It’s probably too early to judge but I wanted to get this thread going. Still in shock that my 6 year old iPad Air 2 is supported again! Which features of the iOS 14 made it to the oldest devices, and what about the performance?
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iOS 14 Feature Availability and Performance on older devices iPhone 6s / iPad Air 2
- Thread starter thebrocode
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My Air2 works very well on the latest version of iPadOS13 so I'm hoping iPadOS14 is a stable replacement as I'm sure it will be the last OS offered for it...
really? My iPad Air 2 on iOS 13 is a little laggy. It works but its definitively not « smooth » like previous iOS versions and it become warm when doing basic tasks. Battery health is at around 85%. I’m downloading iPadOS 14 now to see how it runs.
Only complaint is terrible predictive text using the keyboard. I had to disable it because it constantly was misbehaving. I've also had minor mail issues but nothing too bad. Performance has been impressive for 6 year old hardware. I use it daily for web consumption and email/texting standard use. No gaming or anything that's really pushing the hardware to the limit...
As far as I know, the following features are missing:
ARKit 4 (and ARKit 3 for that matter, requires XR or later)
CarKey (requires an XR or newer)
Spatial audio for AirPods Pro (requires a 7 or later)
FaceTime eye correction (requires XR or later)
Back tap (X or later)
On-device dictation (XS or later)
There are some other features that the 6S is lacking from iOS 11-iOS 13, although there aren't many:
ARKit 3 (debuted in iOS 13)
Core NFC (debuted in iOS 11)
Core Haptics API (debuted in iOS 13)
FaceTime camera effects (debuted in iOS 12)
HEVC and HEIF encoding for photos and videos (debuted in iOS 11)
Not sure exactly what the Air 2 and Mini 4 are lacking, but this is what I know of:
Spatial audio
FaceTime eye correction
And of course, ARKit 1-4
Older missing features of the Air 2 include the following:
Audio Sharing (debuted in iOS 13)
Both FaceTime and Messages camera effects (debuted in iOS 12)
Memoji stickers (debuted in iOS 13)
Both hardware decoding and encoding of HEIF/HEVC content (debuted in iOS 11)
ARKit 4 (and ARKit 3 for that matter, requires XR or later)
CarKey (requires an XR or newer)
Spatial audio for AirPods Pro (requires a 7 or later)
FaceTime eye correction (requires XR or later)
Back tap (X or later)
On-device dictation (XS or later)
There are some other features that the 6S is lacking from iOS 11-iOS 13, although there aren't many:
ARKit 3 (debuted in iOS 13)
Core NFC (debuted in iOS 11)
Core Haptics API (debuted in iOS 13)
FaceTime camera effects (debuted in iOS 12)
HEVC and HEIF encoding for photos and videos (debuted in iOS 11)
Not sure exactly what the Air 2 and Mini 4 are lacking, but this is what I know of:
Spatial audio
FaceTime eye correction
And of course, ARKit 1-4
Older missing features of the Air 2 include the following:
Audio Sharing (debuted in iOS 13)
Both FaceTime and Messages camera effects (debuted in iOS 12)
Memoji stickers (debuted in iOS 13)
Both hardware decoding and encoding of HEIF/HEVC content (debuted in iOS 11)
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Yea what exactly makes it work that it won't work on SE2020 either? Guessing it is since 2020 is mostly an 8? But I am still annoyed long press isn't working on lock screen since it does work on 8, and that it was also broken at first on XR but they fixed it.
The design of the SE is that of an 8, but the inside is more of an 11 even.
Yea that what I thought which made me wonder why the back tap doesn't work on the new SE.
Sounds like it might be something design related and/or some piece of hardware that's not there or is different.
Chiming in as an iPhone 6S Plus user on iOS 14 developer beta 1.
This OS is already more stable than iOS 13.5.1 in most ways. It has had a few keyboard quirks where the keyboard will hide after tapping an entry field in Safari but if you tap off and tap back it’ll come back up. The slowdown in photo editing is gone. It shows that it’s downloading before editing can occur unlike in iOS13 where it just freezes until it’s downloaded.
All the widgets and new Springboard home screen work smoothly. The updated CC is just as fast. Messages features work well (group, pinning, replying to specific person). CarPlay even works more smoothly even with background wallpaper (they look great). And apps don’t quit as aggressively as they didn’t in iOS 13 (thank God!).
Honestly, the only reason I’m upgrading to the next iPhone this year is for the camera. Otherwise the 6S is perfectly useable 5 versions later. Incredible.
This OS is already more stable than iOS 13.5.1 in most ways. It has had a few keyboard quirks where the keyboard will hide after tapping an entry field in Safari but if you tap off and tap back it’ll come back up. The slowdown in photo editing is gone. It shows that it’s downloading before editing can occur unlike in iOS13 where it just freezes until it’s downloaded.
All the widgets and new Springboard home screen work smoothly. The updated CC is just as fast. Messages features work well (group, pinning, replying to specific person). CarPlay even works more smoothly even with background wallpaper (they look great). And apps don’t quit as aggressively as they didn’t in iOS 13 (thank God!).
Honestly, the only reason I’m upgrading to the next iPhone this year is for the camera. Otherwise the 6S is perfectly useable 5 versions later. Incredible.
I’m sure FaceTime eye thing requires TrueDepth camera so your right in saying XR or later but 2nd gen SE won’t get it as it is Although newer it doesn’t have a TrueDepth camera
also hevc And heif encoding debuted in iOS 11 not 12
Yea it probably just has processor and ram upgrades, but not whatever is needed for back tap.
My mistake, will update it to say it debuted in iOS 11.
I'll also update the post to say that it doesn't support the SE.
While I'm at it, might as well post what the A9 and A9X iPads are missing so far:
The only iPadOS 14 features that they're missing is the ARKit 4 functionality (as well as the FaceTime eye correction feature), on-device keyboard dictation, and the spatial audio feature. I'm pretty sure they get everything else.
These devices are also missing some features from previous versions of iOS such as:
HEVC/HEIF encoding (debuted in iOS 11)
FaceTime camera effects (debuted in iOS 12)
ARKit 3 (debuted in iOS 13)
Audio sharing (debuted in iOS 13, only works on fifth gen iPad but not the A9X iPad Pros)
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Same here. Testing it on a spare iPhone 6S. Very solid performance, must say very impressed.
A9 iPad also doesn’t get the extra pencil features in iPadOS 14 (but that is a obvious)
It's kind of interesting given that there's a fair bit of under the hood stuff that the OS does for a little while after an upgrade/update, and in terms of caches, while it's good in some sense to have them cleared up (perhaps mainly from freeing up some storage), in terms of performance it seems like empty caches would actually make things somewhat worse in comparison to caches that have data in them that could be accessed faster.
yeah it's definitely slower immediately after upgrading as it does indexing, etc. I don't take that into account. I just leave the device and then test it once the CPU is no longer pegged in the background. Day 2 on the Air 2 of ios14 and still runs very fluid. Dont see any big bugs either.
Will need to test notability further as it crashed like hell on ios13 (but ok on 12)
I agree iPadOS 13 sometimes lags on the iPad Air 2, but overall it’s still fairly decent IMO. Same thing with iOS 13 on the iPhone 6s (although it can feel a bit speedier than the iPad Air 2).
If performance on these older devices with iPadOS 14 & iOS 14 is like iPadOS 13 & iOS 13, I will be very pleased.
Just noticed that another feature was missing on A8-A11 devices. Apparently, on-device keyboard dictation is not supported on anything below the second gen iPad Pro, iPhone XS, iPad mini 5, or iPad Air 3.
Not sure if XR is supported or not, as it's not mentioned but it has the same specs as the XS minus one extra gigabyte of RAM.
Note how the XR isn't listed in the fine print.
Not sure if XR is supported or not, as it's not mentioned but it has the same specs as the XS minus one extra gigabyte of RAM.
Note how the XR isn't listed in the fine print.
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