Other Devices dropped by iOS 15?

[jfeathe]

Touch ID came with iPhone 5s.
For many that were waiting and hoping for larger phones that was probably one of the releases that they've been waiting for for a long time.

My apologies - I meant 3D Touch which added efficiencies to so many apps and functions. Haptic touch is slower and doesn't do as much as 3D did. I agree that for a lot of people, the bigger screen was a revolution and was all they needed to justify a new purchase. However, Apple dropped the ball massively on the tech. Both iPhones, especially the 6 plus, were far too big for what their underpowered interiors could handle. The year that Apple introduced modern-sized phones should have been the year for the tech upgrades we saw in the 6s. Instead, they made it appear that they couldn't handle a phone with a screen larger than 4 inches.

Thankfully, it appears that all of Apple's devices that run the current iOS do so excellently. We seem to be past the years where Apple nearly bricked devices that should have never received their final iOS updates. I'll never complain when Apple discontinues iOS updates for a device because it means that the device is not able to handle it. At the same time, I do hope the current devices continue the trend of receiving updates for 5 or 6 years after release AND can easily handle the new operating system.

 

[rui no onna]

My apologies - I meant 3D Touch which added efficiencies to so many apps and functions. Haptic touch is slower and doesn't do as much as 3D did. I agree that for a lot of people, the bigger screen was a revolution and was all they needed to justify a new purchase. However, Apple dropped the ball massively on the tech. Both iPhones, especially the 6 plus, were far too big for what their underpowered interiors could handle. The year that Apple introduced modern-sized phones should have been the year for the tech upgrades we saw in the 6s. Instead, they made it appear that they couldn't handle a phone with a screen larger than 4 inches.

In fairness to Apple, at the time the Apple A8 was already ahead of the competition, iirc. 1GB RAM instead of 2GB is a legitimate gripe but I can't really fault them on the chipset side. Technology simply wasn't there yet.

 

[Jerry Maguire]

Do you think ipad 5 th gen won get ipados15? i bought one new in apple in 2018 and it isn't going to update?

 

[Falhófnir]

Do you think ipad 5 th gen won get ipados15? i bought one new in apple in 2018 and it isn't going to update?

There's a rumour to the effect the A9 iPhones won't get iOS 15, but the iPads seem to be trending towards longer support. The mini 4 and Air 2 (A8(X)) based are still supported, so while it's possible they will drop both of those and the iPad 5, and A9X based iPad pro models, that undoes their move towards extended iPad support, which seems to be deliberate. Presumably they want iPads to have more Mac-like support cycles (~7 years) as they're used and upgraded more like Macs than iPhones.

 

[ian87w]

There's a rumour to the effect the A9 iPhones won't get iOS 15, but the iPads seem to be trending towards longer support. The mini 4 and Air 2 (A8(X)) based are still supported, so while it's possible they will drop both of those and the iPad 5, and A9X based iPad pro models, that undoes their move towards extended iPad support, which seems to be deliberate. Presumably they want iPads to have more Mac-like support cycles (~7 years) as they're used and upgraded more like Macs than iPhones.

We’ll see. If Apple keeps the A9 iPad but drops the 6s, it begs the question because both have the same amount of RAM. It’s different with the A8 mini 4 with 2GB RAM vs iPhone 6 with only 1GB RAM. The RAM is an obvious limitation.

 

[Falhófnir]

We’ll see. If Apple keeps the A9 iPad but drops the 6s, it begs the question because both have the same amount of RAM. It’s different with the A8 mini 4 with 2GB RAM vs iPhone 6 with only 1GB RAM. The RAM is an obvious limitation.

It's going to get really awkward with the A10 being sold until H2 last year in the iPad but the iPhone 7 first coming out in late 2016. Do they give the iPad 7th gen only 3-4 iOS versions or the iPhone 7 10 versions if they stick to supporting the whole chipset generation? As the 7 plus has 3GB RAM the same as the iPad they can't use that as a cutoff either, so there's got to be some arbitrary distinction or they're going to end up with the A10 iPhone 7 supported longer than the A11 iPhone 8/ X just because there's no iPad with the A11.

 

[Homme]

iPad 5th gen (A9/2GB) was just released in 2017 (and still performs decently) so I can actually see it getting iOS 15. If that happens, that means a stay of execution for 6s, 6s+, SE1 and 1st gen iPad Pros.

rule number one. CPU, rule Number 2 RAM

5th Gen iPad has same CPU/RAM as A9 iPhones but runs slower than them because of its 9.7 inch screen, so many more pixels for the A9 to handle than the other A9 iPhones and that screen resolution compared to the phones and your telling me that it should be supported because it came out In 2017

Touch 6th Gen came out in 2015 some months after the 6 models came out and mini 3 came out a year after the other A7 devices

OS compatiabilty has ZERO to do with what date the device came out

In addition, I hope Apple breaks out of giving the S models only one more extra update, especially considering that the S models are MUCH more similar to the next number model rather than the preceding number model. The most obvious example of that is probably the iPhone 6S, the 6 and 6S had pretty much nothing in common, not counting design and screen tech (except 3D Touch). Other than that, the 6S had a Taptic Engine, 12MP rear camera, HEVC decoding, embdedded motion co-processor, 4K camera recording, NVMe storage, 2GB LPDDR4 RAM, dual band 102.11ac WiFi, second generation Touch ID, much better selfie camera (5MP instead of 1.2MP), water resistance (but not advertised), and more. Much more in common with the 7 and 8 than the 6.

6s doesn’t have water resistance. I know what your talking about but its not true “water resistance” like the 7 and up

This isn't a case of an S model, but the only time I can think of where Apple gave more than one extra year to the next succeeding device in a lineup would be the iPad mini 2 (got six iOS versions from 7-12, the mini 1 only got four iOS versions from 6-9). They usually only do a system like this (3G gets iOS 2-4, 3GS gets 3-6, iPhone 4 gets 4-7, 4S gets 5-9, etc).

Going forward, I think the 6S will continue to be supported as it's the turning point of modern iPhones (the 5S and 6 were flawed in that they didn't have enough RAM).

Let's also look at the iPod touch. It has an A10, yet it's underclocked to A9 performance. If they were to support it in iOS 16, they should also support the 6S as well since they're identical in terms of performance. But then again, this is Apple, so I'm not sure which direction they're going with this one.

As for iPadOS, they most certainly will not drop two generations at once (i.e A8/X and A9/X). Unlike the iPhone 6 situation, there's no need to drop more than one generation at a time. I think there's a good chance the A9 and A9X will still be supported. The iPhone 6 is the exception here because it only had one gigabyte of RAM.

And how would you know they won’t drop two generations at once

you don’t know that though. They dropped two generations of iPhones which didn’t get iOS 13 and I saw comments like “they will never drop two generations of iPhone” and yeah

A8/A8X and A9 devices won’t get the next major OS update

The A8 CPU was underwhelming, but the graphics were actually quite a big jump for the time over the A7. I guess they prioritised the graphics for the iPhone 6 plus' @3x retina display. The 1GB of RAM was definitely the real weakness of that generation (as the iPad Air 2 and mini 4 have shown).

This could be something unique to this chipset generation, but at the moment it looks like iPad and iPhone have separate support timeframes. So we could see the A9 iPhones dropped, but the A9 iPads remain supported, like they have done with the A8 generation. Further ahead this would almost certainly be necessary for the A10 based iPads vs iPhone 7, or else one side will get very short or ludicrously long support...

lol no the graphics of A8 were
Not a big jump from the A7, they’re were largely the same but slightly enhanced. In fact 5s could perform better than the 6 plus when it came to gaming because of its tiny screen compared to how big 6 plus’s screen is and yes the enhanced GPU it has verse A7

We’ll see. If Apple keeps the A9 iPad but drops the 6s, it begs the question because both have the same amount of RAM. It’s different with the A8 mini 4 with 2GB RAM vs iPhone 6 with only 1GB RAM. The RAM is an obvious limitation.

All the A7 devices don’t get iOS 13 and yes all of them had the same CPU/GPU and Mini 3 was released a year after 5s/Air/Mini 2

All of you have forgotten the main key element. it is easier for Apple to give sporadic security updates to a large group of devices they think won’t make the cut as evidenced in iOS 12 devices which didn’t get iOS 13 and that is 7 devices

I see the same thing for iOS 14, this time for 6 devices. Sorry but Apple Can give sporadic security updates this time around like iOS 12

 

[rui no onna]

rule number one. CPU, rule Number 2 RAM

5th Gen iPad has same CPU/RAM as A9 iPhones but runs slower than them because of its 9.7 inch screen, so many more pixels for the A9 to handle than the other A9 iPhones and that screen resolution compared to the phones and your telling me that it should be supported because it came out In 2017

Touch 6th Gen came out in 2015 some months after the 6 models came out and mini 3 came out a year after the other A7 devices

OS compatiabilty has ZERO to do with what date the device came out

That depends. One of the iPad 5th gen's target market was education. It's entirely possible Apple may have committed to supporting it for 4-5 years. Honestly, I think the only reason the iPad 2 was supported all the way to iOS 9 was minimum support commitment to fleet customers. The A5-based iPads were just way too slow past iOS 7.

What I'm saying is if Apple does end up supporting the iPad 5th gen longer due to commitments or contracts, that would mean other A9/2GB devices will most likely get updated as well. Granted, if they stop at iOS 14 for the 5th gen, that still means it got more than 4 years support (March 2017 - Sep/Oct 2021).

As for A9 iPads being slower than A9 iPhones, maybe for gaming or other tasks requiring GPU hardware acceleration. Otherwise, the GPU has more than enough oomph to power the UI at 60 FPS. One of the problems with previous chipsets is they couldn't handle all the eye candy that iOS 7 and newer brought so even the UI was noticeably slow or stuttering.

We have iPhone SE (2016), iPhone 6S and iPad 5th gen in our household and apart from more frequent reloads and crashes due to lack of RAM, they're still plenty fast. Certainly faster than iPad 4 on iOS 6. Web browsing, the Air 2 is noticeably slower now but I don't notice much difference between iPad 5th gen (A9/2GB), 6th gen (A10/2GB), 7th gen (A10/3GB), Pro 9.7 (A9X/2GB), Pro 10.5 (A10X/4GB) and Air 3 (A12/3GB).

I've done side by side comparison with the iPads and the 5th gen can sometimes be faster than the 6th gen. Probably has to do with the low power cores on A10 doing the work whereas A9 only has fast cores.