in a hotel in Ireland and had to handle the flaky phone the rest of the holidays, including many lost or damaged photos from that trip. I would wait for after the journey.
I once updated my 6s to iOS 11.0 (public release) on holidays in a hotel in Ireland and had to handle the flaky phone the rest of the holidays, including many lost or damaged photos from that trip. I would wait for after the journey.
Be warned.
I went from Beta 3 to Beta 4 yesterday. Beta 4 worked great for a day, but this morning my phone was stuck in a recovery loop. The new “Recovery Assistant” in Beta 4 started off the morning by saying my phone had a problem. When I pressed “continue” to fix the problem it immediately said “no problem found”. That was followed by a reboot after which it looped right back to Recovery Assistant saying I have a problem. Over and over. Stuck.
I am now restoring back to iOS 18 using a MacBook backup I made a couple of weeks ago.
Do you really want to risk that while traveling?
I went from Beta 3 to Beta 4 yesterday. Beta 4 worked great for a day, but this morning my phone was stuck in a recovery loop. The new “Recovery Assistant” in Beta 4 started off the morning by saying my phone had a problem. When I pressed “continue” to fix the problem it immediately said “no problem found”. That was followed by a reboot after which it looped right back to Recovery Assistant saying I have a problem. Over and over. Stuck.
I am now restoring back to iOS 18 using a MacBook backup I made a couple of weeks ago.
Do you really want to risk that while traveling?
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I tend to go on holiday at this time of the year but I do wait until I’m home to download and install the public beta. I don’t take any other device and I’m away with my family so it’s too much of a risk.
I’ve done it before and it was fine, though have had to deal with annoyances, but nothing fatal. Nobody can tell you if you should do it. You can always have problems.
ive had betas for years where one update will make it wacky and frankly some apps have broken for me. I frankly would not travel with one beta software if its more than 2-3 days.
I would not advise it because if things do go wrong you will not be able to focus your time with your family because you will be too distracted trying to deal with the issues of the beta and thus not be able to enjoy your time with your family because you will be constantly thinking about getting your iphone to work properly again.
Install the beta when you come back. Enjoy the time with your family without having the distraction of dealing with beta issues.
Install the beta when you come back. Enjoy the time with your family without having the distraction of dealing with beta issues.
Similar to some others i'm normally heading away on holiday this time of year, we're due to head off in a couple of weeks. With us driving down from the UK to the south of France we rely on the phones for sat nav, music in the car etc so i tend to wait and see what sort of reaction the beta gets and if it looks solid enough i may take the plunge before going. Most times i've done it and been fine, one year i didnt bother i think mainly as i never got round to doing it but i think also my banking app at the time didnt like the beta so i steered clear because of that. Tend to use Sky Go while i'm away as well and think that saw the beta as jailbroken once and wouldnt start so i didnt bother trying it.
This is a good point too. One beta update, it's great no issues, then another update poor battery, then another update to fix the battery and an app keeps crashing on start up. Not something i want to deal with while overseas. Bad battery I can deal with since i'm usually at a desk or home charging but not when sight seeing.
Basically it comes down to what is more important to you, enjoying time with your family or installing a beta iOS on your iphone and dealing with all the issues that come with it?
Also, look at it from your families perspective, how are they going to feel if your on holiday with them but you spend too much time on your iphone because you are dealing with issues the beta has caused? They are going to rightly get annoyed and possibly angry. Do you want that to happen?
Everything will be fine. I travel all the time, with all betas, haven’t had issues.
You‘ll permanently damage your battery though, if the weather in spain is hot / warm.
Betas produce excess heat which is already damaging to your battery. Going to a hot summer country will just burn through your battery health.
I‘d wait (seeing as it‘s only a week) and by the time you return, you‘ll most likely have DB5 waiting for you.
In terms of issues with betas abroad, there really is no risk other than running out of battery due to excessive drain or potential connectivity issues (don‘t think there are any in this beta).
Betas produce excess heat which is already damaging to your battery. Going to a hot summer country will just burn through your battery health.
I‘d wait (seeing as it‘s only a week) and by the time you return, you‘ll most likely have DB5 waiting for you.
In terms of issues with betas abroad, there really is no risk other than running out of battery due to excessive drain or potential connectivity issues (don‘t think there are any in this beta).