Apple’s focus on improving efficiency and performance is good news for older iPhones.
Apple’s two main goals for iOS 27 were to improve the performance of its mobile operating system and add a touch of AI to everything through Apple Intelligence and Siri AI. Anything AI-related gets the most attention, but Apple’s attempts to clean up its software have already yielded one big win: The company won’t drop support for iPhones this year. This means that any iPhone running iOS 26, including the seven-year-old iPhone 11, can run iOS 27.
It’s unclear whether any change helped extend the life of the iPhone 11. The company promises that apps running iOS 27 will open up to 30% faster, among other speed improvements. The efficiency could also have been unlocked by the iOS CPU scheduler, which Apple says has also been recently optimized. That said, it doesn’t change what iPhones can use with Apple Intelligence as well as the new Siri AI features – the oldest is the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
The decision is notable, not only because of the age of the phone, but also because not all Apple devices have been treated equally. For example, watchOS 27 only runs on the Apple Watch Series 10 and later, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later, and the Apple Watch SE 3. That leaves three Apple Watch Series models, one Apple Watch SE model, and one Apple Watch Ultra model capable of running watchOS 26.
