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iPhone 5 or earlier Can I use an old iPhone 4s with iOS 8.4.1 for iMessage and FaceTime in 2023?

D

Dila_Dias

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 30, 2023
6
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Hey guys! I'm planning to buy an iPhone 4s and jailbreak it on iOS 8.4.1. I'm buying device mostly due to nostalgia. But I need to FaceTime and iMessage as well. Just wondering how the experience would be? I know it's pretty old. But I heard it can still use latest emojis through Cydia.

So, I need to know,
1. How functional FaceTime and iMessage on iOS 8.4.1?
2. Battery life?
3. Any tweaks to speed up the iPhone?
4. Overall experience of iPhone 4s with iOS 8.4.1?


Have a good day guys!
 
Dila_Dias said:
Hey guys! I'm planning to buy an iPhone 4s and jailbreak it on iOS 8.4.1. I'm buying device mostly due to nostalgia. But I need to FaceTime and iMessage as well. Just wondering how the experience would be? I know it's pretty old. But I heard it can still use latest emojis through Cydia.

So, I need to know,
1. How functional FaceTime and iMessage on iOS 8.4.1?
2. Battery life?
3. Any tweaks to speed up the iPhone?
4. Overall experience of iPhone 4s with iOS 8.4.1?


Have a good day guys!
Click to expand...
I have an old iPhone 5 that is capable of running iMessage and FaceTime now in 2023. The experience is not great - laggy, slow, stuttery. I’ve removed it from my AppleID because even basic things like syncing iCloud settings or iMessages make the phone unusable. I would expect the 4s to be worse than the 5.
 
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uller6 said:
I have an old iPhone 5 that is capable of running iMessage and FaceTime now in 2023. The experience is not great - laggy, slow, stuttery. I’ve removed it from my AppleID because even basic things like syncing iCloud settings or iMessages make the phone unusable. I would expect the 4s to be worse than the 5.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your response. I think there are ways to boost the speed by some Cydia tweaks.
 
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Dila_Dias said:
Thanks for your response. I think there are ways to boost the speed by some Cydia tweaks.
Click to expand...
To a certain extent. Be aware however, that a lot of the JB devs moved on after iOS 6 and iOS 7. Some stuff may not be functional anymore. Things change.

I have a 6s+ which I had on iOS 9.0.2 from October 2015 to December 2020. I finally updated it because a considerable amount of tweaks and apps (I had around 300 or so) were broken and unfixable. Servers which check for legit installs go down, devs stop developing, etc.

The JB community now is still large and prolific, unfortunately a lot of what they've been doing in the last five or so years has been trying to recover or emulate features that were available when iOS 6 and 7 were around.

Not discouraging you, just trying to make you aware of the state of things now.

Lastly, anything that is working that can accelerate your 4s is not going to make it as fast as even old model iPhones. You'll get a boost, but I don't think you're going to get as much as you might think.
 
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eyoungren said:
To a certain extent. Be aware however, that a lot of the JB devs moved on after iOS 6 and iOS 7. Some stuff may not be functional anymore. Things change.

I have a 6s+ which I had on iOS 9.0.2 from October 2015 to December 2020. I finally updated it because a considerable amount of tweaks and apps (I had around 300 or so) were broken and unfixable. Servers which check for legit installs go down, devs stop developing, etc.

The JB community now is still large and prolific, unfortunately a lot of what they've been doing in the last five or so years has been trying to recover or emulate features that were available when iOS 6 and 7 were around.

Not discouraging you, just trying to make you aware of the state of things now.

Lastly, anything that is working that can accelerate your 4s is not going to make it as fast as even old model iPhones. You'll get a boost, but I don't think you're going to get as much as you might think.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your great explanation. To be honest, I have an iPhone 14 Pro as my daily driver. So, this is just only to use as a backup. :D
 
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Dila_Dias said:
Thank you for your great explanation. To be honest, I have an iPhone 14 Pro as my daily driver. So, this is just only to use as a backup. :D
Click to expand...
I have a 4 on iOS 7 that is jailbroken and a 4s on iOS 9 that is also jailbroken. I don't use them much and the 4s has a semi-untethered jailbreak so I haven't kept up with maintaining the JB.

They are fun to play around with every once in a while but at this point I couldn't use either of them for daily stuff.
 
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uller6 said:
In my opinion you won’t have a great experience no matter how many tweaks you apply, but the iPhone 4/4s design is sweet and I remember loving my 4 at the time.
Click to expand...
I have heard that the 4 and 4s have the best DACs for music, so at least as an iPod they probably still do very well.
 
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iPhone 4s running on iOS 8.4.1 is way faster than iOS 9.3.5/9.3.6

The only time I have jailbroken it was to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3 since Apple stopped signing it to perform downgrade through iTunes...
 
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winxmac said:
iPhone 4s running on iOS 8.4.1 is way faster than iOS 9.3.5/9.3.6

The only time I have jailbroken it was to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3 since Apple stopped signing it to perform downgrade through iTunes...
Click to expand...
Does apple maps still work on iOS 8?
 
Dila_Dias said:
Hey guys! I'm planning to buy an iPhone 4s and jailbreak it on iOS 8.4.1. I'm buying device mostly due to nostalgia. But I need to FaceTime and iMessage as well. Just wondering how the experience would be? I know it's pretty old. But I heard it can still use latest emojis through Cydia.

So, I need to know,
1. How functional FaceTime and iMessage on iOS 8.4.1?
Click to expand...
My iPhone 4S would not access any iMessage services running 9.X.X when it used to. I think that iMessage is a dead end on the 4S devices. I could be wrong and maybe resetting would help, but I've given up.
 
Eriamjh1138@DAN said:
My iPhone 4S would not access any iMessage services running 9.X.X when it used to. I think that iMessage is a dead end on the 4S devices. I could be wrong and maybe resetting would help, but I've given up.
Click to expand...
No, I think iMessage works fine but Facetime got issues as what I heard.
 
Eriamjh1138@DAN said:
My iPhone 4S would not access any iMessage services running 9.X.X when it used to. I think that iMessage is a dead end on the 4S devices. I could be wrong and maybe resetting would help, but I've given up.
Click to expand...
Possibly you had 2FA on? If so, that'd require your password PLUS the code that another device would give you.
 
Dila_Dias said:
No, I think iMessage works fine but Facetime got issues as what I heard.
Click to expand...
Facetime got issues with iOS 6 I believe. It's a certificate that Apple didn't bother to update because they wanted users to buy newer iPhones. Not sure if it still works under iOS 9 but I know it won't under iOS 6.
 
Big Apple Tim said:
I wouldn't trust my sensitive data on an internet facing device that old. Security patches exist for a reason.
Click to expand...
Some people aren't as security conscious as others, so the concern that those who must always be on the latest device with the most up to date security firmware isn't a big deal to them.

Which doesn't mean nothing will happen - but it also doesn't guarantee to you that it will.
 
eyoungren said:
Possibly you had 2FA on? If so, that'd require your password PLUS the code that another device would give you.
Click to expand...
If I did, there was no way to activate it on the 4S. Nothing I tried worked. It just sat there. Never loaded any new messages or sent any. No device notified me of the 4S trying. It's like the iCloud sign-in was busted.
 
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