It’s September, and you know what that means: shorter days, the first tentative tinge of chill in the night air, Halloween candy at the grocery store, and—most relevantly for us—a new version of iOS.
Apple supports its own phones with new software updates for years longer than any of the Android phone makers do, but that doesn’t mean that using a new version of iOS on the oldest-supported hardware is always pleasant. For iOS 14, that hardware is the iPhone 6S and the original 4-inch iPhone SE, the same as it was for iOS 13.
Originally released in late 2015 (the 6S and 6S Plus) and early 2016 (the SE), both phones include an Apple A9 processor and 2GB of RAM, and both devices boast the bare minimum you need for things like augmented reality apps or hardware accelerated decoding of h.265/HEVC video. In the move from iOS 12 to iOS 13, we found that the phones slowed down a little but remained perfectly usable; the same was true of iPadOS on older hardware, which we didn’t re-test this time around. This year, we were pleasantly surprised on the performance front, but the second-generation iPhone SE makes upgrading much easier to justify now than it was last year.
iOS 14 won’t slow down your phone
For this performance test, I did a fresh install of iOS on each device, signed it into a test iCloud account, and let the phones sit for a while to complete any indexing or other behind-the-scenes tasks. I then opened each of these apps three times and averaged the results. In the past, this test has been a fairly reliable indicator of how each phone will actually feel in day-to-day use. If opening an app and waiting for it to load on a fresh iOS install feels slow, that usually means that the rest of the phone (including waiting for the keyboard to pop up, waiting for pages to load, and other tasks) will feel slow, too—especially as you download more stuff and connect more accounts.
(Note that the percentages are here for reference, but these times are so short that anything within 10 percent is easily within the margin of error.)
| iPhone 6S performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Application | iOS 13.7 | iOS 14.0 GM | Difference (%) |
| Safari | 0.93 seconds | 0.89 seconds | -5.0% |
| Camera | 1.01 seconds | 1.07 seconds | +5.6% |
| Settings | 0.63 seconds | 0.65 seconds | +4.3% |
| 0.85 seconds | 0.78 seconds | -7.9% | |
| Messages | 0.69 seconds | 0.63 seconds | -8.2% |
| Calendar | 0.72 seconds | 0.74 seconds | +2.8% |
| Maps | 1.63 seconds | 1.84 seconds | +13.3% |
| Notes | 0.77 seconds | 0.75 seconds | -2.2% |
| TV app | 2.54 seconds | 2.48 seconds | -2.2% |
| Cold boot | 12.26 seconds | 12.84 seconds | +4.7% |
| First-generation iPhone SE performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Application | iOS 13.7 | iOS 14.0 GM | Difference (%) |
| Safari | 0.88 seconds | 0.96 seconds | +8.3% |
| Camera | 1.04 seconds | 1.08 seconds | +3.8% |
| Settings | 0.61 seconds | 0.61 seconds | -1.1% |
| 0.83 seconds | 0.79 seconds | -5.2% | |
| Messages | 0.68 seconds | 0.63 seconds | -6.9% |
| Calendar | 0.66 seconds | 0.60 seconds | -8.6% |
| Maps | 1.46 seconds | 1.59 seconds | +9.2% |
| Notes | 0.75 seconds | 0.78 seconds | +3.1% |
| TV app | 2.35 seconds | 2.50 seconds | +6.5% |
| Cold boot | 11.73 seconds | 12.67 seconds | +8.0% |
It’s remarkable how consistent performance is on these devices—these times are pretty much within the margin of error across the board, and iOS 13 and 14 on the iPhone 6S or first-generation SE will feel much faster than iOS 12 did on the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6. Maps does seem to be slightly slower to open in iOS 14, and boot time consistently takes infinitesimally longer, but overall the differences don't consistently point in one direction or the other. For reference, compare these numbers to iOS 8 on the iPhone 4S (which was clearly slower than iOS 7) or iOS 12 on the iPhone 5S (which was clearly faster than iOS 11).
This makes sense, given how mature the iPhone’s hardware and software both are 12 years in. They’re in the same place that the Mac has been for a while now—new iPhones certainly feel faster than old ones, but the old hardware is still fast enough that you can install new software updates without turning your device into an unusable mess.
Think back to iOS 7 on the iPhone 4 or iOS 8 on the iPhone 4S or iPad 2; newer iPhones were still routinely doubling the speeds of their predecessors, and new software releases were adding tons of features and complexity as the hardware became more capable. As a result, old devices routinely missed out on all sorts of features, and some couldn’t even run the same graphical effects as newer phones and tablets. That’s not really a problem anymore.
Beyond these illustrative-but-limited tests, I used an iPhone 6S running the iOS 14 GM build as my main phone for two days, which is long enough to give the phone time to restore data from iCloud and finish all of its indexing. And even coming from the iPhone 11 I normally use, things generally feel solid! The phone bogs down some if you’re installing apps and trying to do other things at the same time. Scrolling through apps like Slack and Tweetbot occasionally hitch in a way that they don’t on newer phones, and performance is definitely more borderline with Low Power Mode turned on. But it doesn’t feel bad, if you can live with the other non-performance-related problems.
Performance is fine. All the other stuff is… less fine.
The issues with iOS 14 running on old hardware are basically the same as they were last year, but let’s recap.
For the iPhone 6S, the issue is battery life. Even when it was new, the iPhone 6S didn’t last as long as the iPhone 6 that it replaced or the iPhone 7 that replaced it. And compared to an iPhone XR or any iPhone 11, which can easily survive a full day of use with battery to spare, the 6S’s battery life is particularly miserable. And that’s with a gently used battery operating at 100 percent of its original capacity—a years-old battery will be even worse.
The screen size of the original iPhone SE is undoubtedly still a selling point to a shrinking set of die-hards. But for anyone who bought it because it was cheap, its screen feels more claustrophobic than ever once you start adding widgets to your home screen.
As the parent of a one-year-old, though, the thing I noticed the most in daily use was the camera. That the 6S still takes OK pictures in decent light is a testament to Apple’s phone cameras, but you definitely miss the extra detail, the superior low-light performance, and the better video stabilization you get in newer iPhones.
That’s the main reason why, if I were still using the 6S or original SE as my everyday phone, I would consider looking very hard at the second-generation iPhone SE. It definitely makes a lot more sense than trading in a 6S or the original SE for the iPhone 8, which is what you would have had to do this time last year. The new SE’s design is dated—from the front, it looks exactly like a 6S—but it’s a new phone with a new processor and a new camera, and it’s going to get software updates for the next half-decade or so. If you can afford it, you’ll definitely notice a big difference. It especially makes sense if you’re already considering a $49 battery replacement for your current phone. The new SE is also still small enough (especially compared to the iPhone 11 or just about any Android phone) that a user of the original SE should be able to get used to it with a little time and a little willingness.
An iPhone 6S or first-generation iPhone SE still does OK with iOS 14. Performance isn’t up to the level of an iPhone 11 or second-generation iPhone SE, but it’s perfectly acceptable for day-to-day tasks. If you’ve got a newer phone that breaks, or if you’re giving one of these older phones to someone as a hand-me-down, you can rest assured that most apps are going to get the job done most of the time. It’s nice that performance isn’t the problem that it used to be for older iPhones and iPads, but it’s also hard to ignore the camera improvements, better battery life, and other benefits that you’ll get if you’re able to buy newer hardware.
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