Some people keep saying this….don’t know why. As long as you have a backup, you can easily get back to your previous version in under an hour.
Been testing developer Betas since iPhone OS 3, and some have been crappy that wanted me to get off….never had an issue getting back. And now this is doubly true since data is for the most part stored in the cloud (for example my photos are in both OneDrive and iCloud, email in Office 365, files in OneDrive, etc)
Except, how many people keep asking here how they can revert back to iOS 14? That’s proof right there, to me at least, that they are neither developers nor people that should be using any form of beta software. They clearly are not prepared for the issues that are almost guaranteed to follow whilst running such an early release of any software.
Agree with both of these statements. It is easy to get back
PROVIDED you set yourself up to do so with an encrypted, archived backup.
If you don’t spend the time to learn how to be able to restore to a “stable” release, you pretty much deserve whatever happens to your data.
But, as
@JCCL mentions, the risk to most operational data is pretty slight now, with most of it residing in the cloud. The biggest risk is to your health and fitness data, which can only be archived via an encrypted backup (and even then you would lose whatever data was generated since the backup was created).
The biggest barrier to uneducated participants using the developer beta is the cost of the developer program (US $99). I think that is why the MR team is relentless in removing posts advertising where you can get the developer profile for free. They don’t want to be accused of facilitating someone losing their data or, worse, having a phone incapable of, e.g., making emergency calls because an early beta messed up the phone app. During the iOS 13 early betas, my GPS was completely messed up. Maps had me driving across farm fields and lakes. Had this become an issue for me (i.e., if I really needed maps to go somewhere I was not familiar with), I would have had to revert. Imagine that situation if you had to navigate to a hospital in an unfamiliar place. (I had the vehicle nav as my backup)