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Comment by Tomte | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine is still running her iPhone 6 on the original iOS version, so probably iOS 8.

It would slow down with iOS 12, right? Those speed gains are compared to non-ancient versions?

I have a 6s. iOS 11 was pretty annoying and my battery drained noticeably quicker--I was bummed with the upgrade but I think I wanted it for AirPods support. Also I remember the "instant camera" was a feature demoed when the phone was first released and iOS 11 took 5-10 seconds to bring up the camera.

I've been using the 12 beta for months and it immediately fixed those things. I'm not sure if the camera is as snappy as the original iOS, but it's less than a second. I'm not sure how this all compares to the original iOS it shipped with, though.

I have a 6s that's still on 10. Reading this and other comments make me think that maybe 12 won't be too bad. There's a few apps out there that I use that don't work with 10 anymore and so this may be the time for me to upgrade.

I'm pretty curious about how 12 compares to 10 as well. Seems like 11 was definitely worse on performance, but might be too early to compare 12 to earlier versions.

I also have iPhone 6, so I'm kinda hesistant.. Ever since the iOS 6 update rendered my iPhone 4 completely unusable many years ago, I have always been hesitant to upgrade any of my iPhones to the latest iOS, and wait until I have confirmation that upgrade was not "planned obsolescence by design". The problem with iOS update is that it is permanent and not downgrade-able.

I'm on a 5S and the speed gain from iOS 11 to 12 is noticable. Not vast, but noticable.

Unfortunately, that does not answer the question: is iOS 12 slower than iOS 8? Sure, 12 is faster than 11, it's what Apple has been touting. But maybe 11 was a dog, and 8 was a speed demon.

That said, I sure don't know the answer, or even much of an educated guess.

11 was absolutely a dog. I don't think I remember the 8 as a speed demon though.

Most phone perform the best with their original release of iOS. So 6 with iOS8, and 6s with iOS 9 etc....

So far I think iOS 12 brings back some of the original performance if not more. So I think it may not be faster, but shouldn't be any slower.

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