What I have seen with iPhones is that the ram has gone from 4gb to 12gb very quickly compared to how it went from 1gb to 3gb.
Apps used to use less ram but over the years apps have become big and more complicated. This is probably why iPhones feel sluggish because new iPhones have more memory and apps snap back faster as newer iPhones which also have faster storage and memory bandwidth to reduce latency of reading more data from the flash.
Batteries are also a problem as maintaining voltage is difficult for a 2-3 year old battery. An official battery swap at apple service for a 3 year old iPhone will make it run much better.
I used to believe (and sometimes I still do) that apple intentionally makes everything heavier to make old phones and devices feel slower but I don't think thats the case.
I think that more things are happening on newer phones and devices and that same task feels slower on older device. This happens are lot faster on iPhones and phones in general (a year or two) as opposed to Macs/computers which can show signs of aging in 4-5 years.
My 2018 intel computer feels very slow in 2025 running Gnome. No one slowed it down. It's just that the 2025 world of software is a lot heavier and 2026 will be even more and so on.
Apple has been proven to intentionally slow down older devices, but it's definitely not to inflate their profits. It's just a way to kindly preserve your old battery for you. And they try to keep it a secret from you so you don't get confused.
… Eh? It was neither. It was due to a design defect in a particular model; if voltage fell into a range that was perfectly possible with an aging but still functional battery, the SoC would shut off. The only viable software fix was to clock it down instead (there was an option to decline that and risk the abrupt shutoffs).
Not really sure what else they could have done there.
It's not a particular model. It's every model. And it's just interesting that no other manufacturer seems to have the same problem. iPhones are just too advanced, I suppose.
My old iPhone 7, before I eventually replaced it, would sometimes just die due to this as the battery aged (I kept the slowdown setting turned off). AFAIK it is _not_ a thing in any version after the 7 (or maybe 8?); certainly my 11 had a significantly degraded battery by the end (I kept it for four years), and didn't suffer this issue.
EDIT: Actually, I think this article is a _little_ inaccurate, or at least confusing:
> thus preventing the handsets from rapidly running out of juice and powering off.
IIRC the issue was, more precisely, that the SoCs had insufficient voltage smoothing to reliably tolerate full power draw at lowered voltages, and would shut off randomly. I assume the fix was, pretty much, more capacitors.
Apps are heavier because a lot of them do not use native code. It's all cross platform BS. And they include a lot of A/B code as well. Really wish Apple would nip that all in the bud.
My iPhone X worked fine for 7 years, even without a battery replacement. It still works just fine. I wanted a larger screen and better zoom lens, so I upgraded earlier this year but I absolutely didn't have to and didn't feel any pressure from Apple to do so.
I've been using an iPhone 11 for 4 years now (also, reminder: the 11 was launched 2 years prior to when I bought mine). I replaced the battery earlier this year as it wouldn't last to the end of the day any more but besides that it's showing no slowdowns or any other issues.
I have an iPhone 13 Mini and upgraded is iOS 26 and it seems fine to me.
I also have a 2018 iPad Pro and put iPadOS 26 on it and I haven't had any issues on it either except sometimes my keyboard is slow to connect. I'm not sure if it's the software or hardware though.
I haven't really found anything that blew my socks off, and the number of "strange bugs" (not even talking about the UI complaints, just things like "touch stops working suddenly" and other weird things) is too damn high.
i don't see what the big deal is with iOS 26. it looks a little bit different, everything now seems to have some degree of transparency but everything works the same.
Support means that the manufacturer just still releases OS updates. But it says absolutely nothing about the quality of those updates: what if those updates simply degrade the situation? Every iPhone user I know says the same without conspiring with each other: it's better to stop updating to newer major OS releases for older iPhones.
