Apple are doing a good job at keeping their iPhone line up to date with modern technology trends – both in terms of hardware as well as software. And while the company does its best to ensure that users of their old devices can still get to enjoy the new features of the latest iOS versions, that’s not always possible – sometimes hardware limitations get in the way, and those who want the most recent update are forced to invest in a new device. However, it’s often for a good reason – and those wondering if they should upgrade their iPhone 5S to iOS 8 should take a look at this speed test which compares how the latest version of the operating fares on the devices in comparison to the previous one.
Specifically, the test compares iOS 7.1.2 and iOS 8 beta 4 on the iPhone 5S, trying to get an overview of the many different features of the phone and how they are handled differently by both versions of the operating system. During the test, the boot-up time was measured, as well as how the devices performed in general.
The test seemed to show a slightly better performance for iOS 7, which according to some users has been the expected result. The device is not the latest entry into the iPhone line, so it’s understandable that it won’t offer the best performance with the latest version of iOS 7 – but on the other hand, it’s directly behind the current main flagship, so the difference is not that great either.
Other than that, both phones seemed to work relatively equally well, so whether or not a user would upgrade to iOS 8 is mostly a matter of personal preference. The new version does bring various improvements to the overall experience though, so it might be a good idea to consider installing it just for the extra support – but at the same time, it’s usually good to wait a little after a new update is out to make sure that no critical bugs are reported for it.
Is the iPhone 5S going to support the new version of iOS that launches with the iPhone 7 this year? It’s not known yet, but Apple have been putting some extra work into improving the backwards compatibility of their releases, so it’s possible that they may give their users the freedom to install the update on older devices. At some point though, performance would probably be bad enough to require upgrading to a new device, as iOS doesn’t tend to work that well on iPhones older than 1-2 years than the OS itself.