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The iPhone 6S will turn six years old in September, an eternity in the phone years. If you can keep one of these devices for a long time, Apple has some good news for you — your phone will be eligible for an iOS 15 upgrade when it hits the public this fall. The iPhone 6S, 6S Plus, and the first generation iPhone SE, which all shipped with iOS 9, will be among the earliest devices to receive the operating system update.
Six years is a very long life for a mobile device, and definitely puts the 6S in the running for the longest supported phone to date. The iPhone 5S was five years old when it got the latest operating system update with iOS 12 but it didn’t qualify for iOS 13. On the Android side, Samsung has taken recent steps to improve the lifespan of its devices by offering four years of security support to some . from her phones. But six years of operating system updates and security support put the 6S into an entirely different league.
There are certainly a lot of new features that won’t work with the 6S’s A9 Bionic processor. Features like Google Lens-esque Visual Lookup, Live Text in Photos, Portrait Mode in FaceTime, and immersive walking directions in Maps won’t be available to 6S users, since they all require a device with an A12 Bionic chip similar to the XS, XR or later.
It’s also possible for newer software to slow down an old phone with an old and less intelligent processor. That might not necessarily be the case, though – neither Ars Technica nor Macworld found any significant impact on iOS 14 performance on the 6S.
What may be a bigger issue, as both testers note, is that the 6S shows its age with poor battery life. Features like widgets are also more difficult to use on the phone’s 4.7-inch screen, which is odd compared to today’s standard six-inch panels. These are not so many compatibility problems as the inevitable slow march of time from which no tool can escape.
However, iPhone 6S owners should not despair. They’ll still receive potentially useful updates like notification summaries, focus modes to reduce interruptions throughout the day, FaceTime video and music sharing, and added privacy features like a seven-day app privacy report to keep tabs on how apps use your information. There is also the peace of mind that comes with running the latest version of the operating system, and the security patches and bug fixes that come with it throughout the year. Not a bad deal for a six-year-old device.
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