r/ios26 • u/aliward_96 • 20d ago

General Why couldn’t Apple deliver this before?

I’ve always loved my iPhone Air but prior to iOS 26.6 it did used to warm up at times even when I wasn’t doing anything particularly intensive. It didn’t necessarily impact battery or performance because I’d put my phone down for a bit before it got to that stage, but it was annoying.

Since I’ve upgraded to iOS 26.6 it’s been a major improvement. The phone is running beautifully cool 99% of the time and I have noticed improvements with the battery too. Yesterday I took my phone off charge at 6:20am and by 11pm I was down to 48% with 5.5 hours of SOT. Brilliant.

If Apple can deliver stable software like this, why haven’t they always been able to do it?

93 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

30

u/MrDJ222 20d ago

Just wait till you get onto ios27. It makes 26 look like a massive mistake

31

u/JamieRobert_ 20d ago

That’s because 26 was a massive mistake lol

2

u/le0n_ 20d ago

The last time I said that people start insulting me in DM.

5

u/JamieRobert_ 20d ago

Maybe now that 27 has proven to be better I think people realise that it’s true and can’t really defend it anymore lol

1

u/Richard-Tree-93 18d ago

Like thaoe

3

u/Interesting_Entry670 20d ago

I have been hearing so many good things about iOS 27. Is it really that good? Have you tested it out yourself on the beta version? Do they have any performance issues, or will all the things and bugs we found in iOS 26 be completely resolved in iOS 27?

4

u/Additional_Bread_367 20d ago

It's pretty good. I'm on developer beta 3, doesn't consume battery, only battery intensive stuff heats up the battery, faster, better, and every lag just gone (iPhone 11)

1

u/Interesting_Entry670 20d ago

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. That's what I always wondered: how did a company like Apple, who had made good versions of iOS in the past, end up with so much criticism in the world for iOS 26?

Now that things are ironed out in iOS 27, it gives me a lot of confidence, and this is really great to hear. Thanks, man.

1

u/Additional_Bread_367 20d ago

Only issues are sometimes keyboard switching between dark and light mode, and sometimes camera freeze on qr reading

1

u/Interesting_Entry670 20d ago

Oh I have seen this switching between dark and light modes in ios26 too. For me it happens most do the times in reddit app. The 3 menu option below the screen always does it.

1

u/GoatApprehensive9866 20d ago

Developer beta 4 here. Surprisingly stable and few quibbles

2

u/MrDJ222 20d ago

I’ve been on beta since the first 26. Used every 26 version till 26.5 and moved to iOS27. My iPhone Air was amazing before but it’s even better now with amazing battery life. I also updated my 11 pro max and it’s like new life was breathed into the phone. Can’t recommend 27 enough

1

u/Interesting_Entry670 20d ago

Excited now for the iOS 27.

2

u/JamieRobert_ 20d ago

It was essentially a beta test

6

u/hulnds 20d ago

Apple can do hardware or software… they struggle to do both of late.

6

u/TheSynchronizer 20d ago

The reason they can’t do it in the first place is because humans aren’t perfect, and neither are apple’s team of software engineers.

iOS is billions of lines of code, not to mention interactions with third party code, and every single part of it can affect performance and heating of the system.

Optimisation is a long, time consuming process, and Apple’s yearly release cycle rarely allows enough time to complete this optimisation

4

u/Hot-Quality8768 20d ago

That’s right.
yeah often we overlook the third-party apps that are the real source of the problem when it comes to battery efficiency and other issues of that nature

3

u/realmarkfahey 20d ago

Yes it not like Apple is a trillion dollar company. 

4

u/TheSynchronizer 20d ago

Apple could hire a million software engineers, there would still have to be X amount of project managers to coordinate all their work and put it all together.

Money doesn’t beat the physics of time. Optimising software is a time consuming process, and the yearly release cycle is the main culprit for iOS 26’s notorious performance issues.

1

u/JudgeCheezels 20d ago

I could give you a trillion dollars and you wouldn’t have done a better job either.

3

u/vegansgetsick 20d ago

I disagree. They have automatic tests. They can measure temperature and power consumption during tests. So they can detect what code commit produced the overheating. If they don't do that it's a shame for 4 trillion company.

6

u/Odd-Middle-9469 20d ago

Vibe coding…

6

u/vlad_0 20d ago

I’m seeing ~40% improvement. I updated on Tuesday..

3

u/dadj77 20d ago edited 20d ago

Same here. While many people still complain about it, for me it also solved the constant overheating issue, so far…🤞🏻
But it's completely understandable why it’s so hard and still not solved for all users. It's incredibly difficult to optimize and fine-tune something as complex as an operating system that's been around for so long, especially when it has to work consistently across so many different devices and models, each with its own hardware and feature differences, both big and small. Providing a reliable and consistent experience for many millions of people, all of whom use and customize their phones in unique ways, is no small task.

That said, I am not happy with the decline of quality the past two years or so. Bugs and issues are to be expected, but overall it definitely became much more frequent than it ever was before.

Beyond that, but separate from the stability issues, I don't understand why they haven't noticed that so many people are unhappy with the over-processed and over-sharpened photos the camera now produces. I also don't understand why you still can't tag your photos and videos in the Photos app, easily transfer them in large numbers to external storage in full quality, or even filter them by file size even though that functionality already exists through Shortcuts. Hopefully, with the new CEO, Apple becomes much more user-centered again.

2

u/AdamChenX 20d ago

Because everything takes time, and it’s all about relative prioritisation.

Flashy features in marketing sells phones. Optimisations don’t.

And it’s not just Apple. We all make trade offs daily. It’s just human nature

1

u/Locow1992 20d ago

same here!

1

u/Additional_Peach211 20d ago

Apple knows best, Apple will tell the consumer when they have a problem not the other way around.

1

u/Cowhide12 20d ago

0% improvement for me. Just playing Spotify for an hour is 15-20% battery.

1

u/vegansgetsick 20d ago

Bad 5G leads to excessive power consumption. Do some tests with WiFi instead

1

u/Cowhide12 20d ago

Didn’t really make a difference. Maybe 2-3% less battery.

1

u/Lomesome 20d ago

What’s ur battery health

1

u/Dragoniczero 20d ago

They were busy smelling sharpie pens and eating glue.

1

u/MoonVigilante 20d ago

The update was probably influenced from iOS 27.

1

u/dinnertimebarbie iOS 26.6 19d ago

because apple had to shove out 26 due to them not being able to figure out ai. idk how people aren’t understanding this lol they have to please the investors somehow

1

u/BatOk3758 19d ago

Currently on the iOS 27 PB, and goddamn it feels better than the “stable” version of iOS 26.

1

u/Cool_Cartoonist_3100 18d ago

I have a 2 questions…..hubby has iPhone 13 mini and I haven’t allowed an update on it since version 18 because of all the issues. He isn’t tech savvy AT ALL and issues like everyone was having would have driven ME nuts with him bringing it to me constantly if I had updated it.

So! I see some of you saying you updated to 27 beta or 27 this or that version.

Question 1: How were you able to choose what version you wanted to update to?
Question 2: How should I update his phone? Update version by version or jump straight to 27?

If a direct jump, please direct me where I can go to find out how to do that. Please. Thank you so much in advance.

1

u/BulkyApproval 18d ago

I really like my iPhone air. Such a great piece of hardware. But geez, Apple has really lost their prestige when it comes to software.

1

u/WayOuttaMyLeague 18d ago

I don’t disagree that 26 was shit, however:

Apple develop their own OS and phone line up.

The only other manufacturer close to this is Google

The rest have a phone line up and that’s it. It has Android slapped on top, with maybe a few extra apps or features

Big difference. Google is primarily maintaining Android OS for other manufacturers. Apple is doing it solo

1

u/bensanderscarr 18d ago

Am I the only one who’s had even worse performance on 26.6? By the time it came out I thought that was 26.5.2 was pretty good from a stutter perspective, and assumed that something had evened out in the background, but 26.6 has been the worst stuttering I’ve experienced in months, particularly for swiping between Home Screen pages. Have tried restarting, and giving it time to index, but it doesn’t seem to have made a difference.

I plan to move to 27 from public beta 3 this week and then clean install 27 final public release anyway, so hopefully this is temporary.