The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15 | Hacker News Reader

The six-year-old iPhone 6S will get iOS 15

theverge.com

77 pointsdefqon82 comments

This is why I bought an iPhone 12. I had a Samsung Galaxy S8 before it and I was perfectly happy with it, except for the fact that it had reached the end of its scheduled security updates. The battery life was still good enough for my light usage, it still ran my apps without a hitch, and the OLED screen still looked great, but it had not received a proper software update in over a year and it had just received its final quarterly security patch. I don't care that much for Apple products (except for MacBooks), but it's the only phone manufacturer that actually supports its products beyond the first few years.

Why not just unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM? As you describe it your phone still worked perfectly fine.

I can’t speak for who you’re replying to but having to maintain my phone like that sounds awful. I have my computer that I can endlessly tinker with—I want my phone to be a phone and just work.

This is one of the main reasons I used Windows Phone 7 phone for so many years. All of the phone features, enough smart features to make it great for work, and none of the distractions -- ironically, the things that made it a commercial failure.

I'm an Android user for the ability to do this exact thing, but there's a huge difference in unofficial vs official software support. While you can certainly flash a custom ROM to an Android phone when software update support ends, clearly first party updates would be preferred, at least from a security perspective.

This is a really bold use of "just". Many people (even technically competent ones) don't want to bother, if they have other options.

Translation: “now I can never use cryptocurrency apps because I compromised my own phone and others will take advantage of that when I least expect it”

As a Galaxy S8 user, I absolutely would, but I have the International Edition with a Snapdragon processor (G950U), and the only remaining (safe / reliable) root methods only apply to the models with the Exynos chip.

Bank apps don’t work. Some enterprise security apps don’t work. Rooting is a pain, and custom boot loaders require investment of mental bandwidth that I’d much rather dedicate elsewhere. Which isn’t to say I don’t see the value of it; a couple of years ago, used to play with them. But priorities have changed, and I just want a phone that works.

Switched to iPhone after being on android all this time (with a brief dalliance with Microsoft phone on the lumia 910, which I think is still one of the best smartphone UIs) for the same reason as parent.

I was an android early adopter, had my share of custom roms and their attendant issues with drivers. Enough to me. I admire those projects, but no, thanks, I have better things to do with my time.

Same. Only recently replaced my 6+ with a 12. I used my old phone constantly for 6 years. And, it was still pretty useable at the end. Amortized over that much time the new one is a reasonably cheap upgrade.

I just bought a new android smartphone, and I have the current one since 2012 I never really needed to update the system: all the apps that I wanted just worked, and I didn't really needed new features from more recent versions of android.

It works still fine: performance is ok (maps is the only app that is a little laggy), the battery still last a full day.

But now the version of android on that phone is no longer supported by one of the app I use (banking app), so I'm forced to change it. I would have wanted it to last a few more years, but 9 years is still a long run.

I hope my new phone will last as long, and I choose it with that goal in mind (modern processor, 5G so I have it if I need, no samsung galaxy flagship that will be deprecated in a year, the possibility to install a custom OS instead of android if I need to, ...)

Good lord dude. Any site you browse to on the internet can trivially steal all the data in your phone...

Actually Android phones remain relatively safe to use because the browser continues to get updates (well, eventually Chrome stopped updating for Android 4.x, not sure what the oldest Android version supported is now).

An iPhone is not safe to use when it no longer gets updates because Safari doesn’t get updates.

yeah, I obviously keep all my apps up-to-date with the most recent versions. The fact that it was no longer possible is precisely what made me change my phone.

Android has auto-update for apps, although if your phone was too outdated then obviously no help. Note that sarcasm is generally unwelcome on hn (as per comments I have seen from dang).

That wasn't sarcasm, and looking back at my comment I don't really understand what could be understood as sarcasm. What did you understood when reading it ?

edit: ok, I see how it could be seen as sarcasm.

What do you mean?

Highlights a much better policy than Google with respect to their Pixel phones. Pixel 2 was released at the end of 2017 and stopped getting updates at the end of 2020. I was kinda pissed, as I really felt no other compelling reason to get a later model phone. I might get a Pixel 6 when it's released later this year because 5G network availability is starting to become a real thing, but at this point I feel like only 3 years of support for a flagship phone is bullshit.

Same for Sony. Got like 2.5y support and that's it, not even regular security updates.

I am thinking about switching to iPhones. I just hope the anti-trust case forces Apple to allow other App stores or side-loading. That and the back button is what keeps me on Android, and I am sure I could accustomed to whatever gesture means "back" on iOS.

> whatever gesture means "back" on IOS

Swipe right from the left edge of the screen.

Thanks!

Not really! There's not an iOS equivalent to the Android "back" concept.

On Android pressing "back" will take you to the last screen you were on; importantly this might be in the same app or a different one. It'll also do things like dismiss popups and hide the keyboard, since that's also moving back to a previous state.

The back-swipe on iOS is the equivalent of the Android "up" button, in that it's specific to the current app. It's also only going to work if the current app is deliberately supporting it, of course -- they might have their own UI chrome that doesn't respond to a swipe.

The other half of the "back" button behavior on iOS is that you can swipe left/right across the bottom of the screen to cycle between apps. (Or there's a special back-button in the toolbar if you've just followed a link that took you between apps.) So it does need more intentional-knowledge about what you mean to achieve.

Agreed, it's not a perfect analog, but for me it did work out as a roughly equivalent replacement for what I used the back button for in Android. I've also had really good luck with most apps supporting the convention.

But YMMV of course, this is going to be largely dependent on your own usage patterns, app choices, etc.

Yeah, that's fair. I felt it was worth calling out that it's not a perfect 1:1 map of behavior, since the Android-back does contain multitudes and it's hard to say what a given person expects it to do in their own usage.

Honestly, having used both, I prefer the iOS separation of concerns. I've seen a lot of non-technical people get confused about what Android's "back" is going to do, so a button that'll do something different based on the context of how your reached the current screen apparently doesn't map well to many people's mental models of their phones.

Personally, I love that I can open a web site in the browser from say the Reddit app and back will bring me back to the Reddit app. Guess I'll miss this behavior.

That functionality exists on iOS. When I open a site from Apollo, to use your Reddit example, I get a small "Done" button at the upper left corner of the screen. Touching that closes the browser window and leaves me right back in Apollo where I started.

Conventionally, most iOS apps seem to do it like Apple does with the native apps. E.g. when I click a link in an iMessage, it opens up the page in Safari and at the top left of the screen there is a little "< Messages" button that will take me back exactly where I was.

Honestly, it seems just like a Windows vs MacOS vs Linux thing. There are analogs for almost every behavior that is even a tiny bit popular, you just have to get comfortable with how to use it.

It’s looking likely that the EU will force them to add other stores. Don’t know whether that’ll apply to the US if they do.

Also the EU isn’t in Apple’s top 3 priority markets, so we’ll see.

As an EU-citizen, it's sufficient for me if the EU forces them, but I think there's also the Steam vs Apple case in the USA

Well, good news then - https://twitter.com/keleftheriou/status/1403394252457930752?...

I really like Vestager, but Apple will fight this tooth and nails in court.

Sad that the article is so extremely anti-EU instead of pro-consumer.

My last Android phone was a Moto X. As I recall, it got precisely one software update from the manufacturer, and within a year it was unsupported altogether. That was coincident with several notable mobile phone vulnerabilities, and not a peep from Motorola. I decided to switch to iPhone just because I didn't want to have to worry about such things any more, because I didn't want to trade out phones every two or three years (especially since Android phones absolutely tank in value), and because I don't tinker with my phone. Took some getting used to the Apple ecosystem, but I was glad to turn my phone back into an appliance.

While Apple are still supporting six-year-old iPhones, it's disappointing that they're dropping support for six-year-old Macs.

Especially when some software vendors drop support of previous versions of macOS. Recently Sketch axed support for macOS Mojave, which was released less than three years ago!

And it is a real problem because a lot of fine functioning computers can't be officially upgraded to newer versions of macOS, rendering them essentially useless.

VMware Fusion is the same - version 12, released in September 2020, only supports Catalina and Big Sur.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2088571

Why do they need to be updated to newer versions? I don’t see what makes computers useless if they aren’t on the latest major release of the OS.

I’m running a 2008 MacBook which works just fine for its purpose (digital audio) and isn’t on the latest OS.

They’re still releasing security updates for High Sierra, which supports hardware back to 2009/10.

Because all plugins, all samples and stencils on popular websites rarely support anything other than the later version. You can do without upgrading version of Sketch for maybe 6months, but then you'll run into problems, and in 18 months it'll be just what it is, cloud features gone, modern plugin versions gone too, no official libraries are of any use.

The last High Sierra update was 7 months ago and it's now unsupported. It's not going to get anymore now that Big Sur has launched as Apple only supports 2 versions back.

So no security updates for starters, software slowly starts to leave behind old versions too.

I’m not aware of a recent EOL Mac OS that did not continue to receive security updates for some time.

And that time is two years after the next version comes out. That's how it's worked since Mountain Lion and High Sierra's time is up which is why it hasn't gotten any for 7 months while Mojave has received some.

MacOS Monterey seems to support their hardware back to early 2015 / late 2014, according to Wikipedia.

Which Macs that are six years old are being dropped?

MacBook 12 inch 2015 is no longer supported. Disappointing, it would probably run fine on mine.

I see their logic -- that was a famously underpowered computer (but delightfully compact). The same-year MacBook Air[1] blows its specs away, for instance.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP714?locale=en_US

It looks like this year they've finally dropped support for all nVidia equipped hardware.

My Late 2014 15" MacBook Pro is finally at the end of it's run.

Which Macs? The Mac mini Late 2014 will be supported.

Mid-2015 iMac 5K, the 2015 MacBook. Maybe others. The 2014 Mac Mini is probably being dragged along since it was sold until 2018.

There will still be security releases AFAIK.

It is worth noting that not all iPhones are bought on day 1. 6s was discontinued September 12, 2018 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6S) and customers may have bought these phones later.

The non-S iPhone 6 was discontinued at the same time, and did not even get iOS 13 one year later.

The 6S has 2GB of RAM versus the 1GB of the 6, probably the principle differentiator here as otherwise the specs look pretty comparable (6S also has 2 more GPU cores and a faster CPU clock rate which may be other contributing factors).

That's sad, but it's at least getting security updates for iOS 12, and quite frequently.

> 6s was discontinued September 12, 2018

Looks like they were still being manufactured and sold in some regions until at least August 2019.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/apples-new-repair-pr...

Also worth calling out that the even older (2014) iPad Air 2 will be supported by iPadOS 15. It is the lone A8-series device with 2 GB of Ram.

For the A8 gen:

iPad mini 4 is A8 with 2GB of RAM and remains supported. iPad Air 2 is A8X (with 2GB of RAM) too and remains supported. Other devices to remain supported are Apple TV HD (A8 with 2GB of RAM) and HomePod (A8 + 1GB RAM, but no big UI to deal with).

Unsupported A8 devices:

iPod Touch 6, iPhone 6/6 Plus, both because of RAM size

I moved from Iphone to android after the Iphone 5S. I had so many android devices after that, I don't even remember for which one. But for me android devices are good for one, two years, even when they have updates. Now just got back to apple world with a 12 Pro Max. I expect it to be still fast and responsible long after most flagship androids from the same vintage will have been neglected to the role of paper weights.

My first-gen SE (same age as the 6S) is also supported and doing just fine. Second screen, third battery, works great for everything except spending extended idle entertainment time on it, which is why I still use it.

Do you use airpods with it? Curious about how that experience would be

I do! First gen. Works just fine. But I also occasionally use regular earbuds via... the headphone jack.

Instead of thinking of this as a six-year-old iPhone, from the release date, consider when Apple stopped selling the 6S and the SE. In the case of the SE, that was March 2019, a little more than two years ago.

Happy 6S owner here. If I get another year I’ll be even happier. Hopefully by then the Pinephone will be ready for daily use.

6s/6s Plus are great devices. Last (full size) iPhone with headphone jack.

Put a case on it and it should last a long time.

I’d argue the original SE is magic... but it’s just a 6s crammed into the 5 case. As a mini 12 owner, I’m still sad “my spoon is still to big”.

iPhone 5s (2013 IIRC) is also still receiving security updates for iOS 12.5.x.

This is good to know. I don't care at all about using the latest iOS; if my iPhone 6S was still running the original version it shipped with, I'd never know the difference.

But I do care about security updates.

You probably would notice, because system apps like Safari are tied into it. I'm not sure how much of the web is broken on Safari 9. Or whether iMessage or Facetime still works.

I would say that's the one place where Android got it right, you can keep having updated system apps for a long time after the OS itself is abandoned (which is shamefuly quickly).

While I love that Apple provides security updates for older iOS releases (The iOS 12.5.2 security upgrade from March[0] for eg) - Apple doesn't have any guarantees around it.

The closest guarantee you get from Apple is that "iPhones on the latest iOS release are supported". The latest iOS list of supported devices is at [1], and Wikipedia[2] also considers that as the "list of supported devices", because Apple refuses to provide clear guarantees.

The Apple guarantees are on service[3], and only seem to apply for Hardware issues[4]. If someone has a better citation for iPhone 5s being officially under security support, I'd love to update https://endoflife.date/iphone accordingly.

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212257

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/io...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_and_iPadOS_devices...

[3]: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201624

[4]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/370530/is-ios-12-s...

I'm not actually super surprised by this. Considering that they didn't really update the system in any way that might push the current performance envelope, who's really surprised? Apple has done this for decades, and when they announce that iOS 16 is getting $KILLER_FEATURE they'll also unveil the heartbreaking announcement that the 6S is being sunsetted.

And zero people are at all surprised that you appeared to try to somehow spin this as a negative. It has become cartoonish at this point.

This is simply what I’ve come to expect of HN xD. I agree with you.

A phone can only last for so long, I imagine their number would be significantly reduced after 4 years of not selling them.

I wonder if anything about the hardware (really, the CPU) makes it easier to get modern iOS to run on it. Over in PC land, everything since the Pentium Pro has been modern enough that mainstream Linux distros support it out-of-the-box. That's 25 years of support. Supposedly FreeBSD still has 486 support.

My 6S is still going strong but I had to buy a battery case to extend the battery life.

I just got a new battery for my 6S for 49 bucks. A bargain.

Big deal. I just installed ubuntu 21.04 on a ten-year-old machine. There is no non-evil reason why the latest OS cannot run on yesterday's hardware.

There is a huge difference between a ten-year-old laptop/desktop and a ten-year-old phone—or, more accurately, laptops and desktops have advanced a lot less in the past ten years than phones have.

It would be a much better analogy if you were to say you'd installed the latest Ubuntu on a machine from twenty years ago (though even that may be generous, given that the iPhone was only 4 years old 10 years ago, while the Intel PC was roughly 20 years old 20 years ago)—and I'd expect it to work about as well as iOS 15 would on an iPhone 4.

Or maybe installing the latest upcoming version of OSX on a mid-2014 Macbook Pro, which if I'm not mistaken, will not work.

It'll work if you install a piece of software that changes the device identifier.

You are right though that Apple retires support after 6-7y. That surely could be longer considering how desktop/mobile CPUs have stagnated over the last 5-10y.

It's just unlikely to change given Apple makes no money supporting old computers apart from repairs.

I'm not an Apple user, so I couldn't possibly care any less, but like....come on. Maintaining old hardware platforms costs time and money.

"There is no non-evil reason"

The reason is that someone needs to sit down, open up Xcode, and compile it for the old hardware, fix all the compilation issues that crop up, and then that OS needs to be tested on every variation of that hardware that was ever released anywhere in the world.

If you don't want to do that because the userbase is dwindling and you aren't running a charity and/or open source project.....how is that evil??? Cheap, maybe even greedy - but evil??

Also, that hardware may be able to walk the new code, but not run it.

So, you’ll have to choose between cutting some features and releasing underperforming software (likely severely underperforming, for older devices)

Hacking on the code for months or even years may alleviate that somewhat (look at what the hacker scene can get out of computers from the 1980’s), but that isn’t a certainty and if you do that, you either have to release later, or release later for so devices.

Either way, your users won’t be happy. They’ll get less, get it later, and/or it won’t perform.

If anything fails in your ubuntu install, you'll go and find the answers on Ask Ubuntu or so, whereas people expect their smartphones to "just work" and work consistently without changing driver settings.

That creates test and QA work on Apple's part. They also have a pretty good breakdown how many devices of which build type are still out in the wild - and at some point, it simply becomes uneconomical to still support a given device version.

You aren't wrong to point out that incentives are wrong since we don't pay for the Android/iOS version, so the manufacturer makes more money retiring support early, but IMO Apple is doing a pretty good job here, esp. considering how much smartphones have evolved during that time.

Calling the dropping of support for any single piece of hardware by any group of people, for-profit or non, open source or closed, "evil" seems pretty dramatic.

It actually is a big deal, compared to the support lifespan of Android devices.

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