So Apple announced iOS 14 the other day and a variety of devices are supported, the oldest being the iPhone 6s which was released 5 years ago. A 5-year-old phone receiving software updates is unheard of in the industry. But I’m running the developer preview on my 4-year-old iPhone 7 and I have certain opinions about iOS 14’s improvements and performance specifically on older devices like my iPhone 7.
I talk about performance because this is a developer preview and they are known for being glitchy, but this is really smooth throughout. I have not seen any frame drop even when I have stacked multiple widgets on top of each other. In fact, in some places, I even find it faster than iOS 13. Like taking a screenshot feels almost instant now. Shooting a photograph also feels slightly faster than before. Plus now the video format and resolution can finally be changed in the camera app itself. This was earlier only supported by the newer iPhones. But the USP of iOS 14 is widgets and I filled all my home screens with various widgets of different sizes hoping that this would actually slow down animations but they didn’t which I honestly did not expect on a 4-year-old iPhone.



And that’s my major concern with iOS 14 on older devices, especially the first generation iPhone SE with a 4″ display. Imagine all these widgets and PIP video playback on the home screen. You can fill up all the widgets you need in just one page with no app icons, but again, what’s the point when you can simply swipe left from the home screen and get all the widgets in one place. It’s polarising and debatable especially on the smaller iPhones which are the older iPhones.
