I think an interesting third comparator would be used phone with new battery

My phone is now so old its showing up in legacy hardware videos. 83% battery health too! Going strong, no noticable slowdowns.

I believe it gets slower because apps are becoming more demanding on CPU and RAM, more features being added on social media apps and games.

This video is kind of pointless because Apple admitted that they slow down their phones back in 2017.

One thing that slows down older iPhones is old batteries. Replacing those old batteries really does improve the phone a lot

1:59 I don’t think I would bring that on an airplane without TSA having some questions

Commercial break at 1:13, regular programming resumes at 2:19

I’ve been wondering about this for quite a while. Thanks!

When are we going to talk about a beast of a phone and a powerhouse the iPhone XS still is? most people forget about it's existence, this phone is so underrated and still performs so good even on the laggy and buggy iOS 17.

still loving my XS ❤️

Would love to see you replace the battery in the old phone and do this test again.

Would have been interesting to see how the new phone fared after being updated to the same OS version as the used one after doing the tests you did here

Literally just had my battery replaced on my 12 pro max after it getting to 77%, and was noticing considerable lag and stuttering. Glad to say, I can confirm it seems like a new phone again after getting the new battery! 🎉

Here I'm using the 6s 128gb 😂 still keep up in 2024 (FYI Battery, home button,Screen has been changed)

3:26 Look here youngling, that's what we used to call a charger and a pair of earbuds. Back in my day (gets on soapbox) Apple used to provide those items with every iphone sold!

I think that you hit on an important point, Luke. In approximately 2007, Leo Laporte (technology guru/reporter) released an episode of his show where he stated that it was a good idea to annually reinstall the OS on your iPod in order to prevent software-induced slowdowns. Makes sense to me that the iPhone is no different!

The findings are already interesting but I think you were testing two factors here old vs new phone and iOS12 vs 17. I think if you now update the new phone to iOS 17 and run comparisons again it would give more insights on how the old vs new phone actually perform as well as how new phone on two different software versions compares.

I use a XS Max as my spare alongside my 15 Pro Max and it works perfectly fine except for when processing video edits and preparing a software update (which might be due to slower storage R/W speeds). Otherwise, it keeps apps in the background with no problems and its 6 year old battery still sits at 85%. I water damaged it once and used a hairdryer to try to dry out the internals. The FaceID doesn’t work but there’s no other flaw.

Would be cool to see picture quality too! My brother and I were discussing how our photos seem higher quality when we first got our phones compared to after a few years of usage

Great video! I have noticed similar things in my testing, phones that are 5 or 6, or even 7 years old are still completely fine. It normally just comes down to the battery. On an older used phone the battery degradation over time will contribute the most to slow downs. I have especially noticed it when it's cold outside or when the battery is below 20%, or both. Fantastic video as always Luke!

This is the only video on yt testing this , good job but i wanted more app opening speed test specialy with heavy games

It would be interesting to see if replacing the battery in the old one would increase benchmark scores.

Hey Luke! Great video as always! Keep up the good work.

I would've also done tests with the old phone, then upgraded to the latest ver to do a 3way comparison.

Well apple actually admitted that they slowed down older iPhones

You should have updated the unboxed phone to iOS 17 as a last test to see if getting a new battery is all a phone needs! For someone who uses a Xs or 11 hoping to hold onto it while it still gets updates, that would have been great info.

Great vid Luke, exploring the everyday real-world questions. 👍 Probably battery wear and latest iOS on an older phone plays it’s part. I guess also no surprise that ‘bloat’ over time is a major factor. But if you’re like me, the will is weak to clean out your phone and delete all those apps you used once, 4 years ago.

This thing is on my mind for over a long time it's exciting to see someone making video about this

Please compare quality of photo/video from these 2 phones with different OS versions.

I can tell you that on the macOS side, Ventura and Sonoma are both WAAAY heavier than their predecessors...

i found this video very interesting. keep up the great work.

Luke in IT and phone shops in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam you can still buy new old iPhones still in sealed boxes. You’ve just inspired me to go and see just how old an iPhone I can buy.

I was laughing at the comparison graph at 10:07, iPhone vs a M2 Macbook Air 😂😂

Why it says M2 MBA in 10:07?

I noticed the most with my iPhone 6 after four years of constant use. I even had visited Genius Bar when Apple announced the special discount for the battery replacement. The technician was astounded that the battery life was almost like new after four years and couldn't understand how it was to be. I explained to him that I never let it drain down to below 20%. However, he stated that the battery was in "pristine" condition so nothing could improve the increasingly molasses speed.

Luke, it is likely that Apple pushes out a larger minor update that is slower and more stable in order to prepare for the annual major update, while eschewing anything that may give increased performance? Could you do a test with a phone still on a prior to minor update, and with the minor update before a major upgrade to software?

Putting in a new official Apple battery would be an interesting follow up test. I've personally witnessed a few times a phone was stuttering and dropping frames while reporting normal battery health, but replacing the battery vastly improved it.

The nand flash inside your phone also degrades over time especially if you keep your phone full all the time and it can cause slowness also

I did a similar test years ago with the iPhone 5, and I can tell you that there was definitely a great deal of slowdown when upgrading to iOS 9, and iOS 10 was practically unusable. It ran so well on iOS 8 though.

Very nice to test this. To me, what makes it feel slow is the apps that you have installed on the device.

I am still using an iPhone 6s Plus and it’s still working fine.

My 15 pro max's performance was absolutely flawless when I bought it. 2 months and a few ios updates later, the phone sometimes stutters and does other weird little things. Sometimes the keyboard doesnt wanna work, an app doesnt work, or there is a lag in the animations. It doesn't happen all the time but that 5% of the time it does, really gets me because it was perfect before I updated it. This just me?

I'm currently using an iPhone XS black myself and i gotta say it's having issues with the heat, if i ever tried to do anything without sitting in a room with AC on or using the phone cooler it just gets too hot and decrease the screen brightness automatically, and it also runs out of battery faster too

Upgraded my XS last September! Broken screen, 72% battery & full memory but still an amazing device!!!!!

You had a good chance to do something no one has ever done before, but you just messed things up by not putting in effort and not using the opportunity at all

This isn’t scientific. There are OS optimizations for certain apps with certain versions of the benchmark apps you’re using. The way you want to do it is use the same version of the benchmark app that goes with the year the OS was release. Do not use the same version of whatever benchmark app you plan to use. This skews the data.

Great video, would think that a lot of difference would be due to the battery health. What I’ve been wondering is if apple have been slowing down the Intel Macs?

You should’ve tested something like iPad 2018, it’s literally unusable now on iPadOS 17. It was very fast on IOS 12, but now it drops to 30 fps even in Hill Climb Racing and crashes frequently. Benchmark score is the same, but real life usage performance drastically changed.

What was the battery health on the new iPhone? Be interesting to know

What’s the battery health of the new phone -_-

It would be interesting to see benchmarks on both device running same software. Just wanted to see whether the battery health has a role in phones performance.

Good job with the video. I think the batteries are where the devices differ. Maybe if the used phone had a battery replacement, it would have run on full performance mode as compared to when it has less that 90% battery? maybe that was a factor?

Replace battery and test again.

What you should do is do the test as you did, but then take the iOS 12 device and update it to the latest iOS version and test against itself previously.

file transfer speeds would’ve been a good test to run. as well as seeing temperatures of both devices under stress. my xr used to get extremely hot while facetiming

I got a Xs-max when it was new, I kept it till earlier this year,and it never slowed down at all even though all updates,I upgraded earlier this year to a 15pro-max. Also had a Samsung s-10 when it was new and also upgraded that this year as well with a s-24u. (One is my personal phone the other is my business phone.)

Who else is watching this on a XS?

You should have upgraded the new phone to the same iOS version. That would eliminate what is the biggest difference in performance. The new phone wasn't really faster - In some tests it was and in others it was slower. But the difference is so small that the reason for the difference is most likely the major difference in iOS versions and minute differences in how fast you click on one compared to the other. You could take 5 brand new iPhone 15 Pro and run the same benchmark - you would get 5 different results all differing within a few percent of each other. Short version: No, the iPhone does not slow down. Differences in performance is minute and is explained by newer iOS versions having more features and usually requiring a bit more CPU and that every single CPU has slight variations in performance.

I suggest trying the same test with the storage (partially) filled up. It's probably throttling itself once storage gets fuller because it runs out of swap space or something.

I have a 13 pro max (ik not very old yet) but i did start to feel like my phone was getting slow and the battery was draining too quick. it used to last about two days when it was new, then it started to only last about a day. Later on, I had my battery replaced since my phone was damaged and it would be good to replace the battery too. I got my phone back and it felt like a brand new phone again, lasts about two days on one charge and runs smooth. Just take care of your battery, don’t stress out your phone, and try not to max out your storage!!

i don't think you can use any bench software, apple detect those and make it work as it should, if you want to truely see the difference, use games or heavy productive app like photoshop etc

Actually since iPhone 5S onwards due to improved performance they aren't unusable like the 4S or 4 on the latest iOS versions. Since XR series on wards they are still very good like what you found in the video, very usable. Atleast this is what I noticed.

As a guy daily driving a XS for 4 years, I'm still impressed how fast it is for every single task and how good the camera still is today. I haven't found a reason to upgrade yet because of how good it is and HOW PRETTY IT IZ COMPARED TO 11 TO 15. I mean... Gold XS is the prettiest iPhone

I have a new sealed 3GS that i plan on trying someday, no idea how that will fair or even if it will work. Thanks for the video.

It's the security and the new features that make the phone feel slower. New and extra unplanned software items running in the background on an older phone cause it to feel like a slower phone over time. And with the battery aging degraded capacity over time- the phone experiences voltage dips when the processor loads while it's working hard- to prevent the voltage from collapsing and the phone shutting off instantly, they can downclock the processor to prevent voltage dips. (When I say downclocking, that can also assigning the work to the efficiency cores rather than the performance cores. -this could explain why there are variances in performance on the used-phone in the synthetic benchmarks.) The experiment to have also include would have been to fully upgrade the iOS on the brand new phone, then repeat the benchmarks. This could have made this comparison pretty definitive because nobody on KZfaq or tech news sites have done it yet.

I think RAM and battery condition are most likely culprits for most people on later upgrades of iOS.

I've been using iPhone 7 Plus from 2016 until a few months back, on the end it did get slower, but I think was due to the battery getting below 80% and the apps getting more resource hungry. After battery change the phone works like new, no complaints whatsoever. Only upgrated to newer model because many apps stopped working under the old iOS and the 32GB it has is not enough. I guess it comes to iOS being well optimized, if an old phone with only 3GB ram and 4 core processors work so well 8 years on. Good luck achieving this with an android phone with 100GB ram and 100 core CPU, you will be lucky if after a year the android isn't freezing and crushing all the time.

I have an iphone 7 since launch and it's falling apart... Losing network during calls, wifi connectivity issues from time to time, gets really hot while using certain apps like the camera, instagram e.t.c... Quite slow in general and it's due for an upgrade.

The XS isn't even that old. Since the release of the 6s, iPhones have generally performed acceptably on newer iOS versions (though the 6(and older) did experience slowdowns over time). With newer models like the XS, it's harder to notice any decline in performance.

They don't optimze new iOS versions for older screens anymore, so everything feels cramped. I think that is the noticable difference.

i would love to see a comparison of the new iphone xs with the latest ios vs old iPhone xs with the latest ios!

My iPad Air 2nd gen now got stuck in iPadOS 15.8.2. I clearly notice it sometimes stutters with everything I try or even completely freezes. Never had that before. The battery is fine as it's basically connected to power all it's life. I now have to reboot it frequently to get it going again. I don't think it's the hardware as nothing changed, but more likely updates on various apps. They probably become more complicated and harder to process. More memory required? Looking for functionality that isn't there? Maybe Apple is doing stuff in the background we usually don't notice on faster new devices? Who will tell? Just like with the typical desktop OS it's usually software related. A fresh install can do miracles.

5 minutes ago gang where u at

inaccurate, use the same colour and storage for +5% performance

excellent topic!! I just skipped ahead to @9:45 for the results. But i will come back and watch it again at some point.

XS Maxx Gold is definitely one of the sexiest phones. I’ve been using it since 2018 and I’m thinking about getting the 16 this year. Depending on if it’s stronger than the 15 titanium / paper Mâché phone. My battery is at 79% it gets hot quite often during applications. I really think a new battery will 100% benefit it.

First!

Great video, thanks for making it.

It might be interesting to update the software on the new phone to the same one as the old phone to see if the change in OS contributes to the slowdown.

I've been contemplating creating a video on this very topic but haven't found the time, so I was thrilled to see your deep dive into it. Your conclusion resonated with me, especially based on my experience with my iPhone 8. I got it new in 2018, and by 2022, it was evident that it needed a battery replacement-four years seemed like a good lifespan for a battery. After Apple replaced the battery, I noticed that its health began to decline much faster than the original, and within a year, I was facing the need for another replacement. Apple's stance was that battery performance varies with usage, which is understandable. Assuming the replacement battery was of the same quality as the original, the only variable that had changed was the software. Like the conclusion you've drawn, I don't believe Apple is intentionally causing batteries to degrade faster. Instead, what seems to be happening is a matter of hardware limitations. With each software update requiring more from the hardware, my iPhone 8, which has only 2GB of RAM, struggled. I noticed that switching between apps often forced them to reload from scratch, suggesting a RAM limitation was making the device appear slower. This constant reloading from storage likely led to the increased battery drain I experienced. It's interesting to consider how modern iPhones, even with 4GB of RAM, might not currently face this issue. However, I anticipate similar challenges as they approach their end-of-life phase, echoing the cycle I've observed with my iPhone 8. This insight into hardware limitations versus software demands sheds light on the broader implications of our devices' longevity and performance.

4:53 adding the quack didn't stop my homepod 😂

what would happen if you Update the New iPhone 10 to the most current iOS? & run all the test again.

Great video. Some really old iPhones are still usable while being slower, but can’t say the same for some Androids. 😅

Funnily enough I had a problem a week ago when a shop replaced the battery in my XS and gave me a new XS with all the plastic parts and everything. 🤣🤣

I’m currently using the IPhone 6SPlus. I’m still thoroughly enjoying it and don’t feel I’m missing out on much. The battery upgrade to the newer phones isn’t impressive because it’s built for that specific phone to handle the processing. But if you used a new battery for my phone or the 10. I’m sure you would see a much longer battery life for sure. The cameras are obviously more powerful in the newer phones but overall my phone does exactly what other phones are meant to do; call, text, internet, use apps as long as it’s still usable with the software. Other than that I’m saving loads of money but this year I’m on the look for a new phone cause it has some minor lagging maybe due to storage perhaps being too full but other than that the speed is much better than any android old phone when it comes to responsiveness. I’m just not too caught up in the hype of things so many years ago.

With this you will resolve whether or not planned obsolescence exists, thank you.

What if you install iOS 17 on the new phone and re do the tests?

Still using my XS Max! Such a great phone! Cause it’s at 79% battery health I usually have to charge it a bit during the day, but other than that and missing the latest cameras, it’s still more than capable after 5 and a half years.

Fortunately, i happened to just switch from my iPhone X from 2017 (which actually is 6yrs. old!) to an iPhone 15 Pro! I did have all my apps downloaded from iCloud back onto my new phone. My new iPhone 15 Pro absolutely does feel faster. And i'm not talking about benchmarks but actually using it. Opening up the app store, scrolling through apps, websites, opening anything up goes faster actually. I should say though, i don't know how much the battery is responsible for the phone maybe slowing down.

This is great video for peoples looking to buy old second hand iPhones

I Always wanted a video like this😂

so, as a person who has a couple of iphones in the collection and used them as dailies for a while, i haven't really noticed any CPU slowdown, BUT the phones get considerably hotter with each new update and become way worse at multitasking, bc the new OS versions take up more RAM. For example, even on ios 15.7 my iphone x struggles to keep some apps (KZfaq, Telegram, Discord, etc.) in the same state i left them even when switching out for a minute or two, and that's extremely frustrating

What about updating the old one to iOS 17 and trying these tests again?

i have ip 7 plus ( battery changed yesterday ) , still good . as an old unit this is actualy fast , no lag , speaker good , kamera still okay i think i have ip 12 too

keep in mind too that there are slight differences in performance via the silicon lottery comparing two processors even if they are the same kind.

There are some differences sure but that could be anything, maybe not the OS itself but maybe given the older phone has more apps running in the background and so on, i am not sure you need to upgrade to the latest one after seeing this

my gym bro has the iphone x and it's still going strong lol. i have the iphone 15 pro and ngl when i held the iphone x it felt sooooo good! recently replaced battery too and it's still going strong

Im very impressed how you managed to handle it without it crumbling to dust. A true relic of our past

I had my ip11 for 5 yrs and it only showed 73 bh on towards the end. Had no issues whatsoever with it. I'm now on 13 pro and its been amazing

Thank you for making this comparison video, on that note rumor has it that Apple will soon be changing up their system so that when you buy any iPhone, it will automatically have the newest latest update software off the box.