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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
I have an iPhone 8 Plus that I bought back at the end of 2017. I haven’t yet updated it to iOS 16 and am still on 15.7.1. I’m a bit reluctant to update, knowing that this is the oldest generation still supported. I put iOS 7 on my iPhone 4 back in the day and wasn’t too impressed, it was fairly sluggish.
Is iOS 16 OK on the iPhone 8 or should I stick with 15 for as long as I can?
I updated my iPhone SE2 from 15.7 to iOS 16.1 on October 25th via iTunes, a major update of ~5.64GB. I’ve had *no* subsequent issues since, not even the usual increased battery drain for 2-3 days afterwards as the battery is recalibrated. The ONLY difference I’ve noticed is that the lock screen now uses a different font which makes the time easier to read.
I’ve just carried out a manual update from iOS 16.1 to 16.1.1 (I never leave Automatic Updates enabled… too risky.)
As it was a pretty small *delta* update of 219.8MB (and I have an up-to-date device backup in iTunes) I let it update OTA (Over The Air) using Wi-Fi only, not Mobile Data (i.e. not using my cellphone/mobile data plan).
From start to finish the update took 16 minutes (and reduced its battery charge from 77% to 68%). This was a lot longer than I was expecting.
By comparison I also updated my iPad Gen 9 from iPadOS 16.1 to 16.1.1 using iTunes and the update – start to finish – took 23 minutes. Why so much longer? Well, OTA carries out a *delta* update which means only *changed* bytes are replaced. As a result, the 16.1.1 OTA *delta* update is only 181.3MB.
By comparison, iTunes not only does a full backup (if you choose… which I did, for safety) but also downloads a *full* update… in this case 5.36GB.
So, the size of the *full* installer is huge by comparison but the install itself was slowed dramatically by the full backup first. If I hadn’t chosen to carry out a full backup first then the install of the 5.36GB *full* update would have been very much faster than the 181MB OTA *delta* update, despite the massive difference in size.
It’s probably worth noting that if you have any doubts about the integrity or operation of any iDevice then the best advice is to carry out a *full* update via iTunes (and use the Apple installer for iTunes, not the Windows Store version) rather than risk an OTA update which is less likely to fix any glitches.
(Another thing worth noting is that if an OTA update of an iDevice fails (due to loss of connection, etc.) then you’ll probably need to fix it using iTunes [and DFU mode] anyway.)
Hope this helps…
Any update process including OTA take a full backup of all your apps and data. that is why you need free space. If you don’t have enough free space the backup is done to iCloud using Apple’s space. So the time it takes to update rely on the amount of apps and data.
I’m not convinced that’s an accurate statement. I had to manually choose whether I wanted to carry out a full backup before the update began using iTunes. (Next update I’ll screenshot the ‘choose’ dialog that popped up.)
The OTA update may well have made a full backup internally as my iPhone has lots of storage space free.
However, iCloud only allows 5GB of free storage space by default, much less than what would be required for a backup of my iPhone to iCloud. Does Apple allow a temporary override of the default free storage limitation for the purpose of OTA updates?
Note: I’ve just noticed its battery level has plunged from 68% to 35% in the few hours since the update to iOS 16.1.1… and – off-topic – Mail has a new feature:
I have an 8 Plus running on 16.1.1 and there are a few minor bugs. Initially a couple of apps crashed and I had to restart my session. Hopefully there will be more bug fixes to come. But I’m not too concerned overall and at this point not sorry I upgraded.
MacOS iPadOS and sometimes SOS
Initially a couple of apps crashed
App developers don’t test their apps vs Dev / beta iOS versions.
correction : App developers don’t always test their apps vs Dev / beta iOS versions.
Every time after an iOS update I usually get ~10 apps updates.
Updated to iOS 16.1.1
After a huge leap of faith and trust in the Master Patch List, updated iPhone13 from 15.7.1 to 16.1.1. It was the fastest iPhone update ever. Very surprised…maybe 20 minutes total. So far so good. Apps seems to be working OK. Got a lot of new features I don’t care about, but at least the phone is now current.
iPhone 13, 2019 iMac(SSD)
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