However, with iOS 12, Apple has set out to answer one of the primary complaints about iOS 11, its slowness and instability. Sure, iOS is still stale and largely uncustomizable, but now it won’t make you want to scream in frustration. That’s because, even on old devices, Apple promised iOS 12 would bring noticeable speed improvements and increased stability. A YouTube video comparing iOS 11 to iOS 12 on an iPhone 5s, a 5-year-old phone, shows some dramatic improvement. Considering this is beta software and third party apps haven’t been updated for it yet, this is impressive. Check out the video comparison below, along with a similar comparison to iOS 11.
iOS 11 vs iOS 12 Beta 8
In the video above, we can see some areas where iOS 12 clearly stood out. Booting up, launching apps, and opening the keyboard were faster in Apple’s latest operating system. In fact, the keyboard opened shockingly faster, removing what is surely a colossal frustration for users of Apple’s older devices on iOS 11. While I normally urge caution before installing a new operating system on older hardware, I think these results speak for themselves. Install iOS 12 on launch day next month.
The video did show some areas where iOS 11 beat out iOS 12. This included the graphics benchmarks, loading some third party apps, and updated Apple apps. The Stocks app, for example, pulls data from news sources relevant to the stocks it’s displaying. This is simply more to download, so it should take longer. The same goes for Apple Music and the App Store. As for third party apps, these haven’t been optimized for iOS 12 yet, so we shouldn’t judge them too harshly. Once iOS 12 has been out for a month or so, this test could be revisited.
iOS 7 vs iOS 12
This was an interesting test. iOS 7 was released with the iPhone 5s, it was tailored for the hardware. It hasn’t been updated with bloat that OS updates normally come with, like new features, new animations, or software that’s optimized for newer devices, rather than Apple’s older phones. Therefore, we expect iOS 7 to be dramatically faster on the iPhone 5s than newer versions of iOS.
The part of the video above that I want to draw attention to is toward the end, when he opens all the stock apps that each device shares in common twice. This tests the efficiency of each OS, as well as the loading speed. The iPhone 5s with iOS 7 did this in 1:09s, compared to 1:34s for iOS 12. However, because iOS 12 apps were doing more, that’s not a very large gap between OS versions. Compare this to an older video he did for iOS 11. iOS 11 took 2:21s to run the same test. iOS 12 is so good, it undoes years of damage. Whereas iOS 11 was twice as slow as iOS 7, the iOS 12 beta is only 36% slower than iOS 7, and most of that goes into loading apps that simply do more now.
The iOS 12 Leaf and Core Review
Currently, I only have iOS 12 installed on my 9.7″ iPad Pro. I like to wait until the golden master or one version before it to upgrade my personal iPhone to beta versions of iOS. On the iPad, I have noticed that it’s snappier, even in beta format. It doesn’t feel vastly different in many other ways. iOS is still stale when it comes to new and exciting features or visual changes. However, the performance of iOS 12 is more than worth the upgrade, and wrangling notifications is a welcome improvement as well. Multitasking on the iPad, especially initiating split-screen in apps, is far more frustrating than it was before though, and that’s a step backwards on a feature that was already awful.
I’ll do a performance test of my own with my iPhone X once I upgrade it. Apple has mostly focused on the performance improvements iOS 12 brings to older devices, however they have said that newer devices should operate more smoothly as well. As someone who frequently runs into iOS 11 hiccups, I’m looking forward to that.
Source: Ed Hardy, Cult of Mac